SBCSC Transportation Study
The safe and timely transportation of students is pivotal to a successful, smooth school day. In 2016, the South Bend Community School Corporation (SBCSC) tasked enFocus with investigating the viability of shifting the start and end times for their students. However, because of state policy change and declining enrollment the SBCSC has experienced a $41 million decline in tax revenue since 2010. Of the $41 million lost by the schools, over $20 million was cut from the transportation department’s budget. Furthermore, issues linked to school bus routing and an outdated operational system put stress on the school’s transportation system.
enFocus deployed a team of Fellows to unlock operational efficiency for the transportation department to ease the transition to new start and end times. This multi-pronged initiative focused on analyzing student ridership, improving internal management technology and building a start/end-time feasibility modeling tool. Through the course of these analyses, enFocus discovered that while roughly 14,500 students were being accounted for in the routing system, thousands of students were not riding the bus. Fellows piloted a student rider opt-out initiative to better document and plan for students who do not ride the bus. The initiative would save the SBCSC $984 per student that opts out with potential cost avoidance of up to $5.9 million. enFocus also identified and implemented new technology that would eliminate errors in time and attendance reporting for drivers, resulting in thousands of dollars in cost savings per school year.