Driving America Forward with Chuck Blair
“Zum’s innovation is not just that it integrates everything a school transportation systems needs into a single, clean interface, but in how responsive they are to the needs of their customers, like us.”
Chuck Blair
Transportation Coordinator
Virginia Beach City Public Schools
Originally from upstate New York, Chuck began his career in the private tour bus industry. After 20 years, he moved to a warmer climate—Virginia Beach, where he joined Virginia Beach City Public Schools (VBCPS). Today, he’s the Transportation Coordinator for VBCPS, where he oversees routing and analytics for the entire school system, which includes over 60,000 students, 85 schools, and 600 buses.
How is VBS driving innovation forward?
I first started working at VBCPS 22 years ago. Back then, we didn’t have the technology we have today—so we were using index cards, paper maps, pushpins and string to draw out how students would get to and from school.
Another feature of those earlier days that has persisted until very recently is a bus driver shortage. For decades—and this isn’t unique to Virginia Beach, just ask anyone else in the industry—we had been short bus drivers. On any given day, we would be 75 to 100 bus drivers short, due to people leaving the workforce, calling in sick, or other reasons.
The driver shortage, combined with the fact that we knew we weren’t as efficient as we could be, kicked us into a new gear. In 2019, before the COVID pandemic, we started trying to figure out ways to be more efficient. At first, it started small, with things like re-configuring student pickup spots and actually tracking which students were using the buses. Over time, our effort grew and we started including more technology. Of course, we got a huge boost when we started partnering with Zum at the end of last year.
Overall, since our effort to become more efficient, we’ve reduced the number of buses in our fleet from 619 to 560—a huge improvement that’s saving us a ton of human power and taxpayer dollars, all of which can be funneled back into the classroom. They say necessity is the mother of invention, and the same is true of innovation—we innovated and got to be much more efficient as a school system because we had to.
From your perspective, how is Zum driving America forward?
Zum’s innovation is not just that it integrates everything a school transportation system needs into a single, clean interface, but in how responsive they are to the needs of their customers, like us.
Before we started working with Zum, we had another student transportation partner. We’d been working with them for 25 years, the last 5 of which we spent trying to upgrade our technology—but in that time, they never really got a handle on our system, and never really addressed the issues we were facing. We wanted to make our routing more efficient, incorporate data and tracking, and make use of GPS to identify where students and buses were at any given time—yet our prior vendor couldn’t make it work.
So we put out an RFP—and last year, Zum presented to us. We were blown away, because Zum combined everything we needed into a single, simple, easy-to-use interface. Better routing? Check. Data? Check. Parent Communication? Check. GPS? It’s on every bus now.
It’s not just that, though. VBCPS has some unique challenges and situations, many of which we’ve brought to the Zum team. Our transportation scheme is very complicated, which requires a certain amount of customization. Every time we present a challenge, they jump on the issue right away, and come up with a solution—not within weeks or months, but in days. I’ve never seen that kind of responsiveness from a tech partner, and that, beyond simply their superior product, is what makes them truly innovative.
When you think of the future, what role do children/the next generation play, and how can we set them up for success?
At VBCPS, our philosophy is that every person in the school system is equal. The custodial staff, those who work in the lunch room, the teachers, the principal—everyone has something to contribute.
That, of course, includes the students. One thing we’ve started doing recently is inviting some students to see the technology we’re putting in place, to come to our departments and learn about how we’re using AI to improve our routing, and how we integrate with the Department of Transportation to get students safely to and from school every day. It might sound small, but I think one of the best things we can do for our students is simply to include them in the process of positive change. Hopefully that inspires them to create positive change for themselves and others down the road.