Learn how a modern school bus parent notification system helps districts reduce phone calls, improve family confidence, and give parents real-time answers. UniteGPS connects routing, GPS tracking, SMS alerts, and ridership notifications so transportation teams can keep families informed during everyday routes, weather delays, sub driver coverage, and unexpected schedule changes.
UniteGPS combines routing, GPS, messaging, and ridership tools to improve parent communication.
Build and manage bus routes straight from your student data — assign students to stops and zones, support transfer points, double runs, and day-of-the-week routing for split-custody and dual-address students, and drag stops between routes instantly.
Learn More →Analyze your existing routes to find consolidations, eliminate redundant routes, and cut daily mileage and student ride time — with before-and-after overlays and documented dollar savings to defend route changes to your board.
Learn More →The engine behind optimization: it rebalances student loads across your school bus fleet within hard constraints — capacity caps, maximum ride time, and bell windows — and proposes consolidation scenarios for your team to review and approve.
Learn More →A daily data feed from your student information system — PowerSchool, Infinite Campus, Skyward, or Harmony — that works even without the SIS transportation module, flagging new students, address changes, and disenrollments in one action center and bulk-importing staff.
Parent messaging by email and SMS: send each family their stop and pickup or drop-off times, broadcast route changes, and handle weather and emergency alerts — replacing manual phone trees and a pile of separate apps.
Learn More →A shared trip calendar with a request-and-approval workflow (secretary → AD → principal), Google Calendar export, and bus and driver assignment checked against your daily routes.
Learn More →UniteGPS starts by importing student and route data, including stops, zones, transfer points, and special schedule needs. SIS integration keeps new students, address changes, and disenrollments visible so parent messages are based on current transportation records.
Each bus can be equipped for live GPS tracking, updating every 5 seconds, even when the ignition is off. This gives transportation staff the visibility needed to answer location questions and verify route history.
Families receive stop information, pickup and drop-off times, route changes, and delay alerts by email, SMS, or the parent app. Districts can replace manual phone trees with faster, more consistent communication.
With Tier 3, students swipe on and off the bus using ridership cards. Parents can receive confirmation alerts, while the district gains timestamped records showing who boarded, when, and at which stop.
Transportation teams review GPS history, on-time performance, mileage, load factors, and parent call reductions. These reports help defend decisions to boards, improve routes, and keep families informed during future service changes.
See how districts reduce calls, improve visibility, and make school transportation easier to trust.
UniteGPS helps districts make transportation easier to run and easier for families to trust. We don't just sell you software and walk away — we stay, we share what we know, and we help you build a transportation operation your district can be proud of.
Connect routing, GPS, messaging, ridership, and tablets without juggling disconnected transportation tools.
Connect routing, GPS, messaging, ridership, and tablets without juggling disconnected transportation tools.
Built to protect student data while supporting responsible parent communication and district workflows.
Real GPS, stop, and scan data help reduce disputes and morning transportation calls.
Founder-built, profitable, and focused on long-term partnerships rather than private equity pressure.
Founder-led transportation technology built around real district needs.
Co-Founder
Christopher Bunnell is a Co-Founder of UniteGPS, the company he helped launch in 2014 after watching his own children wait in the freezing Maine winter for a school bus with no arrival information. Driven by that firsthand frustration, Chris partnered with Steve C. Lanning and Steven J. Lanning to build a real-time GPS tracking solution that gave families the visibility they deserved. Before UniteGPS, Chris served as the on-site client representative in Baltimore for a Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services project, while the technical team operated remotely from California. At UniteGPS, Chris has led client relationships and stakeholder engagement since day one, ensuring the platform continues to solve real problems for school districts and transit agencies nationwide.
Co-Founder
Steve C. Lanning is a Co-Founder of UniteGPS, bringing deep database architecture and enterprise-level technical expertise to the platform since its founding in 2014. Steve previously served as an Oracle database administrator on a Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services project at the San Diego Supercomputer Center at UC San Diego, where he first collaborated with Chris Bunnell. In the early years of UniteGPS, Steve balanced the project alongside other professional commitments until growing client traction made it a full-time pursuit. His database expertise has been instrumental in building a reliable, scalable platform that now serves over 100 school districts nationwide, supporting everything from route optimization to student ridership tracking and SIS data integration.
Co-Founder
Steven J. Lanning is a Co-Founder of UniteGPS and the primary architect behind the Crosswalk platform, which he has built and continuously refined since the company's founding in 2014. Steven began his career on the same Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services project as his co-founders, focusing on solution quality assurance and software testing for production readiness while simultaneously pursuing formal software development training. When UniteGPS launched, Steven committed full-time to product development, translating real feedback from transportation directors and drivers into practical platform features. His customer-driven approach to engineering has helped UniteGPS grow into a fully integrated transportation management solution trusted by K-12 districts and transit agencies across the United States.
Yes. Instead of your drivers calling each family, the system sends parents their stop and pickup or drop-off times, and the parent app shows the approaching bus so families can have their kids ready.
Yes — notifications follow the actual route path rather than mere proximity, so a family isn't alerted just because a bus passes a nearby road before it reaches their stop.
Real-time GPS gives you timestamped history, so a dispute over whether a bus showed up is settled with the record — the bus was there at 6:43, not missing at 6:30. Districts also see far fewer calls: during one construction event with routes running 10 to 20 minutes late, a district didn't field a single phone call.
Yes. You'll know where the bus is 24/7 — even when the ignition and engine aren't live, you can still track it.
Yes. We run a daily data feed from your student information system — PowerSchool, Infinite Campus, Skyward, or Harmony. It works even if you don't have the SIS transportation module, and it can still identify who's a bus rider. A daily action center flags new students, address changes, and disenrollments so your routes stay current.
Neither — there's no first-year gimmick, and nobody's expected to work for free. We set up your routes and your data feed at no cost for 90 days to take the risk out of the decision, and if you don't continue, you keep the routing we built. Billing is year-to-year with annual invoicing, and at the GPS tier the GPS devices are included free.
A real person. It's not a chatbot and it's not outsourced to an overseas call center — it's somebody in our own organization. One director said they'd met at least five of our team, compared with a prior vendor they spoke to once in five years.
We handle student data under FERPA, with a data use agreement, encryption, and a data destruction policy. If your district has its own data form, we'll sign it — so student information isn't scattered across disconnected tools.
Get clear answers about setup, pricing, privacy, and parent communication.
Supports responsible student data protection.
Trusted by districts across the United States.
Supports responsible student data protection.
Trusted by districts across the United States.
Founder-built company focused on long-term service.
