New school bus provider in Spokane Public Schools, Zūm, allows parents to track students’ location while on board

You can follow the location of your Uber driver, Doordash order or your Amazon delivery instantaneously on your cellphone. Now, because of Spokane Public Schools’ partnership with a new bus provider, parents will be able to track their children on their school bus.

The district and school bus provider Zūm Services agreed in March to a $71.8 million contract for the next five years. The brand new Zūm fleet is 150-strong, each bus equipped with a tablet that tracks the bus’s location, made available to district dispatchers and parents’ mobile phones. Starting this school year, parents will be able to follow their child’s ride to and from school directly from their phones.

The district ferries around 6,800 students to and from school each day out of their total population of more than 29,000.

Upon boarding, students will scan a unique ID card that links the student to the bus. Parents can use the Zūm app to get estimated arrival times, see if their bus is late or taking a different route.

“The technology is phenomenal. For a long time, we’ve been able to track our pizzas and our foods, right? Now we can track our children even better,” said Jennifer Sievers, general manager at Zūm Spokane. “Our students in the school district will be tracked on technology that you can see exactly when they get on, when they get off.”

Sievers said the district used to get hundreds of calls each morning from parents wanting to know buses’ whereabouts. By having this information at their fingertips, it should reduce workload.

The school district’s previous transportation contract with Durham School Services was marked by bus driver shortages that resulted in late pickups, frustrating parents. In the wake of shortages, the district last year made operational changes, including expanding middle and high school students’ walking radius, reducing stops and partnering with Spokane Transit Authority to have some high schoolers ride the city bus to school. High school students residing in the city bus service area will continue riding the city bus to and from school.

Sievers said Zūm is thoroughly staffed with 140 drivers, though they’re still hiring drivers and bus attendants, who supervise students so the driver can keep their eyes on the road. Many of Spokane’s former Durham drivers have been hired by Zūm .

In the midst of the staffing shortage at the end of 2021, Durham had 85 drivers to service 91 routes.

Upon expiration of the Durham contract, Spokane Public Schools explored transportation options including purchasing its own fleet or partnering with neighboring districts. Ultimately, they opted for a contract with Zūm because of the efficiency of outsourcing to a private company, Spokane Public Schools’ Transportation Supervisor Corey Arkle said.

“Having the technology, the supports, the routing to make sure that you’re not having any inefficient routes and too many stops,” Arkle said. “So all of that kind of ties into what you’re seeking when you’re trying to outsource.”

Though Spokane’s fleet runs on diesel, Zūm said the company aims to make its fleet entirely electric by 2027. The district would have to install charging stations at bus barns and other infrastructure changes to accommodate the electric buses, but that’s still a long-term plan, Sievers said.

Based in San Francisco, Zūm has fleets in districts in Seattle, San Francisco, Oakland and Los Angeles. Some buses in these fleets are already 100% electric.