Lovejoy School District
About
Dennis Womack, Assistant Superintendent for Operations of Lovejoy Independent School District in Texas runs transportation for 4,100 paying students. Lovejoy is made up of 4 different cities and students are not required to use the transportation provided by the district, therefore Dennis and his team want to make the process for busing students as safe and seamless as possible because he knows that parents have other options to get their kids to school.
“The accessibility and consistency without the need for major equipment and antenna installation is what really attracted me
to pdvWIRELESS in the first place,” says Dennis. He was relieved to experience such great service having used other carriers before which did not work for the multitude of buses and coverage areas he services with precious student cargo.
DENNIS’ FAVORITE FEATURE!
Dennis loves that he knows each bus has been checked at the beginning and end of a shift. His drivers use “Child Check” message updates at the end of their shift to assure themselves and him that there were no children left behind. He has heard positive feedback from his drivers – in fact, since using DispatchPlus, he has been able to save money and time by monitoring the routes his drivers take. Dennis’s drivers are placed on strategic routes, but after watching the maps – he noticed that the bus drivers were not sticking to the routes, and were still making great time. DispatchPlus opened the conversation between Dennis and his mobile team and they were able give great recommendations on how best to update their routes and they used the DispatchPlus map to show Dennis. “Normally my drivers would not mention that they did not stick to their planned directions – but now that we have full visibility we can improve on all accounts!”
How did DispatchPlus help?
DispatchPlus’s seamless communication came in handy when an accident disrupted what was a normal morning in Lovejoy. “There was a large accident in our area that covered a few towns. When I first heard about it from a driver – I could immediately look at my map through the DispatchPlus console. On there I could see which drivers I could re-route to avoid getting them stuck and which drivers I could send to a nearby location to help unload some of the students that needed to get to school.” “Additionally, the drivers were all able to talk to one another on the large talk group so they could best gure out where they needed to be to help.”
“With the ability to see where my drivers were – and the clear, private talk group, I spoke with one driver and gave them turn by turn directions. She was in a neighborhood that she was unfamiliar with and so I spoke to her while watching her location update on my map.”