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District transportation director outlines routing, contracted services and new parent bus‑tracking app
Summary
Marie Espinosa, director of student transportation, described routing and contracted services for hundreds of bus routes, the district's use of supplemental sedan services for special needs, and a phased rollout of a parent app with RFID bus‑pass tracking so families can monitor students boarding and alighting.
Marie Espinosa, director of student transportation for San Bernardino City Unified, told the DAC that the department handles in‑house routing and scheduling for hundreds of bus routes and coordinates contracted drivers and vendors to deliver daily service.
"We operate in 2 facets, our in house operation and our contracted operations," Espinosa said, describing route planning, parent communications and field‑trip scheduling. She said the office schedules roughly 1,800 runs under the district's modified bell schedules and oversees both general‑education and special‑education transportation.
Espinosa said the district contracts yellow‑bus service with two providers, Durham and Zoom, and is using supplemental sedan vendors (named in the presentation as HopSkip and Drive and Adroid EverDriven) for students with temporary or specialized needs. For general‑education transfer routes she cited 102 elementary transfer routes; for special education she cited separate route counts and multiple providers to meet specific needs.
The department has begun a phased rollout of a parent mobile app that lets families track a bus's arrival and whether a student boarded or exited a vehicle. "Just like you would track an Uber, now you can see when your bus is about to show up," Espinosa said, describing features that push alerts to families and show on/off swipes tied to RFID chips embedded in student bus passes.
The presentation emphasized operational details (routing, scheduling, parent outreach and a high volume of field‑trip reservations) and urged families to use the new tools the district is promoting via mailers, website updates and seat drops. Espinosa invited questions after the presentation.
