To address current school transportation operational and funding challenges, HopSkipDrive has announced new initiatives and options for supplemental transportation designed to ensure students can reliably and consistently attend, and get to, school on time.
As a national school bus driver shortage continues this back-to-school season, school districts working to avoid late or no-show buses are partnering with HopSkipDrive to meet the needs of students and families, ensuring students can get to school safely, reliably, and ready to learn.
The company is meeting school district needs in numerous ways.
HopSkipDrive has long led the student transportation industry in the shortest turnaround times for a confirmed ride by enabling district officials to book a ride for a student with just hours’ notice through HopSkipDrive’s leading ride management platform, RideIQ. This is in stark contrast to the norm in student transportation; it often takes days or even weeks to find a driver and arrange transportation for a student — which can result in a child being left at home, stranded without being in the classroom.
In response to district needs, HopSkipDrive has reduced the turnaround time for confirmed rides from eight hours to six hours. Additionally, the HopSkipDrive platform can now arrange same-day rides for students in markets across the country. These changes directly address the needs of districts working to arrange student transportation at the start of the academic year, particularly for highly mobile student populations, such as students experiencing homelessness or in foster care, as well as new public school enrollees, who may require transportation on short notice.
In many cases, these students are identified by school officials and require transportation from new places outside of a school bus route with very little notice. Having safe, reliable, and immediate transportation is a lifeline for these students and their learning outcomes.
HopSkipDrive has increased the number of highly vetted CareDrivers in its network, and is proud to have the highest-ever availability of drivers at back to school. This increased driver availability comes at a critical time for school districts, 91% of which report experiencing bus driver shortages. CareDrivers are parents, grandparents, babysitters, and nurses from the local community who have completed HopSkipDrive’s 15-point certification process, which includes fingerprint-based background checks, driving history checks, vehicle inspections, and video screenings.
Earlier this year, HopSkipDrive announced that throughout the 2023–2024 academic year, the community of active CareDrivers doubled.
With years of experience and high-performance teams across engineering, client experience, product, data science, and operations, HopSkipDrive is welcoming the new school year by setting a new standard for client satisfaction, driven by the HopSkipDrive team’s deep experience, expertise, and ongoing technological innovation.
“Some of our parent pick up areas are not easy to find when you only have the school address. [With HopSkipDrive], the driver can arrive at the parent pick up areas of the school and not mess up the buses. This is great! Thank you.”
—General secretary for transportation at Washington’s Fife School District
Here’s what other HopSkipDrive clients have to say:
In addition to operational excellence — including average customer service wait times under 90 seconds, and guaranteeing that 100% of school district ride requests are matched with a CareDriver — this year, HopSkipDrive launched three new products to further enhance its services and enable smoother onsite operations:
HopSkipDrive’s cutting-edge technology continues to raise the bar for school transportation.
“Educators, teachers, and school staff nimbly and compassionately support the growing number of students needing individualized transportation needs — and we often see clients booking rides the night before so a student doesn’t miss a day of school,” said Joanna McFarland, CEO and Co-Founder of HopSkipDrive. “We’ll continue to empower transportation officials navigating challenges like a bus driver shortage to quickly support students who need a ride.”
Here’s how HopSkipDrive works:
Interested in getting your school district on board with HopSkipDrive?