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Leadership Under Pressure
Findlay City Schools (OH) has faced its share of challenges in the past couple of years, from funding cuts to the tune of $6 million, key personnel departures in transportation and the ongoing driver shortage.
Superintendent Andy Hatton knew transportation would be one of the hardest areas to touch—and one of the most visible.
“We had to announce $6 million in cuts,” Dr. Hatton said. “Out of a budget of about $60 million to $65 million.”
Those reductions included roughly $820,000 from transportation alone, which led to significant alterations and hard choices.
“We eliminated high school busing,” he explained. “We went to a two-mile walk radius for all students, which is the state’s minimum requirement.”
For many superintendents, this would have been a crisis to survive. For Hatton, superintendent at the district for just under three years, it became a leadership test: How to protect families, support drivers, and still keep the system functional with fewer resources.
Turning to an Underutilized Partner: Transfinder
Findlay is a community of about 40,000 people located in the northwest of Columbus, about 40 miles south of Toledo. Its claim to fame is Marathon Petroleum, which traces its origins to the late 1880s, resulting in Findlay being a boomtown. Marathon Petroleum (NYSE: MPC) is still headquartered in Findlay today.
Findlay City Schools has 5,000 students attending two primary schools, three intermediate schools, two middle schools, and the high school. Also on the central office campus is the Career Center which serves 14 school districts across four counties.
As the district was learning of the funding shortfall it was facing, Hatton was also learning that the transportation department had a solution it wasn’t fully using: Routefinder PLUS.
“What we discovered was we were not leveraging this really powerful, amazing tool to help us route our district efficiently,” he said. “We found out that we had not updated our maps in 10 years.”
Hatton and Kelly Cheney, Findlay’s director of communications, are quoted saying in The Courier story how Transfinder’s solutions would play a role in helping the transportation navigate the challenges and get back on course. Cheney noted, before Transfinder, “our transportation department was hand-routing every single student who rode the bus, manually inputting the information for each student and then tweaking it as the year went on … again manually,” according to coverage in the local newspaper, The Courier. “Adjustments were not able to be made quickly for special circumstances, like construction, for example, so buses were delayed.”
Cheney said Transfinder’s technology was playing a key role in not just modernizing its transportation operation but solving critical issues and supporting drivers.
“This program will allow us to immediately message parents of any and all buses as soon as it is needed,” Cheney told The Courier. “Substitute drivers will have turn-by-turn directions to follow as they drive a new route, and student stop information will be updated daily.”
Hatton, in an interview with Transfinder following that meeting, said there were other challenges the transportation department was facing, such as losing key transportation staff.
“In early June, we realized we lost our router,” Hatton said. “She had been routing our district for like a decade.”
The combination of funding cuts, staff turnover, and a driver shortage could have pushed the department into chaos. But Hatton reframed the challenge as an opportunity to update the operation and increase efficiency.
“We had literally stacks of 500 pages of paper all over tables all summer long,” he said. “And then ‘sort of’ using Transfinder.” The district rebuilt its routing process inside Transfinder’s award-winning Routefinder PLUS routing software, cleaned up rider data, and upgraded GPS so routes were no longer guesswork.
He also reorganized leadership needs in the transportation department. Rather than refilling a high-cost director role, Hatton created a transportation manager position with deep system expertise.
“We decided not to replace our director of transportation position,” he said. “We went with a transportation manager and she’s been amazing.”
For Hatton, this wasn’t just about efficiency—it was about accountability to the community.
“We feel this responsibility to live up to the expectations that the community has with a high level of service,” he said. “One of the things that the Board of Education then put together for us was a set of goals that they would like to see implemented. I’m calling it our Path to Progress as we rebuild our district.”
How did Transfinder play a key role in meeting those goals? Continue reading the rest of the story below.
Not Just a Bird’s Eye View but a Windshield View
Hatton doesn’t want just a “bird’s eye view” of transportation but wants to see how things are really working. Last year, he said, “I jumped on a bus on the second to last day of school. It was Miss Tammy’s bus and she was showing me how she used the tablet.”
Hatton said the driver app installed on the tablet combined with the parent app Stopfinder has done wonders for the transportation operation.
“She’s one of those drivers who has incredible relationships with her kids,” Hatton said. “That was the first time I really got to see it and some of the potential that we have behind it.”
Transfinder technology and the support provided became a way to stabilize operations under pressure.
“When we had a really rough start to the year, we had this amazing client success manager who jumped on calls with us at the ready – like daily,” Hatton said. “He showed us little shortcuts and tweaks… and that will solve this issue.”
He said as the district looked route by route, often challenging a driver’s perspective of the best way to drive a route, efficiencies surfaced immediately.
For example, Hatton said, on Day 1 the driver would travel his or her usual route. “And then Day 2 we’d say, let’s run this route exactly the way Transfinder’s mapped it out.” The result?
“It actually saves three minutes here, two minutes there, a minute there,” Hatton said. “And then they (the drivers) start to believe, ‘Wow! This is actually going to be better!’”
Communication also changed for the better. Instead of broad, districtwide alerts, tools now allow precise updates.
“Almost instant communication is expected,” Hatton said. “If we’re not communicating with our families within five to 10 minutes of something happening on that bus… that’s just not acceptable in this day and age.”
Hatton’s approach resonates with other district leaders because it blends realism with vision. He does not promise quick fixes.
“I anticipate efficiencies in our routing,” he said. “I anticipate efficiencies with not having to hire as many drivers because I think we’re going to have fewer bus stops and we’re going to be much more efficient with our routes. … I think we’re going to see savings in the efficiencies of the routing.”
But he also ties technology to human impact.
“The power of what Transfinder can bring allows that driver to focus on the road,” Hatton said. “Take their anxiety and stress down and build those relationships with kids.”
For superintendents and business managers watching state dollars shrink, Hatton’s lesson is clear: leadership is not just about absorbing cuts—it is about using the right tools and people to keep services intact.
“We’re really proud of that,” he said.
In Findlay, funding cuts forced change. Leadership—and smart use of technology—made stability possible.
Hatton’s goal is to restore the service his community received prior to the funding cuts. He is approaching that goal methodically. Certain checkpoints have to be met before making major changes, such as increasing the number of drivers to cover routes.
“We’re just looking forward to maximizing the technology,” he said. Then, referencing the movie The Matrix, he added: “Never send a human to do a machine’s job. But also, never send a machine to do a human’s job. I firmly believe that even though we need to leverage AI and prepare children for their future, the classroom teacher is never going to be replaced and I think should never be replaced. The same with the bus driver. I think that relationship is so important.”
Transfinder technology is at the intersection.
“I think the power of what Transfinder and the resources it can bring to bear allows the driver to focus on the road, take their anxiety and stress down and build those relationships with kids,” Hatton said. “And then in terms of the parents, they feel safer. They can look at their phones and see exactly where the bus is.”
To learn more, visit transfinder.com/solutions, call 800-373-3609 or email solutions@transfinder.com.
Key Takeaways from Findlay’s Experience
- Leverage technology fully before cutting service further. Findlay discovered it had powerful tools in place with Transfinder but wasn’t using them to their potential. Updating maps, data, and routing inside the system created immediate efficiencies when funding was reduced.
- Use disruption as a catalyst to modernize. The loss of state funding and key staff forced the district to abandon paper-based processes and rebuild routing digitally, improving accuracy, visibility, and long-term sustainability.
- Pair software with the right people. Leadership restructured transportation staffing around system expertise, ensuring the technology was supported by someone who could actively manage and optimize it.
- Efficiency protects students and drivers. More precise routing reduced unnecessary stops and confusion, helping drivers focus on safety and relationships with students while maintaining service under tighter budgets.
- Strong vendor partnership matters in crisis. Access to hands-on support and problem-solving from the Transfinder team helped stabilize operations quickly during a difficult transition period.
The views expressed are those of the content sponsor and do not reflect those of School Transportation News.
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