Presented by Zūm
Ten years ago, Ritu Narayan, Founder and CEO of Zūm, set out on a mission to modernize the school bus system for all children — including her own.
“Other parents and I would talk about the daily struggle to get our kids to school safely, reliably, and on time,” she says. “We never knew when or if the school bus was coming, or whether our children had arrived at school. We couldn’t miss work and take them ourselves. I kept asking myself, how is it that we can track our packages and food orders, yet we cannot track our most precious cargo – our kids – to and from school?”
Today, Zum is reshaping the industry, using state-of-the-art technology and equipment to increase safety, efficiency, transparency, and equity on the school bus for children, families, drivers, operators, and schools nationwide.
Zum also brings something that was largely missing from student transportation: comprehensive, real-time data and dashboards that are role-based and easy-to-use to seamlessly manage daily operations. Through real-time analytics and a comprehensive, end-to-end platform that keeps all stakeholders informed, the company is revolutionizing the school bus system for more than 4,000 schools.
Safety and Reliability
Zum’s AI-driven safety technology optimizes daily bus routes, tracks children’s arrival and departure, and connects families, drivers and operators, schools, and district administrators with the right level of information, making each user’s day-to-day job easier. RFID-enabled bus cards track ridership and attendance data and deliver real-time notifications when a child has safely boarded or exited the bus. Through the Zum App, parents can view accurate driver and vehicle information, along with real-time information such as the vehicle location and their child’s pickup or dropoff status.
These advances are transformative: Zum creates real-time analytics for on-time arrivals, bus and student location, ridership data by route, stop, and student, and more. Extensive real-time analytics and insights, and Zum route optimization platform, enable data-driven decision making for continuous improvements in service quality, on-time performance, and student daily ride time. With Zum technology, 98% of the buses managed on the Zum platform arrive on time. School district partners also see 25% fewer student commute hours and a 20% reduction in bus fleet size due to increased efficiency and ridership per vehicle. Zum average Parent Rating is 4.9 of 5 stars, with over one million total ratings across the platform.
In the 2024-2025 school year, Boston Public Schools (BPS) launched Zum’s student transportation technology platform to manage, monitor, and optimize transportation across their fleet of 750 school buses. In a matter of months, Zum brought on-time arrivals to 94%, the highest on-time student transportation rate the district had seen in years. BPS officials said the Zum App offered “transparency like we’ve never had before,” and Zum tech stack replaced the district’s outdated paper systems, digitizing back-end processes and creating easy communication.
To date, Zum has completed more than 22.2 million rides with over 30 million safe miles driven.
Drivers and Training
Zum recognizes and celebrates the important role that school bus drivers play in the educational experience. Zum is committed to ensuring drivers are well-compensated with competitive pay, benefits, state-of-the-art facilities, and modern technology and equipment that make their day-to-day jobs safer, easier, and more comfortable. Zum also pays for training and certification to support new drivers entering the field.
As a result, Zum has solved longstanding driver shortages in many school districts it serves. Zum comprehensive driver training exceeds state and federal requirements and ensures all students, particularly those with special needs, and their families, receive the best-in-class service they deserve.
Zum’s vehicle safety technology and extensive driver training requires all drivers to adhere to specific safety protocols while picking up or dropping off students and while driving. Drivers are equipped with a GPS-enabled tablet and Driver app that provides real-time route updates and turn-by-turn directions, along with any student-specific instructions to ensure safe care for each child as well as easy-to-use incident reporting capabilities.
“(Zum technology) is far better than having a piece of paper,” says Teddy Solomon, a Zum driver in Spokane, Wash. “I really like using the tablets. It’s great for checking on my everyday route and making sure kids get on and off the bus safely. For sports trips, especially if I go out of town, the turn-by-turn directions really help a lot and the Driver app makes it easy for me to preview any special instructions or equipment needed for the route.”
Customer Satisfaction
Zum’s mission to deliver safe, reliable, and modern student transportation has received support from every stakeholder, including families, drivers, school and district administrators, and local and national leaders. Real-time analytics and measurements are revolutionizing the school bus system.
Zum also saves school districts money, which can be redirected into the classroom, athletics, extracurricular and enrichment programs. By switching to Zum, San Francisco Unified School District will save $15M over the course of its five-year contract.
Today, Zum serves thousands of schools across 14 states and is expanding rapidly nationwide. It serves some of the largest school districts in the country, including Los Angeles, Boston, San Francisco, Seattle, Omaha, St. Louis, Salt Lake City, and Virginia Beach.
Sustainability and Energy
Improving student transportation creates a ripple effect that can positively impact entire communities, not just students on the bus.
Zum has deployed electric school buses in several markets and, in 2024, electrified the school bus fleet serving Oakland Unified School District, making it the first major school district in the country to have a fully electrified fleet of 74 EV buses with Vehicle-to-Grid technology (V2G), which uses the electric school bus batteries to send energy back to the local grid. Through V2G, Zum’s electric buses are providing enough energy to power 400 homes, creating more sustainable communities and cities — and making use of the buses and EV batteries when they are in use during the day delivering safer, quieter, and sustainable transportation for students, and while parked at the yard to provide energy back to the grid during the evening when energy is in peak demand.
Again, data reflect the success and impact of this approach: Zum’s EVs in Oakland will save 70,000 tons of CO2e and send over 2.1 Gigawatt hours of energy back to the grid, and can charge 400 homes for a full year.