Tyler Technologies Vice President and GM Ted Thien (center) chats with Orangeburg School District’s Kevin Addison (left) and Bill Tindal, SCDE’s director of business and district services, during a recent video call.
ordinator David Poag. Greenville integrates live GPS into its buses using an AngelTrax video management solution that also emits a Wi-Fi signal. The district’s technology department also developed an in-house tablet that tracks route time and driver attendance. “We eventually hope to have some student tracking capabilities with that,” Poag added. While the entire South Carolina student transportation
experience is unparalleled, several other states do offer a similar type of software integration or transportation management system for its school districts. One of those states is Maine, where the state department of education purchased a centralized student routing and transporta- tion management system from Transfinder in the early fall of 2009. All school administrative districts have the option of using Routefinder Pro as well as Stopfinder for district communication and field trip management, Infofinder i to provide web-based busing information to parents, and Servicefinder for fleet maintenance. One of the first adopters was Maine School Adminis-
trative District (MSAD) 44 in rural Bethel, Maine, which is locarted near the state’s border with New Hampshire. At the time, the school district had no computerized routing system for its dozen buses that transport nearly 800 students on a normal school day. Transportation Director Ron Deegan signed up as one of 10 districts to conduct a pilot test. Immediately, the integration helped him more efficiently route his buses to account for the
50 School Transportation News • SEPTEMBER 2020
loss of two drivers due to retirement. The student track- ing component proved the vehicles were only running at 60 percent of their capacity. Deegan added that because the Transfinder suite is hosted remotely in the cloud, it alleviates stress on his small staff, allowing them to concentrate on their re- sponsibilities while also saving the district money. Another state that provides routing software for
districts that want to use it is North Carolina. The state department of public instruction partnered with the Uni- versity of North Carolina-Charlotte Urban Institute more than two decades ago to improve school bus efficiency with a standardized and comprehensive computer-as- sisted routing and scheduling software.
Embracing Technology with Eyes Wide Open Katrina Falk, the director of transportation for Shelby Eastern Schools located about 40 miles southwest of Indianapolis, said she could write a novel on why every school district, especially small, rural ones, should utilize some form of technology. The district recently switched from a different parent-facing app to Stopfinder, which came especially handy in the spring to see the location of buses delivering meals and homework packets during COVID-19 closures. Then, her district used the down- time to migrate to Routefinder Plus, Transfinder’s most recent upgrade that allows Shelby Eastern to customize and merge route reports and student rosters. The district
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