American School Transportation Partners is among the growing number of contractors that are


supplementing school bus service with other vehicles.


“We never go into a school district and say their prob- lems will be all gone when we come in the door. We tell them there [are] going to be problems. However, we will work together to resolve those problems. That’s a team effort. It’s a partnership. Transportation is complex and to make it successful both sides have to come together with the same objective and that’s to get kids to and from school safely, timely and efficiently.”


Going the Extra Mile for Special Needs Students Meanwhile, up the coast in Massachusetts, another


innovative student transportation operation was getting started with the motto, “Going the extra mile.” Beacon Mobility also evokes a strong partnership message and a commitment to its communities. In education, its main purpose is transporting students with special needs. The seeds for Beacon Mobility were planted in 2018,


when an investor and parent noticed what transpor- tation company Van Pool was doing for his and other children. Those seeds took root and began to grow last year, when Beacon Mobility was formed as a parent company with the help of a private equity firm to pro- vide infrastructure and support for the growing number of values-based companies that were motivated to grow and build on Van Pool’s service model, said Beacon CEO Judith Crawford. “Beacon has grown to become a house of brands with


a rich history dating back 65 years, supporting 11 part- ner companies in the northeast and Midwest,” Crawford explained. “The diversity of our partner companies is united by Beacon’s two core principles: To be known as a great people-focused place to work and to be the best provider of high needs transportation in the country.” She said Beacon primarily runs school transportation


services for special needs and regular education students, but it also caters to physically challenged adults and has recently begun expanding into paratransit services. Beacon operates in Massachusetts, Illinois, Minnesota,


26 School Transportation News • JUNE 2022


New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and California, the latter as a result of the recent acquisition of technology giant Adroit Technologies and Cloud Solutions, Inc., in California. Beacon’s website refers to Adroit as “a technolo- gy-based transportation service that connects school districts and parents with independent drivers that pro- vide transportation services for special needs students. These drivers use their own vehicles through a tradition- al rideshare model similar to Uber and Lyft.” The addition of Adroit, said Crawford, indicates Beacon’s


commitment to diversification in order to help its partner companies and schools operate more efficiently by giving them choices. “We are building programs that embrace both traditional transportation and alternative transporta- tion models, alternative fuels, and electric vehicles so that districts can build programs that best fit the communities they serve,” Crawford explained. “Adroit is one of the tools we are adding to our toolbox to be able to provide our cus- tomers with those choices.” Crawford added that alternative programs will offer expanded opportunities to school districts, but only if there is regulatory oversight for safety. “To build a world where alternative transportation is available to everyone, we need to ensure that there is legislation in place to make government funding as accessible to alternative transportation models as is it to traditional school trans- portation models,” she said. “We plan to be part of the movement to bring alternative transportation into a safer and accessible regulated space.” New companies seeking refuge under Beacon’s um-


brella are expected to come already qualified to operate in the states where they are located, including licensed drivers who have undergone background checks and possess the required special needs training. Crawford said choosing partner companies doesn’t


have to be a daunting task, but it’s vital for an organization to first know its identity. She said that while every con-


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