Yellow school buses are synonymous with access to school. But school districts are increasingly turning to alternate or supplemental methods of transportation to serve students with special needs and circumstances, and simply to get kids to school in the most efficient and effective way.
A wide array of companies, fleets, drivers and brokers help districts meet these needs and integrate them with their larger system. The result are complicated and nimble networks that can respond on short notice to changing circumstances.
Technology and trust are key to these arrangements, as providers help districts ensure that alternative transportation is safe, reliable and comfortable, and parents or guardians are kept in the loop.
Some students with disabilities or in preschool require special seats or other equipment during rides. Many have an assistant (such as an aide) traveling with them. Meanwhile, students who are experiencing homelessness or housing instability, and students in foster care, also have special transportation needs. Their pickup location may change frequently and on short notice.
A California law that took effect last year underscores how essential alternative transportation is to district operations. SB88 includes a host of safety mandates meant to ensure that alternative transportation providers are meeting similar standards as yellow school buses. The law requires drivers to undergo a background check, a medical exam, a basic amount of training, and drug and alcohol screening, among other requirements. Vehicles must have a first aid kit and fire extinguisher, and undergo third-party inspections every year or every 50,000 miles.
The structure of SB88 sheds light on the type of alternative transportation districts often offer, without even defining it as such, noted Tim Purvis, founder and principal consultant for Pupil Transportation Information, a school transportation consulting firm. Any vehicle carrying 10 or more people including the driver and faculty and staff—for more than 40 hours annually is subject to SB88 requirements. Coaches who drive sports teams in vans to competitions or teachers who drive members of abdebate club or band may have to meet the requirements. Purvis said districts are often unaware of or reluctant to embrace this mandate, and many have not completed the training and testing necessary to comply.
“A majority of our clients still do not have what we would consider robust language specific to how they handle the requirements of SB88 or alternative student transportation,” said Purvis, who has been working in school transportation for four decades, much of it as director of transportation for Poway Unified School District in Southern California.
Purvis also noted that alternative transportation providers can avoid SB88 requirements when their vehicles are unable to seat more than nine people. Some companies are refurbishing larger vans to bring them under the compliance threshold.
Purvis said the issues that SB88 brought to light, and the cost of compliance, underscore that districts may sometimes too readily turn to alternative transportation, when there could be other solutions to their routing and service challenges.
“What you’re doing is putting kids in the most expensive form of transportation,” he said. “I’m not saying I’m not a proponent of alternative transportation. It’s the exact best place for some children who need very involved support,” he said.
But in other cases, the cost may be unnecessary, when benefits could be achieved by other means. “It’s a business decision,” Purvis said.
Small districts without in-house transportation staff also rely on alternative providers as their de facto transportation department. Mike Sawyer, executive director of the transportation department at San Marcos Unified School District in Southern California, and past president of the California Association of School Transportation Officials, said this is not ideal.
“Drawing on my 27 years in student transportation, I believe that whenever students are being transported to and from school or school-related activities, the yellow school bus should remain the preferred mode of transportation,” he said. “School buses are specifically designed for student safety and are operated by highly trained, certified drivers who are subject to rigorous licensing requirements, medical examinations, background checks, ongoing training and drug and alcohol testing,” as well as vehicle inspections by the CHP.
“I appreciate efforts such as SB88, which help strengthen safety standards, accountability and oversight for student transportation,” he continued. “However, it is important to note that SB88 transportation providers do not have the same level of regulatory oversight as school bus operators.” In my experience, districts that do not have a dedicated transportation department are not familiar with SB88 regulations. Even with the additional safeguards SB88 intends to provide, I continue to believe that transporting students on a school bus with a certified school bus driver offers the highest level of safety, supervision and protection.”
An Array of Needs and Options
As Purvis and Sawyer noted, many districts turn to alternative transportation to get students to special events or to accommodate students whose homes don’t fit easily into established bus routes, or to carry students when the district doesn’t have a transportation department at all.
Several providers told School Transportation News that compliance with SB88 has not been a stretch, since they had previously adopted similar internal safety and training measures. The companies shared they are well versed in such legal mandates, and how to provide the best experience for kids and districts alike.
“(We) make sure we are learning about the student’s needs,” said Amen Pawar-LaRosa, vice president of business development at Pawar Transportation. “Whether the student doesn’t like loud noises or is susceptible to smells, or it could be the student needs to have extra room because they like to kick, or they self-harm. We want to make sure we’re part of the healing process and working together as a team.”
A recent online survey sent to 29,375 subscribers by STN and EverDriven that received 193 responses found that a quarter of transportation directors are prioritizing service for students covered under the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act and students with disabilities, and 10 percent of directors are prioritizing alternative transportation modes.
EverDriven supports more than 800 school districts of varying sizes across 37 states. The company serves 16,250 students experiencing housing instability and 10,333 students in special education programs, according to its 2026 Safety and Operations Report. The scale of EverDriven’s operations is one indicator of just how vast the demand for alternative transportation has become.
“Demand for both services has surged, and school districts are struggling to keep pace,” said EverDriven Chief Marketing Officer Courtney Pallotta. “We are seeing districts become more strategic about using the right transportation mode for the right student.”
For the School District of Philadelphia in Pennsylvania, vans and taxi cabs are the primary way to provide alternative student transportation. The district works with multiple providers to coordinate and offer those rides, choosing vendors through RFPs. Contracts have gone to Germantown Cab, Best Transit and FirstAlt, part of First Student, among others.
FirstAlt contracts with a network of drivers to transport homeless, special needs, out-of-district and other students around the country. It operates a fleet of small-capacity vehicles from local transportation companies.
Another option, HopSkipDrive, taps a network of “CareDrivers” who are paid by the ride, offering services in cities including Denver, Pittsburgh, Detroit and Milwaukee.
“They are caregivers from the local community,” said spokesperson Campbell Millum. “Parents, grandparents, former nurses, counselors. They’re required to have caregiving experience including for children. They are not CDL drivers. They’re not looking for a full-time job.
They might say, ‘I like to take my grandkids to school in the morning and in the afternoon give rides through HopSkipDrive.’”
The rigorous vetting process for these drivers includes a 15-point certification process with background checks and video screening, where the company “asks specific questions about how you would handle certain scenarios,” noted Millum. “We’re looking for compassion, situational judgment, the ability to understand how to take care of a child.”
Vehicle inspections are paired with training that includes trauma-informed care and neurodiversity. A telematics app on the driver’s phone alerts the company to any red flags like unexpected stops, speeding or swerving, and can cause a ride to be canceled even before the student is picked up.
Meanwhile, Pawar Transportation, a family business that mostly serves schools in California but is expanding nationwide, uses a model similar to HopSkipDrive. Drivers use their own vehicles after a 19-point certification process. First Aid and CPR training—required for drivers under California SB88—must be done in person, and Pawar supervisors meet personally with each driver to review equipment and hard copies of individualized pickup plans.
“Physically meeting with the driver is really important,” said Pawar. “We’re making sure they understand they have to wear the identification vest we provide. It can be a big deal if you pull up and aren’t identified in the right way. If things fall through, we double down, and make sure we are retraining that driver, making sure they understand the details.”
Meanwhile, since 2015, EverDriven said it has provided 17 million rides to students, including transporting more than 50,000 students experiencing housing instability and more than 36,000 students with special needs. The company’s drivers go through extensive screening, training and monitoring.
EverDriven notes that it “meets or exceeds” state department of education requirements for small-capacity vehicles, a mandate that is largely not imposed on alternative transportation companies that are often regulated as ride-share vehicles instead by local public utility commissions. The company notes that in 83 percent of its rides for students with disabilities, the same driver serves the student each time.
“For many students, especially those with disabilities, housing instability or unique behavioral or medical needs, consistency, and trust matter just as much as punctuality,” said Pallotta. “It is our mission to ensure every student arrives at school each day safe, calm, and ready to learn.”
Growing Reliance
Almost two decades ago, Gregg Prettyman attended a meeting in Dallas, Texas, where parents were skeptical of alternative transportation, which was “almost unheard of” at the time. A district was looking to supplemental services to help deal with a school bus driver shortage. Prettyman explained a change in district policy—where teachers could no longer drive buses—was made a couple of months before school started and severely impacted driver availability.
“We were shouted out of the room,” as parents chanted “We want the yellow bus!” Prettyman recalled. Six months later, when more drivers became available, he said parents didn’t want to go back. With alternative transport, “We had knocked down their ride time by 20 or 30 minutes, so they could participate in scouting or sports after school,” he said.
Now Prettyman is vice president of FirstAlt, which works with districts nationwide. “In the last 10 to 15 years, it’s come a long way,” he said of the sector. Millum concurred.
“For many years, it was just a yellow school bus. Over time, school has changed and students’ needs have changed,” she said. “One of the things we’ve seen over time is this move towards a multimodal approach to school transportation. Districts say it’s not just about one size fits all. It’s about finding the right vehicle for the right student.”
Flexibility and Focus
Alternative providers said they can be much more flexible than a district’s fleet of traditional buses or other alternatives like public transit or taxi cabs.
“They’ll get a call at the last second. A student just moved in the district, or a court ordered them to have transportation within 48 hours,” said Prettyman. “You don’t have the ability to be that flexible on a bus.
“We can reach out to a nonemergency medical transport company and say we need to utilize your resources for three weeks.” He added it would be difficult for a district to contract with a company on short notice for such a brief period, but alternative providers are set up to do so.
“We can go out in the community and find other resources to ramp up, then ramp down,” said Prettyman. Such flexibility is especially necessary for students without stable housing, noted HopSkipDrive’s Millum. “If they’re moved from a shelter to a motel at 10 p.m., you can’t reroute a 72-passenger bus the next morning without that having a huge domino effect on all the other students,” said Millum. “We’re able to book a ride
with six hours’ notice or shorter,” leveraging their “huge network of drivers.”
Flexibility is also integral to meeting the varied and specific needs of different students. “Sometimes there are auditory issues. You cannot play any music during that ride and they have to ride alone, it needs to be silent,” noted Prettyman. “Other times they need to always sit on the right side of the vehicle.”
One young girl depends on hearing the song, “Let it Go” from the movie “Frozen” played during every ride, Prettyman said, “And the drivers end up loving it as well.”
Editor’s Note: As reprinted from the July 2026 issue of School Transportation News.
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