When the weather shifts to colder temperatures this time of year, school administrators and transportation directors must keep an eye on inclement weather and road conditions to keep students safe. Tracking dozens of school buses and thousands of students is difficult on an average day, and bad weather can make it even tougher. When School District 49 in Colorado needed a way to securely track students, keep parents informed and give school officials control, SafeStop had the solution.

Transportation apps may make it easier and more efficient to get to the school bus, but do they also make our lives safer? School administrators, parents, and transportation directors are now paying attention to the security aspects of apps, not only on the “backend” data transfer side but on the “real world” physical side, as well. The worldwide standard for secure information handling — known as Service Organization Control 2, or SOC2 — marks one of the highest security achievements in the education industry.

Fleet telematics — the systems that transportation directors and administrators use to understand information about their school buses — provide vital information that can improve your school transportation operations. But understanding this information doesn’t have to be as complicated as it sounds. The top GPS trackers, routing softwares, and fleet maintenance devices on the market can now provide easy-to-understand reports that can help drive important purchase decisions.

Each year during the third week in October, the National Association for Pupil Transportation (NAPT) promotes National School Bus Safety Week, a public education program designed to advocate safety on and around the school bus. Parents, students, teachers, school bus drivers and school administrators are all encouraged to participate and gather around a school bus safety theme unique to each year of the program. This year, the campaign runs from October 16-20, and participants across the country are focusing on the importance of stopping fully around a school bus.

Entering its third year on the market, SafeStop is enjoying a strong start to the 2017-2018 school year with an improved focus on its analytics platform and an abundance of new customers across the country.

As the summer comes to a close and the kids head back to school, we are excited to reveal what SafeStop has been focusing on over the summer break. The SafeStop team has been hard at work on the development of these three functions that aim to improve your app experience.

School bus route optimization is the process of generating a set of school bus routes that efficiently transports students to and from their schools safely and on time. Why is optimizing your school bus routes important? It drastically cuts costs, raises the level of efficiency, and addresses issues that school transportation officials face each year.

School buses carry precious cargo. So when it comes to school bus safety, drivers should receive extensive training about arrival and departure procedures, emergency protocols, and the importance of pre-trip inspection checklists.

School bus safety starts before your engine does

When most people hear the phrase school bus safety, they think about things like seat belts and defensive driving. However, when it comes to your buses, safety starts before your yellow-and-black fleet leaves the lot.

Driving in an urban environment can be challenging for any commuter. The regular frustrations of city driving — heavy traffic, unpredictable pedestrians, and congested roadways, to name a few — are significantly more problematic for school bus drivers.

Considering that a school bus can measure up to 45 feet long, it’s easy to understand why routes in urban environments can be tough for drivers. School bus scheduling and routing in cities can also present particular challenges, since buses must compete with dense urban traffic, emergency vehicles, and pedestrians. The good news: managing the challenges of city driving is easily done with sufficient training custom-tailored to your area.