He added that when a transportation department is planning routes, capturing actual ridership and opti- mizing it by cutting routes or trying to consolidate in a way to derive fuel savings with fewer buses on the road equates to significant cost savings. “Hopefully the planning and decision-making at a fed-
eral level will calm down,” he added. “That will allow the states to then make better decisions. I’ve seen some very quick decisions made in particular states at a high level, then you’ve got six months of planning with the district on projects, and then something changes overnight. Boom, funding is gone.” When an ID is integrated into the student experience,
districts typically not only get better school transporta- tion data but a global view of who is using the lunch line services, who’s using the library, who’s going to counsel- ing, as well as test-score data, Cole added. Brett Taylor, SMART tag product marketing manager, noted the tablet and software company has partial but not industry-wide visibility through its end users and actively provides them the reports needed to support Medicaid reimbursement submissions, as the main reimbursement
is for trips home to school and school to home. “The report tracks everything from if a student rides
or not every day of the month and if a student rides, you have to record certain information,” he said. “If they don’t ride, you have to mark it as absent for them not being at school, so they don’t get reimbursed for a day they didn’t ride.” The reports record pick-up and drop-off location times, the student ID, how many minutes they were on the bus, how many miles the bus traveled and where and at what time the students were dropped off as well as the name of the driver and monitor. Districts will hire a company to process their reim- bursement or their Medicaid reports for both in the classroom and on the bus, Taylor said, adding those companies often ask districts to have SMART tag auto- matically send them the report each month, relieving the burden on the transportation department. While requested information differs, “We ensure every
company that processes our Medicaid report has all the information they need,” he said. “If they get audited, it has everything in place so when the auditor reviews
26 School Transportation News • JANUARY 2026
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