T
hroughout the U.S., school districts are adopting tablets providing GPS features to optimize routing and provide real-time information for
districts and parents on the status of buses. Leander Independent School District northwest
of Austin, Texas covers about 200 square miles and transports 11,600 students with 238 general education buses, 84 SPED buses and a white fleet of 29 suburban vehicles. Peter Simonsen, the district’s transportation systems specialist, noted public school districts are reimbursed using a Texas Education Agency formula for miles driven and students transported. “Prior to SMART Tag, we had to conduct manual
roll calls of all students three times a year using pen and paper,” recalled Simonsen, adding it was cumbersome, time consuming and sometimes inaccurate. Routers used to print route directions, updates and student rosters on paper throughout the year. “Before GPS, we had no idea as to where any of our buses were physically located,” said Simon- sen. “We had to use the two-way radio and get the driver to give our dispatch street intersections for us to know where a specific bus was located.” Another concern was, like most public school
districts, Leander was experiencing driver short- age and turnover. To address those concerns, in 2021 Leander ISD
sought a GPS solution, choosing SMART Tag in part for being developed by someone with school bus driving experience, said Simonsen. “SMART Tag also has a very comprehensive administration portal. The driver interface is very intuitive for any school bus driver, helping with driver training and retention,” said Simonsen. “Turn-by-turn directions on the driver tablet are great, especially for new drivers. The live map in the administration portal gives us location of all buses throughout our school district. When we enter unavailable drivers, our dispatchers can easily and quickly see which route needs a cover driver and assign one immediately.” Complete visibility of all bus locations means the district can see routes ahead of schedule, on time or behind, and the driven path of any route compared to the planned route, Simonsen said. He added that the terminal monitor gives an overview of students transported, buses on route and remaining students on buses. “Our dispatch center and management can
28 School Transportation News • NOVEMBER 2025
push out notifications to any or all tablets about any important issues as well as to parents using the SMART Tag cell phone app,” Simonsen said. Drivers conducting pre- or post-trip bus in-
spections can enter any bus defect—such as an engine warning light or oil spill—on the tablet that activates the message, “Do Not Drive This Bus. Call Dispatch and Get a Sub Bus,” with a shop supervisor determining which defects constitute a no-roll situation, Simonsen said. The district can now have a daily roll call including data on Medicaid-eligible expense reporting, he added, noting the function includes 24 standard reports. “From a school bus drivers’ perspective, it is
very easy to load and unload students riding the bus, which gives us complete and accurate student ridership by route and totals by day,” he explained Any stop that does not have any students
assigned to it is automatically skipped and turn- by-turn directions are displayed to the next stop. If a student boards the wrong bus, a red screen
displays “wrong bus” and the correct bus route number for that student. The SMART Tag tablet displays the roster for each bus route. Students can pick their name from the roster or enter their six-digit student ID number. The Campus Portal enables staff at all campuses to view buses enroute or delayed due to traffic delays, road construction, or bad weather. More than 12,000 parents have registered to use the free SMART Tag Parent Cell Phone App, offering notifications up to 20 minutes prior to when the bus is arriving at the stop and when the student boarded and exited the bus in the morning and afternoon as well as when buses are running late. Following a major recent crash, the SMART Tag
solution was helpful in knowing exactly who was on the bus, Simonsen said, adding that since Le- ander ISD implemented the SMART Tag solution, the number of phone calls its dispatch centers are receiving has decreased dramatically and the dis- trict is not printing as many routes and updates. This saves the district money and helps with the environment. Training helped mitigate initial challenges
implementing the SMART Tag solution, Simonsen said, adding drivers know it’s a tool to make their jobs easier and should not be viewed as a way to catch them doing something wrong.
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