Greg Jackson, School Bus Logistics director of client success and industry engagement, speaks at the 2024 STN EXPO West in Reno, Nevada, on the importance of receiving real-time information in school bus operations. Read about the session at
stnonline.com/go/nd.
the 2025-2026 school year, which comprises around 1,5 percent of the overall district budget. To support overall district budget efforts and improve
efficiency, bus routes are developed based on requests from district families who opt in through an online parent portal. The district refines transportation routes throughout the school year to ensure efficient service. Meanwhile, Somerville noted that Show Low Unified
implemented several changes, including student rider- ship verification, accountability and support software. “Routing is our core, but that support software is there
for the maintenance shop, field trips and parent notifica- tion,” he said.
A GIS expert, Somerville’s student transportation
career dates to 1986, when he was an assistant trans- portation director for a school district in Alaska. Most recently, he was the director of fleet sales for Safe Fleet and prior was a GIS specialists for the Utah Transit
Authority. He then held several sales and product man- ager roles with Edulog, Trapeze, Zonar, ESRI and U.S. Computing. In Reno last month, he advised school districts to uti-
lize requirements that make sense in RFPs, from needed resources to what the district can realistically handle. Ex- amine the end goal, he explained. If the district already has software, is anything else needed? Should the district instead upgrade what it has or get more training on it? If something else is needed, what will most benefit the
district, and who can provide it, continued Somerville, adding that more than 43 companies offer some type of routing technology and the district should consider if all aspects of it is needed at this point. Somerville noted district buy-in is critical and attained
by identifying the stakeholders, articulating why the software is needed, what will it do for specific individuals or district departments, how will it save money, how will
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