Dean Transportation in Michigan uses school bus telematics not merely to show vehicle location but to take a deep dive into total vehicle performance.
with our routing and our student placement on routes, bus stops, and boundaries, and all of that,” she added. “We’re really excited for all of the possibilities, of all the communication with families. That’s really the key.” Last year, Baggese relayed that the driver shortage
matically download video via Wi-Fi transfer. Dr. Burton noted that Gifford may soon live his dream.
Dayton applied for the full amount of 25 electric school buses at $370,000 each during this summer’s Clean School Bus Program rebate. “Those buses will come with a lot of modern technology we wish we had on diesel buses,” she added.
A California State of Technology Pajaro Valley Unified School District near Santa Cruz,
California runs a third of the routes Dayton does. But thanks to the new California budget and its historic investment in student transportation to the tune of 60 percent state reimbursement on top of local control funds from property owners, directors of transportation like Kathryn Baggese will see their student ridership increase in the coming years. And districts like Pajaro Valley that have already invested in technology and are soon upping the ante will be better suited to accept the influx.
Seeing this need, Baggese said her department is seeking to create a new position to manage all of the data coming from student ridership programs. “The idea behind it is to use all of our databases relationally,” she explained. “The idea is to have our student information system talk to Transfinder or Transfinder talk to Zonar. They’re already doing it, but we’re not using any of our programs to the full capacity that we can be. We don’t have somebody who’s dedicated to utilizing them and getting everything out of them that they can.” As of last month, Baggese said the district was working
with its collective bargaining unit on the new position and would then need school board approval, a process she said she hoped would culminate with recruiting beginning this fall. “That will, I’m sure, help us become more efficient
58 School Transportation News • SEPTEMBER 2022
resulted in canceling routes, but the district was unable to communicate the issues properly to parents. It proved difficult to rely on individual school sites because either all families, regardless of if their children were transport- ed or not, would receive cancellation messages. “If we had better communication between our sys- tems, we could effectively communicate to just the one route that needed to be communicated to, instead of upsetting a lot of parents,” she continued. “The real ques- tion became, how can we do this better or differently? And how can we control our own message?” Having the new technology employee in place will be- gin the process. Pajaro Valley will upgrade to Transfinder Routefinder Pro, Stopfinder to allow parents to see the bus stop, and Wayfinder for tablet navigation to the drivers. “That new position is going to be really pivotal to tying
everything together because, right now, they’re just kind of a hodgepodge, if you will. We’re really not integrated yet,” she explained. In terms of GPS, Baggese said Pajaro Valley USD re-
cently upgraded to version four of Zonar Ground Traffic Control. This includes an upgrade to the Samsung TA3 tablets for use with Electronic Vehicle Inspection Report- ing that she said would be rolled out for bus drivers in time for the start of school on Aug. 15. Work orders are submitted to mechanics via Servicefinder. The tablets also conduct head counts as students scan
badges when boarding and exiting their buses. In the end, technology usage to its full potential will
allow the transportation department to operate more ef- ficiently, which in turn could reduce the size of the fleet because of more optimized routing, Baggese said.
The ‘Dean’ of Michigan Transportation When one utters the company name Dean Transpor-
tation, thoughts quickly turn to special needs students and Michigan. But the recently crowned Contractor Company of the Year by the National School Transpor- tation Association and School Transportation News has diversified. Christopher Dean, the director of innova- tion for the family-owned company that is the largest provider in Michigan, said general education routes now account for 40 percent of business. What has not changed is the reliance on technology. “My goal as director of innovation is to provide the tools and utilize tools for our team to be able to have as
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