Increased Transportation Access Helps Connect Students to After-School Programming

The Madison Metropolitan School District’s (MMSD) yellow bus service has expanded to increase transportation access for students. One area seeing positive impacts of the increased routes is the number of middle school students accessing after-school programming offered by MSCR by providing students a way to safely get home from their activities. 

“We are excited to see our students using these services,” said Scott Chehak, Senior Executive Director of Building Services. “By providing transportation access, we’re able to connect our scholars to a variety of MSCR opportunities.” 

MMSD has also seen growth in the adoption of the First Student-developed FirstView app, which allows families to monitor the status of their yellow bus in real time, via smartphone or tablet. Since its introduction in the spring of 2024, the app has been downloaded 3,929 times, with 2,943 active parent profiles for 8,013 student-riders. Metro Transit riders are able to track their buses via city- and third-party-supplied programs. Plans are in place to pilot special education route tracking through the FirstView app in the coming weeks.  

“Special education routing is an area we are continuing to look into and plan for,” said Vanessa Cruz, assistant director of transportation and logistics. “We plan to identify a school to pilot to help ensure we have a clear process so that families have what they need.”

In addition, arrival times have improved, with yellow buses arriving within five minutes of their scheduled stop 98% of the time in January. 

“The MMSD transportation team, as a whole, wants to continue to enhance our service to the community,” Cruz said. “We want to find economical solutions, be transparent and work toward proactive, solutions-focused outcomes.” 

MMSD accommodates 9,398 students across its yellow bus, specialized, TEP and 4K transportation services.