The future is now, at least for school buses. Ozarks at Large's Jack Travis has more on a company that's making school transportation easier for everyone involved.
Jason Salmons has a complex job. He is the transportation director for Bentonville Public Schools and oversees dozens of buses loaded with children as they navigate school pickup and dropoff. Every day, thousands of students enter and exit these vehicles, and parents place their trust in people like Salmons to ensure their kids reach their learning centers safely. But it's a chaotic world, and that extends to Salmons' universe. However, he says the district started using technology that streamlines operations and offers new tools to bolster school bus safety and accessibility for administrators, parents and students.
“From an administrative standpoint, schools that don't have it, I do not know how they function.”
The company providing that tech is called Transportant. Paul Gandrud is one of their national sales executives and says the technology was developed through conversations with transportation directors like Salmons.
“It's an all-in-one solution, basically to get everything under one roof. So right now in the transportation world, there's a lot of good companies out there with some interesting technology, but some of it is very antiquated and some of it is very silo-based.”
Gandrud says that districts typically have a piecemeal approach to their transportation tech.
“Because they have cameras of one company, GPS with one company, they'll have routing with another company. They add tablets to be able to do turn-by-turn directions and ridership. Generally, that's another company. So it's very difficult to get it all to work together.
“Before Transportant even started writing software about this, they actually interviewed over 100 people in Chris’ type of position and just said, ‘What are you looking for? What would make your job easier?’ And so basically what they did is they put all of this under one roof. So we do live video, live audio, GPS. You can talk onto the bus. We have routing capabilities. You can do tablets with turn-by-turn directions. We have ridership. And then we also have a parent app. So we really cover that whole gamut of everything that you need to have everything in one cloud-based solution.”
During a demonstration, Salmons confirms its simplicity. Bus drivers now have access to a tablet on their dashboard, much like a digital display common in today's non-utility cars and trucks. This screen can pull up a list of students' names and pictures during pickup. Kids use their school-issued ID badges to check onto the bus, confirming their status as boarded — think of scanning your boarding pass as you get on a plane. But if a child has forgotten their badge, which Salmons says is a common occurrence, then the driver can input their name and confirm them manually. Once the bus is moving, drivers will see a highlighted route illuminate their screen.
Administrators can watch all buses move about, and parents know when the bus is three stops, two stops, and then one stop away.
“So that they can see that, ‘Oh, here comes the bus.’ And it helps parents, especially when it's cold, when it's rainy, that type of stuff. ‘Hey, wait, wait, wait, wait — it's two stops away. OK, he's picking up Jack. OK, run out there now.’ And it keeps the kids out there in less weather, which is better.”
Drivers can access the name, picture, grade and pickup location for each student. Plus, they get route guidance and can report incidents — all from that one screen, which Salmons says reduces distractions. Although if a driver does get off track with their directions, it's up to them to find the way back to their route. But he says they're reportedly working on that.
Now at this point you might be thinking this all sounds great, but how do buses run without this technology? Maybe these are all just bells and whistles and school transport is easy enough without them. Well, Chris Johnston is currently a bus mechanic at Wonderview School District, just north of Morrilton. They recently made the decision to start using Transportant, and Johnston says he's ready for that new tech. He started his career at Atkins School District, which also contracted with the company, and says a day in the life of overseeing their system before Transportant was, in a word, stressful.
“When I started there, we had nothing. I had a map on the wall with highlighters and my knowledge from my drivers. And then right away, I saw — I was like, ‘I gotta find something.’”
Bus drivers navigated with a piece of paper, and when the unexpected happened, they were often at a loss.
“I had my subs who don't drive around every day — like some of the coaches also go and speak. It's like, ‘Hey, you know, I drove this morning route and I didn't have a clue where to go besides a piece of paper, you know, because we don't have anything.’ Because I drove around thinking, ‘I can't — I missed my first kid.’”
Both Johnston and Salmons in Bentonville say cameras and the ability to access the footage they collected were a constant point of struggle.
“Our camera system was getting older. I was having to work on it constantly, or it didn't work half the time at all. And nowadays, that's something very important that you need — not just for the kids, but the drivers, the school, everybody.”
Situations arise that a bus driver cannot handle themselves. They have to maintain control over the conflict, the rest of the students and the vehicle itself. One time, Johnston had an incident requiring intervention from the district's student resource officer, law enforcement personnel assigned to specific schools.
“Said it'd be nice to have another set of eyes, just in case something was to happen. And that's one of the selling points with here, besides Paul doing his thing, talking to the superintendent. Another school that I've referred her to that's been using it for a while — just so happened they had an incident. The driver called in and said, ‘Hey, can y'all pull up the video on my bus right now? Because I think there's something going on, but I can't tell.’ And it was something. I'm not saying this for… I'm not sure exactly what happened — but it was serious enough he had to pull over and stop what was going on and call an SRO. And without that, who knows what would have happened.”
Transportant installed at least four cameras with HD live-streaming capabilities on all Bentonville School District buses. They include interior cameras complete with microphones, so school admin, like the principal, can pipe in and speak directly to students. Plus, the footage goes directly into a cloud server, so nothing is lost. They also installed exterior cameras on the dash and the front and back of the stop arm. This may help reduce red-light runs, which the Bentonville Bulletin reported was a growing trend in 2024.
“When a bus is fully stopped and the eight-ways are on — their flashing red — and a car passes the bus, by Arkansas state law, they are required to stop. All traffic comes to a stop. So when a car passes, those cameras pick up it coming and going. Plus I have the dash cam, so it gives me another angle. And when it passes the bus, the camera picks up their license plate. The bus driver fills out a report: ‘I saw this red Ford F-150. I was laying on the horn, I was waving, the driver just looked at me and kept right on going.’ They fill out a report, we pull the video, and we send it to the corresponding police department that is responsible for that area that it happened in, and then they take the investigation from there. We send the video along. We send everything, including the driver's report. If that person challenges it, they can go to court, that’s great. The judge says, ‘Let's watch the video.’ You can't really argue with video.”
There are drawbacks to the technology, and Salmons says Transportant is working with districts to issue improvements such as real-time route correction. National sales executive Paul Gandrud says they're also eyeing new technology that could implement AI into school bus cameras.
“One of the things that our accounts have kind of asked for is something for distracted drivers, that type of thing. Or, you know, our cameras will have the ability to recognize a weapon or recognize, like, kind of bullying or aggressive behavior on buses, so that, again, you can become much more proactive with that. Now, that's something that's going to be released in the next couple of months, but kind of where we want to be able to go.”
These systems are not without cost, either. Over email, Beth Labresh wrote that Transportant's one-time startup cost is roughly $4,500 per bus, with ongoing monthly fees that add up to about $800 per bus per year. However, Johnston says it's still a good deal.
“When you look at the cost of buying something separately, piecing it all out, you're looking at a whole lot more money versus one package. I got one guy to deal with, one tech support I deal with. So on a small scale like me, where I do it all, that makes a world of difference. I just call one number and get it all done.”
So in the end, Salmons' job is still complex, but technology like the kind Transportant is providing is making it just a little bit more simple. You can visit Transportant.com for more information about the tech and how it works.
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