Situated in the beautiful state of North Carolina, Caldwell County School District serves 11,311 students, maintains 94 buses, and oversees 26 schools throughout the district. During peak times of the school year, approximately 4,000 students are routed. Jay McCarraher, Director of Transportation, has been serving this midsized district since 2018 and has led the department in transitioning from an antiquated system that offered limited visibility into routing processes. Under his leadership, Caldwell County transitioned to a modern, simplified school bus routing system that not only provides him with the insights and access he needs but has also increased the efficiency of his two-person routing team.
Download the Caldwell County School District Case Study PDF Now!
Going from “Very Old” to New and Improved
Prior to implementing EZRouting (formerly TravelTrackerRouting), Jay and his team managed the district’s routing process through a “very old system” that required “significant time to ensure routes were up to date.” Moreover, the system could only be accessed and managed by a single user with a license to use the system.
Caldwell only had one license for their legacy system, so if Jodi Sanders—the license holder—was out of the office, there was no way for Jay to get into the application. “I had no way of working it myself, ” Jay states. “I couldn’t see what was going on. If a student needed to be rerouted, I couldn’t help. I couldn’t do anything.”
Their legacy system was also only accessible if they were physically in the Transportation building, which according to Jay, was “very aggravating.”
Jay needed a solution—and fast.
I take this personally. I need to know where every child is and make sure they’re on the right bus. – Jay McCarraher, Director of Transportation at Caldwell County School District, North Carolina
Transitioning to a Cloud-Based System
The inability to access the routing system when Jodi Sanders, their initial router, was out of the office was the primary catalyst for Caldwell to consider other options. So, they chose Pathwise’s EZRouting to simplify their school bus routing system.
The transition to EZRouting was a tremendous change for Jay and his team. With EZRouting, they can easily add or delete students from a route, consolidate routes if a driver is out, and combine bus loads when needed. Plus, since EZRouting is cloud-based, they can access the system from wherever they are at any time of day.
And because EZRouting comes with an unlimited number of users, everyone on the Transportation team can access it.
Caldwell’s Top Three Benefits from its Simplified School Bus Routing with EZRouting
Now that Caldwell has been using EZRouting to simplify its school bus routing process, they’ve experienced a variety of benefits. They listed their top three as:
- An unlimited number of people can use the system at no additional cost
- The Caldwell routing team doesn’t have to “go to 100 different pages to route one kid”
- The people they work with at Pathwise are exceptional
Not only do all members of the Transportation team have access to EZRouting, but by using the “ view only ” feature, Jay has been able to provide access to the district’s principals so they can view a real-time list of their school’s students and the buses to which they are assigned, helping ensure that students board the correct buses. Previously, each time a busing change occurred, hardcopy updates had to be couriered to each school.
Adding, deleting, and updating students on routes is now easy. Stated Jay, “I had a principal call me yesterday. She had told me about a student who needed to be picked up two days a week and every other Friday. And I said, just send this information to your router and they will create two transportation plans for this child. So now everyone knows where their students are at all times, which as a principal is important.” As to the Customer Success team at Pathwise, “They ’ re right on top of it. They want to get it done. They want to help you, ” Misty said. “And that means a lot to us.”
Regarding the national driver shortage issue, Caldwell uses EZRouting’s “sandbox ” feature when a driver calls out. “We’ re always looking for drivers, ” says Jay. But if Caldwell needs to combine bus loads, “We will and we can, easily.”
I love the people that we work with. I ask a question and they’re on it. All of them are amazing. – Misty Davis, Secretary/Cost Clerk (All Billing/ Paying Bills)/Also Router For Collettsville, GES, GMS, HVES, Valmead, Whitnel, WCHS, Davenport, Horizons, & Gateway, Travel Tracker Mileage and Billing
Measuring the Impact of Simplified School Bus Routing
We asked Jay and his team if they ’ ve been able to measure any impacts after transitioning from their previous system to EZRouting. “It’s time-saving, ” Jay states. “It’s definitely time-saving due to the ease of routing and unrouting students. We went from a 15-step process to a two-step process after switching to EZRouting.” Commented Jodi, “It now takes half the time it did with our previous system.”
“Any director needs to consider EZRouting, ” Jay states. “It’s not a hard system to learn. Customer service is outstanding. It’s transparent.”
Improved Accuracy and Ability to Build Routes for Next Year
Jodi, one of two routers and Caldwell County ’s original router, has been routing for eight years. She typically handles her routing tasks in EZRouting first thing in the morning. Within “15-20 minutes,” she’s done using the routing system for the day.
With their legacy system, nothing was electronic. Everything was hard copies and “double the work.”
“With EZRouting, I just open one tab if I have to find a kid. If one of my colleagues calls, I can find the kid and say yes, this is the bus they’re supposed to be on. I like looking at it when I can see the green checks knowing that they were routed, ” claims Jay. “The transparency goes a long way for everybody.”
And as the current school year comes to a close, it’s time to focus on building routes for the next school year. In terms of route accuracy, said Jay, “We’ re working on getting the new kindergarteners in the system, putting in 7th graders, and updating our flips. I think our routes in EZRouting are more accurate this time of year than our routes were with our former system.”
In the world of education, the work never ends for transportation professionals. We look forward to working with Caldwell County School District as they prepare for the next school year, as well as for many years to come.
It’s all about the service. For example, I can buy a bus from three different vendors, but a lot of times I base it off their service. TransAct’s customer service is outstanding. – Jay McCarraher Director of Transportation at Caldwell County School District, North Carolina
Download the Caldwell County School District Case Study PDF Now!
