Hiring good school bus drivers these days can be fairly challenging, mostly due to the shortage of people applying for these roles. Based on a survey conducted by BusPlanner, almost 77% of respondents reported a moderate to significant impact on operations because of the driver shortage.
While every school district has its own check-and-balance while hiring drivers, it also helps to have some methods to ensure that employees are following safety policies.
Read on to learn about how school bus routing software can help you keep drivers in check.
Track Your Fleet
School bus tracking software is a great way to keep tabs on each bus in your fleet. Here are some ways it can be helpful:
- Eliminate Speeding: Using tracking tools, transportation personnel can check if there are any instances of speeding or harsh braking. Poor driving habits can cause motion sickness in students and increase the risk of accidents.
- Reduce Slack Time: Having a tracker on buses increases driver accountability since they know they’re being monitored. This means fewer coffee breaks and more productivity!
- Increase Safety: Accidents can happen at any time. But it’s important to get the exact location of your buses in case they break down or crash.
Improve Punctuality
Using school bus management software can help ensure punctuality, which also helps ensure students get to class on time.
- Check-in Times: When drivers arrive at their assigned buses, software can inform the transportation department when they start working. Additionally, districts can track if drivers are present that day, increasing accountability.
- Pick-up Times: Districts can monitor ETAs for each bus in their fleet. Having this check ensures drivers are picking up and dropping off students on time. This also allows districts to take corrective measures if a bus is constantly late.

Communicate Effectively
The worst thing that can happen when one of your buses is on the road is losing communication with them. Communication tools can help ensure your drivers can see updates from the district when they need to.
Software tools also allow for two-way communication between school bus drivers and students’ parents. This functionality allows parents to notify drivers if they won’t be needing the district’s transportation services on a certain day. Similarly, drivers can communicate any delays to parents to improve overall stakeholder communication.
Know Where to Go
While drivers have access to a route map before they start their day, what’s to say nothing out of the ordinary will come up? Software can help in such cases:
- Re-route Buses: If there’s any accident or road hazard on the way, tracking software can help drivers get updates about route changes while on the road.
- Remove Stops: Instead of wasting time going on routes or stopping at locations where there are no students, transportation departments can quickly update routes to remove redundant stops.
- Plan Trips: Field trips are an important part of school life. With school bus software, you can plan the logistics while easily assigning staff members and drivers for these trips.
The Big Picture
School bus routing software is not only a great tool to ensure that everything is in your control, but it also simplifies things for drivers. Connect with us today to see how we can help you achieve everything in this article and more with BusPlanner!