Onsite at TSD 2025 (Part 1/2): Mission-Critical Partners for Special Needs Transportation

(upbeat music) Hello, school transportation nation. It's Tony Corp. We're live here in Frisco, Texas at the TSD conference. Things are going really well this week. We have packed audience, sold out crowd. The trade show is gonna be rolling this evening. We have some great interviews this week for you. And we're bringing all the industry together, talk about all things happening in special needs. This is the ultimate in special needs training. You guys can go to STNOnline.com to look up all our updates on the event. We got lots of information and news, recaps on sessions. You guys definitely need to keep your fingers on the pulse of the industry. And we have a great episode this week, brought to you by Trancefinder, the leader in school bus routing software. By ride, real innovation delivered with excellence. And by school radio your source for reliable radio communications. And while we're here, we've got a lineup of interviews coming up right after this. We've got some great conversations. The ride family of vehicles include the award-winning achiever, creator, and dreamer battery electric school buses. The creator is powered by STN's 2025 best green technology award winner, the Blade Battery. With safety as a central focus, ride school buses provide immediate benefits to our communities and our children. Visit ride.co to discover the future of student transportation or email [email protected] for further product detail. - Hello, school transportation nation. We're alive here at the TSD conference in Frisco, Texas. Ran into a really cool guest that I wanted to bring on the podcast today. Talking all about technology and safety and communications. We've been hearing a lot about communications at the conference thus far this week. And it is a key element to running an operation in school transportation. And when an emergency arises in special needs, communication is vital that it's quick. So I wanted to bring on Marty Savino from school radio. Marty, good to see you, man. - Hey Tony, glad to be here. This is an opportunity that we've taken advantage of several times before. And we're really happy to be here this year as well. - Yeah, so Marty and I ran into each other at the Embassy Suites Free Breakfast. Everyone congregates at the Embassy Suites for an omelet and maybe some yogurt and a coffee. And it's always a nice feature here at the TSD conference. And really enjoyed our conversation and thought, hey, man, Marty would be a great guest to bring on, discuss a little bit about communications. I know we were chatting a little bit about, you know, how does school radio fit into the market? And, you know, how does special needs play a role? So you want to just start off a little bit with, who is school radio for the audience that isn't really familiar with you guys? - Absolutely. School radio is a nationwide coverage instant communications radio company. So what could talk you style the radios? So we're looking at radios that can communicate, you can literally be in Hawaii and talk to somebody in New Jersey on them instantly. We're also using a uniquely a multi-carrier sim in our radios, what that means is that you are able to, our radio is able to look at Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile, pick out the best signal no matter where you are, lock onto that. So to ensure you have the best connection possible. Additionally, we go to the extra mile here at school radio. We're looking at radios that are FCC type accepted, PTCRB certified and carrier certified. What that means for you is that the radios are always going to be on the networks, not going to get kicked off for whatever reason and you're going to have the best connectivity possible. - Yeah, that's interesting. Now, what would be the advantage of a radio versus a cell phone? - Great question. Surprisingly, a number of our schools still use cell phones. So the driver has to pull over the answer to cell phone call or something pops up, make a call. But the bus has to be stopped for that. So the comparison between cell phones and radio communications is if you're making a phone call, the average phone call is about two minutes to relay whatever information you're talking about at that point in time. A radio call is about 20 seconds for the exact same information. So you're looking at a huge time savings. Plus, you don't have to pull over to talk or to communicate, you can just push the button on a radio and get your message out. In an emergency situation, that is really critical. There's something happening with a special needs student, for example, actually one of my customers in Michigan had an active shooter situation pop up last year. And that they had radios were able to communicate instantly and get the message out. So they were able to act on that quickly without delay. In an emergency situation, I can imagine if a special needs child was having an incident and there needed to be some intervention 'cause the driver or the aide isn't able to handle it. They need to escalate it to EMS. Now, what about the connectivity to non-district personnel? Is it everybody just in the ecosystem that is in the school, right? How did an emergency situation, what's that look like? So they contact Dispatch and then Dispatch lets EMS know, "Hey, bus XYZ is at this location. We need you to get to them." - Right, they can do it that way. There's another option. We do have SOS buttons on a radio. So once that button is depressed, the school predetermines who's gonna get that SOS, whether it goes out to everybody or just certain individuals or the base station. They get notified instantly that there's an issue, a red band appears on a screen and then exactly which bus is having that issue. So that SOS goes out instantly to whoever it's designated and they can act on it immediately. - Yeah, I can imagine in an active shooter that's a quite a valuable little button. - Yeah, 'cause then look at the map and see where is that bus because they've already identified which one it was. So they can see instantly where it is. They can direct officers from law enforcement to get exactly to go where it is at that point in time. - Yeah, I know we had a keynote speaker earlier at the conference, Michelle Gay, who was a mother of a Sandy Hook victim and had created kind of a safe, it's called safe and sound schools. And so she has a whole program around safety and education and that is a big thing. So I can imagine again, in these situations, you have tragedy that occurs. You really need a police to respond quickly or emergency services. So yeah, super valuable. The difference in time can be critical. - It can and instantly, instant communications is critical like you pointed out in these situations. So the faster you can get the information out to appropriate personnel, the faster other situation can be remedied or looked at. - So let's talk about the business side a bit a little bit. Now I understand you guys have a managed services business. What does that exactly mean for the customer? - We do, managed services is a turnkey operation. So what that means is the school does not have to put up any money up front. They can just get radios delivered to them that work immediately. They play a fixed monthly fee. So it's a 24 month agreement. What that means is you've got a fixed budget you know for two years, what exactly your expenses are going to be and there's no surprises because if anything breaks or needs repair, that's covered. So you get unlimited air time on group and private as many groups as you need or channels. And all the maintenance is repaired at no cost to you. So let's say a bus driver, this actually happened. A bus driver dropped one of our radios out the window at Portable Radio, ran over with the bus. - Oops. (laughing) - They sent us the pieces. We sent them a new radio at no charge. That's managed services. So at the end of the managed service agreement, at the end of the 24 months, rather they can purchase the radios for a dollar reach or they can be up for another 24 months at the same price. So that is a couple of options that are available there or they can buy the radios off, right? And get the air time. - Now typically I've seen that it's your local radio dealer in the area, they probably know very little about pupil transportation. Do you typically find that it's, you know, John's radio that's selling the handheld and a Motorola or other brands that are out there? And what's that look like in comparison to somebody that may have a name brand radio versus what you're offering? - Great question. So let's say you're looking at Motorola's, Ken Woods, Harris, Tate, all those radios and name brand radios. Are they all have a limited range on their coverage? If you've got a radio dealer that's got a repeater that you're renting from or maybe you've got a repeater on site at the school, you've only got to range 10, 20, 30 miles tops for communications and that under the best of circumstances. So with our radios, you don't have any range limit. You can drive wherever you want and you're completely covered. So you're looking at, first of all, a coverage increase, a massive increase in coverage rather. And also looking at a huge reduction in cost. Our radios are not nearly as expensive as one of the name brand radios and they work far better than they do as well. - Now what about like the local dealer that's selling those radios? Like that's kind of the old school transactional and I feel like those guys are sort of aging out of the market, right? John's radio, John, I've been buying him for 50 years. Well, John eventually is going to retire. What happens then? - Exactly, I've got several situations that happen exactly at the last show. Last week they said, our radio dealer is retiring. What do we do? Well, we can help you out. We're not going away. This is a company that's going to be around for years and years. So we can help you out with your transition. We've got an interoperability module that'll allow you to transition from their radios to our radios gradually not to do it all at once. So maybe there's a cost situation that you're worried about, so if you use the interoperability module, you can do it gradually and be able to talk over both systems simultaneously. What are typical anxiety or pain points with communications that you hear from people at conferences and trade shows? Because I'm imagining you're going to hear about that at the trade show while we're here in Dallas and Frisco. Exactly. The biggest thing is the coverage area. They go out of service. We got a bus that goes here or there and they have no coverage. Sometimes there's a delay in response from the driver because they didn't hear you or whatever. So the coverage issue, of course, but you take care of that with the multi-carrier Sims giving you the best coverage possible. We have the ability to prevent the driver from turning the radio off or returning the volume down. That happens a lot. They'll turn the volume down and then they can't hear the radio. So we can prevent that by some adjustments before we shift the radios out. So they're always heard. Very interesting. Well, you know, before I let you go, is there any kind of last thoughts you wanted to leave with the audience in terms of, you know, communications, safety, special needs over here at the TSD conference? Well, I can buy our booth to people at our tent this show and I can talk about the radios. One of the things we have advantage-wise is the radios are very small. So you can mount them almost anywhere in your vehicle. How small are we talking? Like the size of my hand or we talk pretty much about four inches wide by about three inches deep, about an inch and a half tall. We've also got an antenna that does not require any holes to be drilled in the bus. So I mean, there's no leaks in your vehicle. The antenna is just a disk that holds the DPS and the white area and tiny in it. You just put it on the dash out of the line of sight. So very easy install and no worries about, again, leaks in your bus and your antenna getting knocked off when you drive through the wash, the bus wash or something like that, that happens a lot. So it's one of the complaints. There's rogue tree branches that like knock things. Yeah, I know. Those are always things when these are mounted to the outside of the vehicle. Right. We're a traditional radio dealer as well. We're full service. So we see a lot of antenna replacements on traditional radios. So we always carry a complete stock of replacements to tennis. So they were just those situations that they pop up. Wonderful. We're so glad you're here with us at the TST conference and ST and Expo and all the events we do. So you guys always go check out Marty. It is stand for school radio and look forward to talking about your communication needs. So and it's school-radio.com, right? Correct. booth 823 at this show and look forward to seeing you stop by. Come on, grab a trash key. Outstanding. All right, school transportation nation. It's Tony Corpin. We're here live in TSD conference in Frisco, Texas. I have with me a friend of ours in the nation. He's been here before the Godfather himself. Greg Britteman from first alt. He's been in the alternative student transportation space for a while. So he's a frequent attendee here at our TSD conference. I saw him walking down the aisle. He had a Texas A&M jersey on. He's he's getting hyped for our trade show tailgate experience. I got my Justin Herbert on number 10. Go bolts. You know, trying to pump it up and I was like, Greg, are you Texas A&M fan? He's like, I'm a Texas fan. He loves Texas, right? That's right. God bless Texas. That's it. Everything's big in Texas. We're going big with the barbecue feast tonight. Have some fun. The the conference has been a buzz. We had some great sessions today. I know you're celebrating something big. So we picked a good night to do it, right? It's your birthday. Happy birthday. Yeah. Thank you. This is to the day, our three-year anniversary of launching first alt and we launched it here at STN. Yeah. I remember you're on the keynote stage and everybody's mouth dropped. Like what way double take? What did we do? So what for the audience? It doesn't know what first alt is. Why don't you fill them in on on what you do and maybe share a little bit about the secret sauce. Yeah. As you mentioned, I started the alternative transportation business back in 2009. So we've been doing it for a long time. That was a thing in 2009. Yeah. Well, it wasn't a thing yet, but we were getting started. We were introducing it to schools, really not accepted whatsoever when we first started. So it's really amazing to be here at the conference and see breakout sessions specifically designed around alternative transportation. So we've come a long way. But yeah, so first alt is first students alternative transportation solution. And so I came over here about three years ago and we thought we'd take our 15 years of experience in the past and build something from scratch within first student. And one of our hypothesis or theories was that districts were going to want to work with one company from time to time that could provide both bus and alternative transportation. So that's been great and proven out to be true. And then we work with standalone districts as well where all we're doing is providing alternative transportation for them. Yeah, I know alternative transportation as you said was kind of it's really been emerging more and more and more and we're seeing more and more. I mean, I almost have to double take and pinch myself because you walk around the TSD conference trade show floor. There's like eight vans. I mean, I can't remember when there were zero vans and all of a sudden van transport or MPV right because you can't do the 16 passenger anymore. But there's also the differences between alternative student transportation and TNC, right? They almost like an Uber or Lyft style. So there's some differences in the market. And there was a bit of gray area in terms of these standards that everyone was held to. And recently there was the NCST get the all the acronyms, right? Which is the base of the National Congress on school transportation. And they carved out some policy and some minimum standards for this category, which was long overdue, right? I mean, this thing has been supposed to meet every five years. It had been 10. I mean, a whole new market has emerged. So it was about time. So I know there's been a lot of talk. You were part of that conversation and you had some input in that process. You want to talk a little bit about where that is gone and what it's meant to you guys at first all. Yeah, it was great to see that get started and be a part of that committee and have input. I do think there just needs to be one standard, right? So I think sometimes there's a misnomer that alternative transportation drivers need to have a different set of standards. And with first all, and I think industry wide, whether that driver shows up the type of vehicle the driver's end shouldn't matter with regards to the training of the drivers received. So with first all, for example, the same training a bus driver goes through with dealing with special needs students, how to handle behavior that might be escalating, how to de-escalate that behavior. It's the same across the board. So I think today we had a session even talking about alternative student transportation standards. Sometimes I think we're over complicated and it really just said be there should be no difference for a driver regardless of the vehicle type. Where are the typical questions you find that people are coming up to you and asking you specifically about alternative transportation? Where there's like maybe some myths out there? Yeah, I think the vetting of the drivers is one of the biggest questions we get from parents and from school districts. And so I think the myth is that we have to lower the standards or the districts expect there to be a lesser standard for alternative drivers. And so I think that's concerning to them. And you'll see sometimes even legislation may be getting proposed to lower those standards. So I think it's comforts them a lot. If we're like, look, whether it's a bus or an alternative vehicle the driver should have the same vetting standards. So whether you run a bus in house all of your buses or whether you contract out your alternative driver should be held the exact same standard. Yeah, I mean, there's many regulations out there that people have to follow. And I think since you've seen it since 2009, I mean, what are things you see in the market from a regulatory standpoint that people clients should be asking of their alternative student transportation provider? What they should be be saying, hey, look, I need to, I need this. This is like a deal breaker. If you don't have this, we can't use you. Right. I'd say the biggest one is the pre-service drug and alcohol testing in the whole program. That's a big thing with DOT and with the CDL driver's license on the bus side. And so we do see sometimes districts maybe letting that slide or thinking, oh, it can't apply to alternative transportation. We're really it should apply to those same drivers. So to me, that's the biggest one. And it hasn't been enforced or regulated yet. So it's really up to the districts to make sure that it's complied with. Now, I know you have invested a lot also in training your drivers. And you had launched in previous year, you know, some programs around that you want to talk to that. What kind of training do your drivers go through? Yeah. So again, like I say, the same as the bus driver, but that art since first students located in Cincinnati, we teamed up with the Cincinnati University Hospital and their children's unit and several other educational institutions and put together training. And really what it's around is how the rage cycle. And as drivers see students behavior escalating how to help them de-escalate it, which cues to look for and really how to work with those students. Because once you're up and trained on how to drive a bus or drive the vehicle, what's really important then is how do you interact with the students who are on that vehicle? No, when customers come to you and they engage you for service opportunities, you know, typically they're like, Hey, I've been running my special needs routes myself for a long time, but maybe I have a driver's shortage or I'm really under a budgetary crunch. And I want higher vehicle utilization. Is that what you typically see in the marketplace? Or is it more of a McKinney Vento thing? Or is there a blend? Yeah, I think it's both. So on the McKinney Vento side as districts know, you may start with kind of resets in the summer, right? And the students have to reapply from McKinney Vento status. So you might start the year with only 20 students and end the year with 200 students. And so when you're running that in half, You've got to ramp up your physical vehicles. You got a ramp up hiring drivers and then the next fall that number drops all the way back to like 20 again And so where alternative can really help as we can help scale and make the to have the districts only pay for what they're going to use So it's a huge help in the McKinney event Oh on special needs There's districts that just have students are hard to even serve their you know 20 miles outside the district and They might be running five buses with two or three students than that's it and then they're sure on drivers And so when they utilize the alternative for those routes they can free up those drivers and that capacity for other routes Now you talked obviously for student being your parent. Yeah, that is the largest school bus contractor in North America Largest fleet in North America owned by one individual group And there's probably some great economies of scale that you're getting out of that in partnerships And I saw recently you partnered with Sam Sarah and obviously that was very public They're on the New York Stock Exchange ring in the bell the buses out there. Um, what does that mean for first? Alt yeah, it's been a great partnership So we've been able to bring those Sam Sarah cameras into all of our alt vehicles So we have over 75% of our fleet right now Which has got to be the highest in the industry with the front forward and backward facing cameras and what's really interesting The exact same camera that goes in the front of the bus is the exact camera we're using in the alternative vehicles So it we really get that economies of scale and the quality So that has been a game changer as you know when I first started Cameras weren't even you know considered and then even as early as like three or four years ago If you did have a camera in a car I had like an SD card in the camera And if there was an incident or accident He had to track down the driver pull the card out Maybe the card was full didn't have any more memory space which is very inefficient and but the buses have kind of always had that Um, in the cloud, you know that it would upload as soon as they pulled into the bus yard So as Sam Sarah we now have that same thing where it's live in the in the cloud as it's happening Yeah, transparency security for everyone in the vehicle yes I'm sure there can be vehicular accidents that occur on the road and yep you want to have a digital record of how it all went down Yeah, one of the one of the cooler things too is with AI right now So Sam Sarah's cameras will detect if a driver picks their cell phone up to look at it And it will put out a series of beeps So the driver will pick up their phone and it gives him like a beep beep And then it's just kind of reminding me hey you need to put your phone down We can also track distracted drivers with the AI So like it's really kind of interesting if they on and you can like set the parameters like okay They can be on once every 30 minutes, but if they on let's say 10 times in five minutes like it the lord goes off said Hey, maybe you need to take a break or something So the AI part Sam Sarah's been really interesting and we've seen him make a huge change in the in the safety of our drivers now and really their habits Do you see a use case for reviewing student behavior with those systems? Or is it really more driver-facing? Oh, no, it's both yep. So districts will call in um, you know a parent reported that another student hit the student riding in the back seat with them Anything like that. So I think it's both for the protection of both the student and the drivers And so it's used I would say it's used the majority of the time to check on the student behavior And then from time to time we use it to help you know with the districts with the driver behavior So just to clarify because you know if there are cameras in these vehicles, that means you own the vehicles correct Or is it a blend of using technology to access fleets in multiple cities? What's that look like in terms of fleet utilization? Yeah on the alternative side we don't own the vehicles But we own access all those cameras. So we still install the cameras So we can pull up to Sam Sarah dashboard see every camera every vehicle across the country We actually have a national view of that you can zoom in into one particular car You can turn the camera on and and look in their live if you need to if there's an incident happening And so although we don't own the vehicles they have to comply with our camera policy Make sure they do have the camera in the vehicle Yeah, to be in your network that's right and then there's a part of our network It's kind of really an all-star team of drivers you're putting together across the country And there are still some districts who choose not to have cameras in Their vehicles and there's some states that might have laws against that But we find the majority of districts do want them installed and it's worth that extra cost and time to do that Wonderful. I really appreciate you dropping into the podcast and sharing your thoughts happy birthday to first all on the three year anniversary Yes, it's really great exciting to celebrate with us here at the TSD conference And we keep getting bigger is it it's record attendance here for us again this year trade show is expanded as well So we're looking for a really fun time and we're glad you're here with us. Yeah, thank you I think I've been to every show you've ever had here at TSD in the same exact hotel same city And like you said, it's just getting larger and larger So I actually actually kind of nice to have our launch date associated with the TSD show. So appreciate it All right school transportation nation. We are live at the TSD conference in frisco, Texas, suburb of Dallas We survived the travel apocalypse. I think we're here. We made it Here with John Daniels VP of sales or VP of marketing sorry John at trans finders You know, I think sales and marketing all together, but you know, I see you so much. We were just in Grand Rapids together Just in Grand Rapids. Yes Yeah, so welcome. I'm glad you made it all the way from Grand Rapids. Did you fly direct? Yeah I came right from Grand Rapids right here worked a little bit here at the hotel And now we're getting going here for transportation Summit for disabilities nice. Yeah, and also Mr. Logan from garland welcome. I'm glad you made it out So tell me a little bit about you. Tell me about garland. I heard you're supplying the vehicle for the ride along with trans finder today and What's happening? We are thanks for the invitation to be here. This is a great conference and we're happy to participate great chance to network with our peers and learn about new products on trade show floor and yes indeed we're providing a bus this afternoon for the trans finder ride along so we're happy to do that So on that note, thanks for having me But I'm Tim Logan director of transportation for garland independent school district We are 18 miles northeast of the city of Dallas and run about 370 buses and also over 200 white fleet as support vehicles 52,000 students 64 schools happy to be here Wonderful, so in terms of garland in texas Tell me a little more about your special needs student populations And since this is the conference on transporting students with disabilities and special needs absolutely great question Out of 52,000 students we have several thousand that are in the spread program and about a thousand or transported every day on 82 Of our spread buses that of course have the driver not so what now is called the special education assistant Providing um professional care services for each of those so about a thousand riders every day Now is it strictly school buses you're using are using multiple modalities at this point in the majority is on our yellow fleet Yes, and are you utilizing type a are you using larger vehicles? What's your vehicle utilization tire fleet of 370 buses or type sea Conventionals, okay, so you're using it for fully use yes, okay, got it and then talk to me about how you're using technology I know your partner with trans finder. How are you leveraging their suite of products as the trans finder evangelist here You've got a deep tech stack on these vehicles absolutely. We do we were one of the early pioneers in north Texas to champion I'm this product. We absolutely love it We kind of call it the castle right that has doors that we're still understanding what that software can do for us And we love it and we try to maximize that as much as we can It certainly made us more efficient. It has greatly promoted um on our end the stock finder app and how we've executed it All of the trans finder products whether it is bulletin boards for the community It is t-shirts its QR codes and it's been very well received from when we kicked off three years ago So we love it Made us more efficient. We're learning the areas and I have to tell you um from starting out there's very little Resistance that we encountered from drivers and also parents and now they've become dependent on it where it is a way That we just run our business for the community in the district our department and also our writers Now you talked about the parents a little bit there you want to kind of expand on what that looks like for you Obviously you're using a mobile app. I assume to communicate with parents. We are we push out the stop finder app It is very well received over 65% of students involved have a parent or a guardian that are Tracking our buses on stop finder and the geofence they absolutely love it to the point if there's an internet problem Not necessarily trans finder like people get upset because they can't track their littles Especially you know that population that we're talking about you know tsd right now because they are very concerned where that student is And it's it's just been a blessing to have that type of product to be able to communicate with the public John have you seen app usage with parent communications really spike Yes, yes, we're we're at all time highs for parent communications and our geo Tracking in the stop finder app and when you combine that with the way finder app, it's all real time So it just it allows the parents to really see if the school district wants where that bus is Where that student is and when they get out and off that bus Which is critically important and then you know Tim I have a question for you have you come across situations where the ip information being and way finder has come in handy and and valuable It's absolutely critical and it helps our drivers, because in Wayfinder we will to put student specifics, wheelchair, no wheelchair. Are they allowed to be left alone? Are they, do they have a specific guardian or parent that needs to receive them, any medical conditions, any special requirements, things like that? It's been fabulous and well embraced by our drivers. And then how is it being embraced by parents too in terms of like stop finder? What's the, what does that actual communication look like? What are they seeing? So they're actually, of course, they haven't on their phone that we've pushed out. They again have embraced it well. And they're actually the way we have it set up seeing the geofence when it enters that area much like an Uber, they can see where the bus is, how far to way. Is it running late? Is it running early? Is it merged with another route? And we've actually supplied our campuses all 68 of our schools with a custom dashboard where they can track it as well. So that's in view finder, but they have the tools to observe it as well. And then have you noticed that it solved any particular challenges before you had outfitted using the app in terms of communication? Because you are, you've been using it for a while, but maybe the audience, some of them, it aren't using this parent communication tool. What are kind of the benefits that you've experienced by integrating with this? Right. So it's a reduction in communication and incoming phone calls, first of all, to our dispatch center. So we were receiving hundreds of calls a day, transporting 14,000 students and 1,000 TSD type students. And now they can just simply look at the app if they want to know what's going on. Yeah, and talk a little bit about way finder. How is that product helpful for you to leverage? It's a great feature. It is, we have notes and files, HPs, medical information, notes that who can receive our kindergartners must be received by a parent always, no matter what is flagged in their individual health plans and things like that. So that population as well is just in Gen Ed. The parents are very interested in where their littles are. Interesting. John, you want to explain way finder a little bit for the audience just so they understand kind of what the offering is? Yeah, so way finder works in real time with route finder plus in the GPS location of the bus. So the drivers are able to see route changes. Asset reallocation is able to take place if I mean school districts have issues with buses in the morning, sometimes a bus doesn't. Do your buses always start them? No, no. So they can easily change the asset and the route and the driver information. And the drivers get all that information on their tablet. We now offer real time traffic updates. So maybe there's a traffic incident, an accident, on a specific route. The drivers can hit that there's a traffic accident or some kind of construction or something. It shows up on the map, not just for them, but it goes back into plus and disperses to all the routes that are traveling on that road. That is correct. So that is, now that you're not hearing on the radio, oh my god, there's a traffic accident on such and such street. It's right up there on way finder for all the drivers to see. We were talking about the drivers having the IEP information. They have real time updates if a route changes. If there is a delay taking place, it shows up in plus and it also shows up for the parent app because we're leveraging the real time GPS data. Now Tim, did you see any examples? Maybe you could share on how that really helps your drivers? It does. It makes us work more efficient and smarter. It gives us real time information where we are able to reroute and not have to tie up a radio with 370 buses that are outrolling plus field trips and coaches and things like that. We're 94 square miles. We drive 22,000 miles a day just for routes. So we are the largest school district in North Texas other than Dallas, ISD. And it just has made us more efficient and even learned the area where we've not gone down that street, but it is suggested a alternate route that makes sense and gets us there on time. 'Cause it's all about getting the students on time, right? For instructional time. That's my one goal to get them to school. - Sure. And, John, there's another solution called FewFinder. You wanna explain what that is a little bit? - FewFinder is basically view access for anyone that's maybe an administration, principal, school secretary. Anybody that needs to be in the know of where the bus is located, the route details. Maybe there's an emergency. And the EMS folks need information. They can look at ViewFinder at the school or at some other location. It really exposes everything that is in route finder plus the core of the system, the routing solution database, but you can't change routes. - Sure, sure. Tim, are you using ViewFinder? - We are and he is totally correct. It is just to view. Not edit, right? But all of our 68 schools, we've given a custom dashboard for ViewFinder. They can check on a bus, see if it's merged, see if it's running right. - No, no, no, no, there's no more phone calls of, where is this bus? Or, you know, how far away is it? No, just look on ViewFinder and it will tell you and each of our campuses has three or four people that have access to this, you know, great branch of the system called ViewFinder. And they can see what's going on or what equipment is needed. And it is eliminated Tony, hundreds of phone calls that came through our dispatch center or to our supervisors who might be driving or very busy working other emergencies of just where's the bus? And it's fabulous. I think having other stakeholders involved in the communication where you don't have to like, get on the phone or dispatch out to 68 schools, that's what you're saying? - Yes. A lot of schools have been communicating. - Absolutely. - And there's a lot of people, every principal wants to know, hey, where's the bus? Yeah, it's interesting to see that. Have you seen from their perspective, is there much hand holding to get that up and running? Like, is there a user, like they're like, oh, hey, now that you have ViewFinder, like how do I use that? Like, have you kind of got them acclimated to now train them, right? - Correct, it's all in the training and to start out, right? Building the foundation of what's going to be successful and the entire department and district and the community have embraced it. But those 68 schools, absolutely, they love having the information versus having to call in. They have real-time view of what's happening and in addition to eliminating all those phone calls, it's just empowered them to have the information. And even if a parent calls in on StopFinder, the first thing we say is happy to help. Have you downloaded our app, right? Let me send you a link to download our app or look around for the QR codes in your school. They're in the front door of all the schools. You know, help us make it easier for you. - Yeah, that's great. Well, since we're here at the TSD conference, I'm sure you've looked at the agenda. There's probably some sessions that you wanna jump into. Is there anything particular education wise you're looking forward to seeing any speaker, particularly? - You know, I'm really interested in the trade show floor this year. - Oh, exciting. - 'Cause this is one of my first visits to TSD where I've gone to NAPT and I was in Scottsdale last month seeing great things. But I really wanna see since we have such a high population that we transport, I wanna see what's new and what's out there. And I spend a lot of time on the trade floor to find new information. - That's great. Yeah, there's so many solutions this year at the TSD conference and so many different providers. It's actually the largest trade show we've ever done. We had so much demand. We actually had to expand the trade show floor of solution providers. So there's two days of that. So you guys will take full advantage of that. John, what are other things that you're doing here at the TSD conference this week? - Well, certainly we have the ride along which is taking place this evening in the technology show place. And then certainly on the trade show floor, we have a lunch and learn with one of the folks from Garland ISD on it as well as a couple of other customers that you're gonna be helping us host. - I will, yes. - So we're looking forward to that. We're talking about technology in general and how technology is assisting folks transporting students with special needs and adaptive needs. We're happy to show off some great new things specific to Wayfinder for example. We're at the lot of school districts at the end of the day have students that were maybe in detention or they stayed out longer at school for band or theater or whatever happens to be. Maybe it was a delay for special needs student because there was something taking place in a school and they got delayed. That late bus is something that districts challenge with. How do you handle this late bus? Because it's not a route that's built already. Well, now you can have the students scan on with their ID card into Wayfinder, the driver can hit route and it optimizes a route following the rules that are set up in routefinder plus. So if the student is right hand approach and pick up and drop off, it'll make certain the bus follows that appropriate path and it builds an optimized route on the spot for all those students for that late bus. Driver can save it, go on his way, their way saves in routefinder plus so that there's an existing route. All the parents who have stopped finder now have the information of their child's drawback, off time and it's like it was already pre-built. That's a great ad and I will admit a huge ambassador and zealot for trains finder. Every time we've ever called with the problem, they have come up with a solve or said, "We're working on that. You're the third person to tell us and within a couple of weeks, the problem is resolved." Right? Because everyone has usually the same problems and while we talk about these issues every day because it's so common to us, what we learn is the people that come to visit us on property and understand how do we do it? It's new to them. You just don't know what you don't know and once they actually get to see it and touch it and feel it and watch it in action, they're usually sold as well. I don't think there's anyone probably 10 different school districts, whether it's a Zoom call from Bellevue Washington or his localist Fort Worth where they sent four people over that haven't fallen in love with the product and I'm familiar with other products out there as well as are the other directors we meet each month in North Texas and I'm an unpaid ambassador but I love the product and what's happening this entire weekend also for these kiddos. Wonderful. We're so glad you made it to the conference. Absolutely. Welcome. Let me be the first to welcome you. Thank you. We hope you partake of all the great content as well as the trade show since you're looking forward to that as a top item on your list. So, enjoy yourself. Thank you for being here and sharing a little bit. What garlands up to? Absolutely. Everything I'll say is it's great to be here. Come visit us sometime because while we're a large district, what you'll find is interesting about us is instead of multiple hubs and depots, we're all in one location. So, we have 450 people and all of those vehicles parked in one spot versus spread out across the city. So, it doesn't divide the family. Always something fun happening. So, Tony, you're welcome to come visit and see it firsthand or any of your staff. Love that. Absolutely. And John, we appreciate you being here as well with the TransFinder family. I'm sure you've got an army of people to help entertain and delight our audience. That we do, that we do. And we also love supporting the podcast nation out there. And we appreciate all the great commentary that happens from that. Awesome. Thanks, guys. A special thanks to all our guests for joining us on the episode. This week, we appreciate all our sponsors TransFinder Ride and School Radio. Don't forget, you can go to STN online for all the latest news and information on the school transportation nation. Catch up on all the latest events. You can listen to this pod on Apple Podcast Spotify or ever you'll listen to pods nation. We love you. We'll see it in just a few days for more live coverage of TSD conference.