St. Johns School District Saves Countless Hours with BusPlanner’s Effective Routing

There are few school districts that have grown as fast as St. Johns. Located in Florida, the school district was adding new neighborhoods every week and needed a routing provider that could keep up with their needs.

See what Karen Mason, the Routing Supervisor at St. Johns School District, has to say about her experience with BusPlanner!

Ways BusPlanner Makes Life Easier at
St. Johns County School District

Checking bus timings from any device

Managing & updating student information

Understanding traffic patterns with Speed Tuner

Determining planned vs. actual costs

Ensuring buses are on the right routes 

Viewing maps with neighborhood information

From a World of Frustration to BusPlanner

After switching to BusPlanner, the St. Johns team was delighted with the customer support. “I don’t know when the support team starts working or when they clock out. All I know is that there is always someone there to pick up the phone. Whether a bus driver is calling, or the transportation director, BusPlanner support always gives us 100%,” Luda said. Luda is Karen’s right-hand woman and takes care of the school district’s routing needs.

The team had struggled with their previous routing software because there was no way for them to manipulate the data or edit maps. For even basic features, they couldn’t make changes without contacting their software provider.

BusPlanner integrates well with GPS software, which allows us to analyze the time each bus spends on routes in addition to tracking idling times. This allows us to build powerful reports for each segment.
Karen Mason
Routing Supervisor
BusPlanner integrates well with GPS software, which allows us to analyze the time each bus spends on routes in addition to tracking idling times. This allows us to build powerful reports for each segment.
Karen Mason
Routing Supervisor

Things St. Johns School District
Loves About BusPlanner

When asked about the best thing about BusPlanner, Karen said, “Everything! BusPlanner can do everything we need and more!”

Granular Control

The St. Johns transportation team loves how easily they can manipulate routes and get parents’ contact information in BusPlanner.

Detailed Seating Charts

Karen frequently uses BusPlanner to create seating charts, which they print out and keep in buses, especially to accommodate special needs students.

Improved Safety

St. John’s transportation department appreciates the danger zones BusPlanner creates around registered sex offender’s houses using public data.

Best-in-Class Support

The BusPlanner team is always there to help Karen and her team. She is thrilled with how BusPlanner support never let her calls go to voicemail.

Higher Productivity

Through their computers, the team tracks bus performance based on time, traffic, number of students, and student load times.

Excellent Documentation

During implementation of the software, guides provided by the BusPlanner team were worded in a way to make adopting the software a breeze.

Suited to Your Needs

The BusPlanner dashboard is customized to meet the unique needs of all team members. They love the customizability BusPlanner offers.

Increased Visibility

St. Johns School District saves hours every week due to fewer incoming calls from parents asking for updates about their children's whereabouts.

Other transportation directors in Florida are calling us and telling us they want to switch to BusPlanner after hearing our experience with the software.
Karen Mason
Routing Supervisor
Other transportation directors in Florida are calling us and telling us they want to switch to BusPlanner after hearing our experience with the software.
Karen Mason
Routing Supervisor

How BusPlanner Deals With Constant Change

When asked about the team’s favorite features for the dynamic environment at their school district, Karen said that the following features were a gamechanger for her:

  • Changing boundaries
  • Retiring bus stop
  • Provisional waivers for split custody
  • Advanced route planning
  • Scheduled alerts to parents

Karen’s team also loves that they can send transportation-specific notifications to stakeholders. “Parents don’t want to know about the PTA meeting every Wednesday, so they turn off alerts from the school district. As a result, they miss out on notifications from the transportation department as well.  Then parents call us, annoyed that we didn’t send the alert out if the bus is late, without realizing they turned off the notifications. BusPlanner really helps simplify that communication.” 

Even though we’re short of around 30 bus drivers, the analytics tools within BusPlanner make sure that we’re optimizing our operations and don’t fail.
Karen Mason
Routing Supervisor
Even though we’re short of around 30 bus drivers, the analytics tools within BusPlanner make sure that we’re optimizing our operations and don’t fail.
Karen Mason
Routing Supervisor