D
enver Public Schools in Colorado used to rely on RFID cards to track students getting on the bus, but the results weren’t good. “We’d never gotten more than 4 percent [of student riders] to scan on
by themselves,” noted Executive Director of Transportation Albert Samora. “The technology was, ‘I have a scanner, you have a card,’ and we didn’t have anything else.” Even worse, school bus drivers had no way to add the
students manually. Additionally, it costs families several dollars to replace
lost cards, a significant barrier considering that two- thirds of the district’s students qualify for reduced-price lunches. Some families had multiple children losing cards, multiple times throughout the school year. Samora was determined to find a better way of track- ing student riders. “We can’t create better services if we don’t know who is riding,” he said. “I’ve been in this industry for 25 years. I’ve heard of everything from eye scanning, to face rec- ognition, fingerprints, RFID and, finally, QR codes. I’ve weighed the differences on all these technologies.” Ultimately, DPS settled on a QR-code-based system
developed in conjunction with the company Sher- paDesk. Students can pull up the QR code on their cellphones or scan their student ID, which also includes the QR code. If students lose their card, school personnel can “simply print another card, laminate it and give it to them that same day,” Samora noted. He said 29 percent of students are scanning them-
selves onto the bus, and drivers can also log students in, adding up to a tracking rate of about 85 percent. “It feels like a pretty big success compared to where we
were,” Samora added. It’s an example of how the right technology can make
a big change for districts, and how actual adoption and engagement of key stakeholders—namely students, parents, vendors and drivers—is central to whether a certain technology is successful. Samora described three key components in per- suading students to adopt the ridership technology, meaning they scan each time they get on the bus. First, the language needs to be accessible. Students in Denver schools speak nine languages. Samora said the tracking app and instructions to use it are currently available in four languages and transportation and the vendor are working on adding more. Next, students and families need to trust the district to engage with its technology. With many international and immigrant students, “There is a distrust. ‘Should I be doing any of this scanning? What does this technology mean in terms of me being safe in the city?’” Samora explained. The third factor is more mundane but absolutely cru-
cial: Providing convenience. “If humans are inconvenienced at any level,” they won’t
52 School Transportation News • SEPTEMBER 2026
adopt a behavior,” Samora added. “You have to teach a hab- it. You have to build up and get people used to doing it.” While districts often use different providers and plat-
forms for routing, student tracking and GPS location, Samora said it was important to Denver to combine the services in one integrated system. They worked with providers Samsara and Tyler Technologies to integrate the different information streams and make them all available on the district’s parent app. This means the app shows families their student’s
route, whether the bus is running late, and whether the student has scanned on or off. More than a third of parents are using the app, and Samora said he expects the uptake to increase, especially as the app becomes available in more languages. He acknowledged that switching technologies and
working with providers to tailor systems can be a big undertaking, and “the path of least resistance”—sticking with existing technology—can be easier. But he advised districts to be proactive in exploring how technology could best serve them, and to ask companies to work with them to meet their needs and realize their ideas. “What often happens is our vendors want you to use their technology and their technology only, but that is not the total package or total solution for all cities or mu- nicipalities,” said Samora, who comes from a computer science background.
Fewer Phone Calls in Florida Bill Wen, the retiring senior director of transportation
services of Orange County Public Schools in central Florida, similarly advised “holding vendors accountable” and making sure platforms deliver as promised, as well as turning to other districts to figure out which new technology to consider in a sector that only gets more complicated with the advent of AI. “There are a lot of bells and whistles. We need to find
out what really works,” said Wen. “We’re all in this togeth- er, lean on each other and ask questions of each other. With all the budget cuts and reductions we’re all asked to do, using technology is a great tool.” Orange County worked with Onflow (previously
known as K12 Insight) to develop a customer service platform for incoming phone calls, with an AI chatbot to help answer parent questions. “It also gives you a dashboard as administrators,” said
Wen. “We can see which the most common questions are and improve our website to answer the questions before you get the calls.” Another of Florida’s largest districts, Hillsborough
County Public Schools, is adopting the platform. “We have the same transportation laws in Florida, so
it helps when something is invented for other districts, to piggyback on it,” said Laura Hill, general manager of
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