As transportation director at Kimberly School District in Kimberly, Idaho, Shonia Gaston knows a lot about work-arounds… “I started as a driver in 1984,” says Gaston. “We had hand-drawn maps.” In the past 40 years of working in school transportation, Gaston says, not much has changed. Most school systems rely on paper and a smattering of software products to manage their drivers, route changes, and parent communication. That can make for an incredibly complicated and frustrating set of logistics when changes inevitably pop up.
There has been little innovation in the space, until recently. Last fall, Gaston took a chance on a small tech company from Connecticut. BusRight makes software that allows school districts to manage all aspects of the school bus experience: safety, route mapping, and communication via a tablet on the bus and an app on parents’ phones. The relationship has completely changed Gaston’s job, shaving at least $8,000 from her budget and allowing her to retain drivers and leverage one part-time dispatcher instead of the 1.5 headcount she’d used previously. “BusRight helped us bring our chaos down,” says Gaston. “It’s the best thing we have ever done.”