Keep Your Employees Organized With Bus Routing Software
published on June 14, 2013 by Sonia Mastros
bus routing software, school bus routing software, routing software
We bill our BusBoss software as bus routing software, but the truth is, it goes far beyond simply scheduling buses. As more schools move towards entirely computer-based solutions for running their operations, there's a real need for software that performs more than one task. The more functionality a piece of software can provide a district, the more value it provides.
That's why our bus routing software is designed to help your school district in as many different ways as we can find. We want to make it easier for you to manage your educational services, and have information at your fingertips when you need it.
So, let's look at some of the ways that BusBoss software can extend into helping your district's employees become more organized and ready to adapt to the challenges of each new school day!
How Bus Routing Software Keeps Your District Organized
The Student Database
Your student database is at the heart of BusBoss. It's not simply a collection of maps. It has the ability to take into account the individual needs of every student you have, based on the information you already have within your student information systems.
However, having that information in one place means that BusBoss is also a great piece of calendar-making software. You can create calendars of schedules for any group of students you need, or district-wide calendars for any activity where transportation would be involved. These days, that's most of them.
ID Tracking
It also helps your teachers know where your students are. When combined with an RFID-based ID card system, you'll know whether each student got on the bus each morning, helping your attendance accuracy. If a student gets on the bus in the morning, and gets off at your doors but doesn't show up in class, you'll also have far more information to go on when you try to look for them.
Hunts for “lost” students can be done in minutes, rather than hours, and with far fewer uncomfortable calls to parents.
Simple Field Trips
Similarly, bus routing software is a real boon to any teacher planning a field trip. Costs for the trip can be calculated beforehand, making it far easier to submit accurate requests for funding. Thanks to the calendar-making functions, they'll also know exactly which drivers and vehicles are available on which days. It streamlines the entire process significantly.
It also integrates email functionality, so those involved in the field trip can be quickly added to a mailing list that ensures everyone keeps on the same page as plans change. (Which they usually do!)
Redistricting
We've also endeavored to make BusBoss a valuable tool in one of the most difficult pieces of planning a school district can have to do: a redistricting. We harness all the data available to allow you to create virtually unlimited hypothetical maps, based on any criteria you have in your database. Thanks to the ability of computers to calculate thousands of alternatives in a matter of seconds, the process is both faster and more accurate than any that would be done by hand.
This is accompanied by the ability to generate easy-to-read reports on virtually every aspect of your district as well. If it's in your database, BusBoss can put it on paper. From attendance rates, to teacher workloads, to the efforts of your maintenance crew, there's little that you can't optimize through our bus routing software.
So, don't be fooled by the name. We might call it “bus routing software,” but we've designed it to be one of the main data hubs for your entire district operations. Give our free demo a try, and see how much power it gives you to organize your district!