Frontier Schools Moves AI Bus Routing From Paper Sheets To Live Rosters

Frontier Schools is moving part of its bus dispatch work from paper route sheets to AI-assisted tablets, after a GovTech Education article described how the New York district is using Tyler Drive to adjust routes around the students who actually board each day.

The system is aimed at a familiar school-transport problem: buses need to move students faster while districts manage driver shortages and fuel costs.

Frontier’s deployment covers middle school and high school students first, pairing onboard tablets with software that builds customized routes, gives drivers voice turn-by-turn directions and identifies the next stop, including the side of the road.

The program cost about $188,000, Frontier assistant superintendent for finance and operations Christopher Thuman said.

Its workflow depends on student identification cards with RFID chips.

Once fully implemented, students will swipe their cards near the bus steps, and the onboard system will use that roster to calculate the most efficient route for the riders present on that trip.

Drivers can manually add a student when an ID card is missing.

That changes the route sheet from a fixed instruction set into a live operating tool.

Frontier transportation director Brent Bogardus said the technology can remove as many as 10 minutes from a given route because drivers can avoid unnecessary stops or slower paths.

The bigger value is expected after school, when clubs and sports make late-bus ridership less predictable than the morning run.

The district’s transportation operation is large enough for small routing changes to matter.

Frontier moves 5,500 students across 86 buses, and the new process has required a transition for drivers, many of whom are retirees.

Bogardus said drivers like no longer having to read and interpret route sheets while working through a run.

For late buses, Thuman described the tablet as a reset button for a variable passenger list.

Once the students are seated, the driver can start the route and have the group sequenced automatically instead of relying on a manually prepared sheet.

Tyler Technologies software is already used by several local districts, including Buffalo Public Schools through its Versatrans routing program.

The same ID-card system will eventually extend to elementary school students.

Its chips also connect to a parent app that shows whether a child has boarded and how close the bus is to home, turning the routing tool into a location and accountability system for families.

Frontier has already used the setup during a vehicle problem.

When a light shorted out and a backup bus was needed, the tablet and roster moved to the replacement vehicle, allowing the route to continue with the same student list and directions.

For the district, the next step is less about a new feature than about expanding the same live-routing workflow across more grades.