Bus Transportation Recommendations

Case Study

Overview 

Managing school bus transportation is not an easy job. Students moving in and out of districts, dealing with transfers, split custody agreements, mid-day shuttles, and alternate routing can make for complex scheduling. On top of that, transporting students with special needs may require extra time or attention.

The Challenge 

In smaller school districts, administrators often have multiple jobs, but they still have the same set of responsibilities that they’re expected to manage efficiently while keeping students safe. Gerry Giarratana wears a few different hats for the Palisades School District in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. He is responsible for transportation, warehouse, and food services. He values efficiency and accuracy and knows the importance of automating processes for optimal success.

A district of about 1,400 students, Palisades needed a way to handle transportation services and routing efficiently. Before BusBoss, the district handled routing using push pins on a map. New students, families that moved, or mid-year adjustments became increasingly challenging to manage.

Each year, the pins had to be redeployed to match current student records. Routes had to be plotted by hand on maps and were often outdated, inaccurate, and inefficient.

The system was labor intensive and overly time-consuming.

The Solution 

Palisades chose BusBoss as the solution to their transportation challenges. By syncing with the district’s student information system (SIS), BusBoss automatically imports and exports the necessary data to update students’ records and automate routing.

With BusBoss™ LiveSYNC, data is imported every night, ensuring that if a new student is registered or any current students’ information changes, the department has the most up-to-date information available the next morning when the work day begins. There’s no manual data entry, reducing the risk of human error significantly.

BusBoss makes it easy to see the changes and assign students to the right bus. Routes are automatically optimized, considering bus capacity, students per seat, maximum travel times, travel restrictions, and road hazards. You also get detailed reporting that benchmarks your school bus routing metrics so you can continue to optimize performance.

“I run transportation and food service,” Giarratana said, “so I’m very familiar with A/P, A/R, inventory, POS software, etc. I can count on those, so I don’t have to double-check everything.” BusBoss gives him that same level of confidence and saves him a considerable amount of time. “Quantifying labor savings would be tough for me, but it’s a lot,” he said. “I can’t imagine if we had to go backward.”

He said he’s sat through some pitches from other companies and listened to their claims, but he always comes back to BusBoss. “They’re always on the cutting edge, and they want to be the best,” he said.

Giarratana said BusBoss is incredibly easy to use. It’s intuitive and user-friendly. “When you do a route, you’re not going to have to go in and out of screens,” he said. “Reports are easy, too. Printing routes for parents or generating yearly subsidy reports are simple.”

He also raves about BusBoss customer support. “They listen to ideas,” said Giarratana. When they launch routes at the Palisades School District, they send out letters to parents based on their student ID number and route. When he mentioned that

 to BusBoss, they built an automated system to generate the letters and streamline the process.

Giarratana has been working at the Palisades School District for 13 years. BusBoss was first put in place there in March of 2000 and he says he sees no reason to change. “Other companies have add-on layers,” he said. “What I love about BusBoss the most is that you get everything you need.”