Lewiston Public Schools in Maine stands at the crossroads of tradition and transformation. With a student body of nearly 6,000 (of which roughly 4,500 rely on some form of school transportation), the district faces logistical complexities magnified by urban density, linguistic diversity, contracted services, and a growing population of newly arrived families. Alisa Roman, the district’s Director of Nutrition and Transportation, inherited a transportation department running on Excel sheets and intuition and has since led a strategic overhaul centered on Transfinder’s suite of routing and communication tools.
Transfinder President and CEO Antonio Civitella and Alisa Roman, Lewiston Public Schools’ Director of Nutrition and Transportation
“I decided that if I was going to direct this department, I had to really get into the nuts and bolts, just like I do in nutrition,” Roman said. “It’s logistics. It’s systems. It’s seconds.”
Roman didn’t come up through a traditional transportation pipeline. A graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, she worked in college dining and operations before taking over child nutrition services at Lewiston. The school district’s transportation duties were added to her portfolio when the existing coordinator retired, and thus she inherited a system with no routing software and one retired police officer estimating trip times by memory and hand gestures.
“At that point, all our transportation was based on Excel sheets,” she said. “I asked how long it took to get from Point A to B, and our employee held up his finger and said, ‘About five minutes.’ I was like, ‘Oh my gosh.’”
Her entry into routing software began with a state-sponsored introduction to Transfinder’s legacy system, Routefinder Pro. She saw immediate potential.
“Everyone else at the training was ready to retire,” she said. “I looked around and said, ‘This would be really good for a city like ours.’”
Upgrading to PLUS
Roman’s early enthusiasm for Transfinder matured into deep operational commitment. The district upgraded from Routefinder Pro to Routefinder PLUS, and embraced the broader Transfinder ecosystem, including adopting Stopfinder for parent communication, Viewfinder for school staff visibility, Formfinder for streamlined requests, and pilot-testing the driver app Wayfinder with their contracted provider.
“I think I had less than a 30-second demo of PLUS before I stopped the rep and said, ‘Just get it,’” Roman said. “We’re using every aspect we can. I’m even certified in Routefinder, and so is my assistant director. I think that’s one of the reasons we’ve been so successful; we’ve committed to doing it right.”
This robust adoption was not without obstacles. Roman’s first assistant director resisted the transition, clinging to familiar spreadsheets. But Roman held firm: “We were in Pro, we’d moved to PLUS, and I said, ‘We’re ripping off the Band-Aid.’ It took someone beside me who could see the vision.”
Scaling with Complexity
Lewiston’s transportation challenges are uniquely complex for a city in Maine. A designated refugee resettlement area, the district serves students from more than 80 linguistic backgrounds, with recent influxes from Somalia, Congo, the Philippines, and Portuguese-speaking regions. Some students have never ridden in a vehicle before boarding a school bus.
“We had over 480 students experiencing homelessness last year, and 130 placed in special-purpose schools as far as 90 minutes away,” Roman said. “We use large buses, minivans, wheelchair vans, and multiple contractors.”
This diversity and rapid growth make real-time visibility essential.
“We absolutely need to know about one-way streets, 911 maps, speed limits, and more,” she said. “I’d struggle if someone told me tomorrow, ‘We’re taking away this software.’ I think I’d cry.”
Integration and Adoption
Despite implementing an advanced system, Roman knew technology wouldn’t matter without people behind it.
“We didn’t have routing software before this,” she said. “So part of my job is to walk into guidance counselor meetings and say, ‘You’re not sending every parent to me anymore. You have these tools. Let me show you Viewfinder.’”:
Her training strategy is based on empowerment “I tell them, ‘You can’t break this. Click all the buttons. I’ll show you how to get back.’”
Parents, too, are gradually being brought into the ecosystem via Stopfinder GPS tracking, which was deliberately limited at first to prevent information overload.
“They can log in and see the GPS, but we didn’t enable direct messaging at the start,” she said. “It’s about building familiarity.”
That intentionality extends to their transportation provider.
“We don’t yet have tablets on all vehicles, so we rerun route sheets manually and communicate updates in a very calculated way,” she said. “We have about a 48-hour window to route a student and notify all stakeholders: school, parent, and contractor.”
Evaluating Success
When asked how she measures the ROI of Transfinder’s software, Roman offered a surprising yet telling answer: the quiet.
“When I first started, the phones never stopped ringing,” she said. “We couldn’t even get through a to-do list. Now, we still have stressful days, but when it’s quiet, and the only calls are clarifying questions? That’s how I know it’s working.”
Additional success metrics include real-time sign-in data from school staff, proactive communication with multilingual families, and the ability to eliminate previously required newspaper listings of bus routes.
“The students know where they’re going now,” she said. “That’s a huge shift.”
“TRANSFINDER WAS WORTH IT”
A few years into implementation, Lewiston’s commitment to Transfinder was tested. The State of Maine, previously footing the software bill, announced it would end funding for routing software across the board. Districts would have to pay or switch.
“I went to our superintendent and said, ‘This doesn’t happen in six months. If you want to switch, it’ll take a year. We’ll strand students if we don’t do it right,’” she said.
Ultimately, Lewiston’s administration supported keeping Transfinder, recognizing both the institutional knowledge built over years and the risk of starting over.
“We run two departments: nutrition and transportation,” she said. “I know how much software costs. This one is worth it.”
A Model District
From Transfinder’s side, Lewiston stands out not just for its scale, but for how fully and thoughtfully it has adopted the platform.
“They’re a sweet spot district, not too small, not too big; but they use the full range of what we offer,” said Antonio Civitella, president and CEO of Transfinder. “Alisa and her team give us honest feedback. We’re constantly evolving to serve clients like them who treat us like partners, not just vendors.”
Civitella emphasized the importance of helping clients avoid a common trap: jumping straight to the “cool” tools like parent apps without first building strong routing fundamentals.
“You better have good data if you want to put a parent app in parents’ hands,” he said. “Otherwise, you’re just exposing your weaknesses.”
Lessons Learned
Civitella offered a clear takeaway for districts considering similar software: Don’t be swayed by flashy tools or bargain pricing.
“Everyone wants the parent app, the GPS, the driver tools,” he said. “But you have to start with reliable routing. Alisa understands that. She’s not afraid of the technology. But for less tech-savvy districts, we partner step by step.”
He also warned that switching to a cheaper system often means giving up future flexibility.
“You may not need all the bells and whistles today,” he said. “But what happens when you do, and your new system can’t deliver?”
Looking Forward
For Roman, the work is never done. She is eyeing next steps like expanding translation capabilities for multilingual families, integrating all GPS sources from multiple vendors into a single view, and continuing to train every school user who touches transportation data.
“My background in food service helps,” she said. “In nutrition, I know it takes eight seconds to feed a kid. So I look at transportation the same way: what should normally happen, what’s an exception, and how do we build systems that get it right every time?”
For districts with similar challenges, such as complex routing needs, rising student populations, limited staff, or outsourced fleets, Lewiston’s experience is a powerful case study in how the right tools, team, and technology can rewire a transportation system for better efficiency, safety, and trust.