Using Zippslip to Improve Pupil Transportation and Parent Communication

About the Program

Category: Transportation (Best in Category)

Year: 2016

Henrico County Public Schools’ Pupil Transportation Department needed a way to deliver bus information to parents without having to print bus-stop lists and individual student labels; and to receive, process and report transportation changes based on parent requests. Since 2013, Henrico Schools has been using online software, called ZippSlip, for K-12 schools that automate paper forms and transactions that go between parents and their students’ schools. By adapting this tool for transportation needs, we aimed to save money on paper; reduce the workload of transportation and school staff members; and provide more efficient delivery of information. Initially, we created a Bus Stop Form and a Transportation Change Form in ZippSlip. We worked with our application development team to establish feeds from the student information system to ZippSlip so that the latest bus information was display all school year. We trained the staff to extract any change requests daily directly from the ZippSlip system for processing as opposed to waiting for the manual forms to be delivered through inter office mail. The solution we created streamlined efforts; created data that can be exported and reported; and made parent and staff efforts more efficient.