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Meet the 2025 Innovator of the Year, Gaurav Sharda! As the chief technology officer of Beacon Mobility, Sharda is approaching innovation with a people-focused and technology based mindset to create positive outcomes for the industry. Read more about Sharda’s story as well as contracting focused features on the future of AI, safety in alternative transportation, NCST resolutions, and guidance for non-yellow school bus transportation.
Read the full July 2025 issue.
Cover Story
‘Here to Serve’ People With Technology
Gaurav Sharda of Beacon Mobility, STN’s Innovator of the Year, focuses on developing AI-based and people-principled technology designed to make easier the jobs of transportation end-users.
Features
Ensuring Student Safety, No Matter the Vehicle
Alternative transportation vehicles are ingrained in student transportation operations, as the recent National Congress on School Transportation proved. Several service providers weigh in on how they are meeting recommended safety measures.
Leadership Perspectives on the Future of AI
Executives with the leading school bus contractors in North America discuss their thoughts on artificial intelligence and the impact on their operations as well as the students, parents and school districts they serve.
Special Reports
Does Safety Save Money?
With insurance costs skyrocketing, technology like video cameras and telematics combined with driver training are tools to help student transporters mitigate their liability.
Q&A: Historic Endeavor
Tyler Bryan, the National Congress on School Transportation alternative transportation committee chair, discusses the importance of the newest addition to national specifications and procedures and breaks down the process for creating the proposals from scratch.
Editor’s Take by Ryan Gray
Securing Industry Wins
Publisher’s Corner by Tony Corpin
Smart Buses, Smarter Outcomes
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CINCINNATI, Ohio- First Student, setting the standard for innovation in school transportation, has completed its biggest school year ever, further advancing student safety and experience through technology, electrification and specialized services. The company is transforming the way school districts, families and school bus drivers experience student transportation.
First Student transported 5.5 million students daily across 44 states and 8 Canadian provinces, covering more than 525 million miles. With a focus on safety, experience, innovation and sustainability, the company is committed to supporting districts and families with a dependable, forward-thinking transportation experience.
First Student launched HALO, the proprietary technology platform that brings together every aspect of school transportation, including routing, navigation, hiring, training, safety, maintenance, and electric vehicle (EV) charging. HALO’s groundbreaking impact has earned First Student a place on Fast Company’s prestigious list of the World’s Most Innovative Companies of 2025, reinforcing the company’s leadership in transforming the industry through proven technology and real-world results.
“This school year, we continued to live out our values by setting the highest standards for student transportation,” said First Student CEO and President John Kenning. “With more than one billion student rides completed and the launch of HALO, we continue to demonstrate our commitment to our values of safety, innovation and student service. These principles guide everything we do as we deliver unmatched care and the safest possible ride to school for every student we serve.”
First Student’s alternative transportation solution, First Alt, experienced significant growth. Over the past year, First Alt increased its customer base by 105%, expanded its presence in states by 62%, and grew the number of trips completed by 94%. First Alt provides safe, reliable and flexible transportation for students with Individualized Education Programs (IEPs), those experiencing homelessness, out-of-district students, and hard-to-serve trips. The program utilizes a dedicated network of vetted drivers and small-capacity vehicles to provide districts with greater flexibility, reducing costs, and freeing up resources for higher-capacity routes. First Alt’s success in helping districts manage complex transportation needs earned First Student the Forrester Technology Strategy Impact Award for North America in 2024.
First Student’s First Serves program achieved a 27% reduction in disruptive incidents year-over-year, setting a new benchmark for supporting students with special needs on the school bus. Developed in collaboration with experts in special education and student behavior, First Serves equips drivers and onboard staff with specialized training and real-time monitoring tools, creating a safer, more positive transportation experience for every student. The program’s success was recognized with the T-Mobile Innovation in Customer Experience Award, reinforcing First Student’s leadership in delivering exceptional service and improving the school transportation experience.
First Student also introduced Fleet Management and Maintenance Services through its First Services division as part of its expanding suite of transportation solutions. These offerings provide school districts with flexible, cost-effective options to maintain and modernize transportation fleets. With a network of over 1,250 ASE-certified technicians who maintain more than 45,000 vehicles, First Student ensures optimal fleet performance and safety. Districts can choose to have vehicles serviced at their facilities or one of First Student’s more than 100 ASE Blue Seal Certified shops across North America. Additionally, the Fleet as a Service program offers tailored solutions, including vehicle leasing, procurement and comprehensive fleet management, which allows districts to upgrade fleets without significant capital investment, enabling them to focus more on educational outcomes while ensuring students have safe and reliable transportation.
First Student’s proprietary above-ground EV charging infrastructure solution, First Charge, is transforming how fleet operators electrify vehicles. The modular above-ground EV charging solution is designed to simplify and accelerate the transition to electric fleets by eliminating costly and time-consuming infrastructure challenges. First Charge reduces installation time and cost supports scalable fleet growth and enables organizations to adopt electric vehicles efficiently and affordably without the need for digging, trenching, or permanent construction.
As a result of First Charge, First Student has made significant progress toward its goal of converting 30,000 diesel school buses to electric by 2035. Its fleet of electric school buses surpassed seven million miles driven, reinforcing the company’s dedication to providing safer, healthier, and more sustainable student transportation.
Already delivering tangible results, First Charge has been recognized with some of the industry’s highest honors, including the Edison Award for Scalable Clean Transportation Energy, the American Business Awards Stevie Award for Product Innovation, the Green Product of the Year by the 2024 BIG Awards for Business, and a place on Fast Company’s prestigious list of the World’s Most Innovative Companies.
About First Student:
As the leading provider of K-12 transportation solutions, First Student ensures the safest and most reliable ride to school each day for 5.5 million students across North America’s communities. With a team of highly trained drivers, the company is on track to complete 1 billion student trips during the 2024-25 school year. Recognized as one of Fast Company’s 2025 Most Innovative Companies, First Student delivers a wide range of essential services, including home-to-school transportation, special needs transportation, fleet electrification, route optimization, maintenance and charter services. The company’s focus extends beyond logistics by creating a positive and welcoming environment for students on each of its 45,000 buses. By continuously enhancing the transportation experience for school districts and families, First Student helps ensure every child arrives at school ready to achieve their full potential.
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Members of the group Initiative Urheberrecht (authors' rights initiative) demonstrate to demand regulation of artificial intelligence on June 16, 2023 in Berlin, Germany. The AI regulation later adopted by the European Union is a model for many U.S. lawmakers interested in consumer protection but a cautionary tale for others who say they're interested in robust innovation, experts say. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
The European Union’s landmark AI Act, which went into effect last year, stands as inspiration for some U.S. legislators looking to enact widespread consumer protections. Others use it as a cautionary tale warning against overregulation leading to a less competitive digital economy.
The European Union enacted its law to prevent what is currently happening in the U.S. — a patchwork of AI legislation throughout the states — said Sean Heather, senior vice president for international regulatory affairs and antitrust at the Chamber of Commerce during an exploratory congressional subcommittee hearing on May 21.
“America’s AI innovators risk getting squeezed between the so-called Brussels Effect of overzealous European regulation and the so-called Sacramento Effect of excessive state and local mandates,” said Adam Thierer, a Senior Fellow at think tank R Street Institute, at the hearing.
The EU’s AI Act is comprehensive, and puts regulatory responsibility on developers of AI to mitigate risk of harm by the systems. It also requires developers to provide technical documentation and training summaries of its models for review by EU officials. The U.S. adopting similar policies would kick the country out of its first-place position in the Global AI race, Thierer testified.
The “Brussels Effect,” Thierer mentioned, is the idea that the EU’s regulations will influence the global market. But not much of the world has followed suit — so far Canada, Brazil and Peru are working on similar laws, but the UK and countries like Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland, Singapore, and Japan have taken a less restrictive approach.
When Jeff Le, founder of tech policy consultancy 100 Mile Strategies LLC, talks to lawmakers on each side of the aisle, he said he hears that they don’t want another country’s laws deciding American rules.
“Maybe there’s a place for it in our regulatory debate,” Le said. “But I think the point here is American constituents should be overseen by American rules, and absent those rules, it’s very complicated.”
Critics of the AI Act say the language is overly broad, which slows down the development of AI systems as they aim to meet regulatory requirements. France and Germany rank in the top 10 global AI leaders, and China is second, according to Stanford’s AI Index, but the U.S. currently leads by a wide margin in the number of leading AI models and its AI research, experts testified before the congressional committee.
University of Houston Law Center professor Peter Salib said he believes the EU’s AI Act is a factor — but not the only one — in keeping European countries out of the top spots. First, the law has only been in effect for about nine months, which wouldn’t be long enough to make as much of an impact on Europe’s ability to participate in the global AI economy, he said.
Secondly, the EU AI act is one piece of the overall attitude about digital protection in Europe, Salib said. The General Data Protection Regulation, a law that went into effect in 2018 and gives individuals control over their personal information, follows a similar strict regulatory mindset.
“It’s part of a much longer-term trend in Europe that prioritizes things like privacy and transparency really, really highly,” Salib said. “Which is, for Europeans, good — if that’s what they want, but it does seem to have serious costs in terms of where innovation happens.”
Stavros Gadinis, a professor at the Berkeley Center for Law and Business who has worked in the U.S. and Europe, said he thinks most of the concerns around innovation in the EU are outside the AI Act. Their tech labor market isn’t as robust as the U.S., and it can’t compete with the major financing accessible by Silicon Valley and Chinese companies, he said.
“That is what’s keeping them, more than this regulation,” Gadinis said. “That and, the law hasn’t really had the chance to have teeth yet.”
During the May 21 hearing, Rep. Lori Trahan, a Democrat from Massachusetts, called the Republican’s stance — that any AI regulation would kill tech startups and growing companies — “a false choice.”
The U.S. heavily invests in science and innovation, has founder-friendly immigration policies, has lenient bankruptcy laws and a “cultural tolerance for risk taking.” All policies the EU does not offer, Trahan said.
“It is therefore false and disingenuous to blame EU’s tech regulation for its low number of major tech firms,” Trahan said. “The story is much more complicated, but just as the EU may have something to learn from United States innovation policy, we’d be wise to study their approach to protecting consumers online.”
The EU’s law puts a lot of responsibility on developers of AI, and requires transparency, reporting, testing with third parties and tracking copyright. These are things that AI companies in the U.S. say they do already, Gadinis said.
“They all say that they do this to a certain extent,” he said. “But the question is, how expansive these efforts need to be, especially if you need to convince a regulator about it.”
AI companies in the U.S. currently self-govern, meaning they test their models for some of the societal and cybersecurity risks currently outlined by many lawmakers. But there’s no universal standard — what one company deems safe may be seen as risky to another, Gadinis said. Universal regulations would create a baseline for introducing new models and features, he said.
Even one company’s safety testing may look different from one year to the next. Until 2024, OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman was pro-federal AI regulation, and sat on the company’s Safety and Security Committee, which regularly evaluates OpenAI’s processes and safeguards over a 90-day period.
In September, he left the committee, and has since become vocal against federal AI legislation. OpenAI’s safety committee has since been operating as an independent entity, Time reported. The committee recently published recommendations to enhance security measures, be more transparent about OpenAI’s work and “unify the company’s safety frameworks.”
Even though Altman has changed his tune on federal regulation, the mission of OpenAI is focused on the benefits society gains from AI — “They wanted to create [artificial general intelligence] that would benefit humanity instead of destroying it,” Salib said.
AI company Anthropic, maker of chatbot Claude, was formed by former staff members of OpenAI in 2021, and focuses on responsible AI development. Google, Microsoft and Meta are other top American AI companies that have some form of self safety testing, and were recently assessed by the AI Safety Project.
The project asked experts to weigh in on the strategies each company took for risk assessment, current harms, safety frameworks, existential safety strategy, governance and accountability, and transparency and communication. Anthropic scored the highest, but all companies were lacking in their “existential safety,” or the harm AI models could cause to society if unchanged.
Just by developing these internal policies, most AI leaders are acknowledging the need for some form of safeguards, Salib said.
“I don’t want to say there’s wide industry agreement, because some seem to have changed their tunes last summer,” Salib said. “But there’s at least a lot of evidence that this is serious and worthwhile thinking about.”
Salib said he believes a law like the EU AI Act in the U.S. would be too “overly comprehensive.”
Many laws addressing AI concerns now, like discrimination by algorithms or self-driving cars, could be governed by existing laws — “It’s not clear to me that we need special AI laws for these things.”
But he said that the specific, case-by-case legislation that the states have been passing have been effective in targeting harmful AI actions, and ensuring compliance from AI companies.
Gadinis said he’s not sure why Congress is opposed to the state-by-state legislative model, as most of the state laws are consumer oriented, and very specific — like deciding how a state may use AI in education, preventing discrimination in healthcare data or keeping children away from sexually explicit AI content.
“I wouldn’t consider these particularly controversial, right?” Gadinis said. “I don’t think the big AI companies would actually want to be associated with problems in that area.”
Gadinis said the EU’s AI Act originally mirrored this specific, case-by-case approach, addressing AI considerations around sexual images, minors, consumer fraud and use of consumer data. But when ChatGPT was released in 2022, EU lawmakers went back to the drawing board and added the component about large language models, systematic risk, high-risk strategies and training, which made the reach of who needed to comply much wider.
After 10 months living with the law, the European Commission said this month it is open to “simplify the implementation” to make it easier for companies to comply.
It’s unlikely the U.S. will end up with AI regulations as comprehensive as the EU, Gadinis and Salib said. President Trump’s administration has taken a deregulated approach to tech so far, and Republicans passed a 10-year moratorium on state-level AI laws in the “big, beautiful bill” heading to the Senate consideration.
Gadinis predicts that the federal government won’t take much action at all to regulate AI, but mounting pressure from the public may result in an industry self-regulatory body. This is where he believes the EU will be most influential — they have leaned on public-private partnerships to develop a strategy.
“Most of the action is going to come either from the private sector itself — they will band together — or from what the EU is doing in getting experts together, trying to kind of come up with a sort of half industry, half government approach,” Gadinis said.
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Farm Foundation has announced the recipients of its prestigious 2025 awards, recognizing outstanding individuals dedicated to addressing critical issues in food and agriculture. The honorees exemplify Farm Foundation’s work of fostering innovation, leadership, and thoughtful public policy dialogue.
The recipients of the 2025 Farm Foundation Awards are:
Innovator of the Year: Robbie Dye, CEO, and Tyler Speer, COO, co-founders of Our Farms.
Emerging Leader Award: Dr. Shandrea Stallworth, Senior Agronomist and Global Resource, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises, Regenerative Agriculture, Nestlé Purina North America.
RJ Hildreth Public Policy Award: Dr. Keith H. Coble, Vice President for the Division of Agriculture, Forestry, and Veterinary Medicine, Mississippi State University.
Book of the Year: Land Rich, Cash Poor by Brian Reisinger, award-winning writer, rural policy expert, speaker, and consultant.
“We received a remarkable range of inspiring nominations this year, and these four honorees stood out for their exceptional contributions,” said Tim Brennan, vice president of programs and strategic impact at Farm Foundation. “Their dedication to tackling critical issues in food and agriculture is vital to improving our food system.”
The awards ceremony will take place during the July 2025 Farm Foundation Round Table meeting in Spokane, Washington.
2024 recipients of Farm Foundation Awards include Dr. Jayson Lusk of Oklahoma State University; Dr. Robert Fraley, former executive vice president and chief technology officer at Monsanto Company; Dr. Yangxuan Liu of the University of Georgia; and Dr. Stephen Adejoro of the Livestock Industry Foundation for Africa.
For more information about the recipients and the Farm Foundation Awards, visit: https://www.farmfoundation.org/programs/farmfoundationawards/
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