Metro Nashville Public Schools Partners with Zum to Offer Safe, Efficient and Sustainable, Tech-Enabled Student Transportation

Metro Nashville Public Schools joins the growing number of innovative school districts that have partnered with Zum, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland and Seattle

REDWOOD CITY, Calif., Dec. 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Metro Nashville Public Schools (MNPS) has awarded a five year transportation contract to Zūm, the leader in modern student transportation. The decision signals the district's commitment to providing a safe, reliable, efficient and equitable solution for the students and families of Metro Nashville.

MNPS serves more than 80,000 students across 159 schools. The district's partnership with Zum allows MNPS to deliver expanded transportation services that are safe and reliable, built around the needs of students, families, schools and drivers, all committed to creating the best educational experience for every student, every day. In particular, this contract will allow Zum to support special needs, homeless, foster, and other students, where traditional bus transportation can prove challenging.  Zum partners to complement existing drivers and services, not to replace them.

MNPS joins the growing number of innovative school districts that have partnered with Zum, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland and Seattle.

Benefits of Zum include:

• Cleaner and greener: Transportation is the largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. As the first and only 100% carbon neutral student transportation company in the U.S., Zum is committed to transitioning their school bus fleet to electric vehicles. In fact, through its Net Zero Initiative, the company has already offset 100% of its fleet's carbon emissions.

• Safer and more reliable: Zum's technology is built to keep students safe from the moment they get on the bus until they are back home. Through the Zum app, parents are able to view the complete profile of their child's driver, along with real-time information about vehicle location and their child's pickup or dropoff time and status. District and school administrators are able to track rides in a map view from start to finish, and routes are adjusted in real time to account for absent students or traffic issues. At the same time, drivers are able to preview all students on assigned routes, along with important supplemental information for each student where necessary for enhanced safety and superior service.
  
  Through Zum's proprietary safety technology, driver training, and certification program, SafeGuard, all drivers not only meet and exceed all state and federal requirements but also are trained on and required to adhere to specific protocols while picking up or dropping off students and while driving. The Zum platform also ensures timely, secure and centralized reporting to keep everyone appropriately informed.

• More equitable and efficient: Modernizing transportation can address inequalities in the current system. By selecting Zum, districts are demonstrating their commitment to modernizing student transportation to ensure equity and access for all students and maximize operational efficiency while providing a superior experience for students and families.

"Zum is at the forefront of a massive transformation in student transportation, helping thousands of schools move away from a one-size-fits-all approach to a modern experience that provides parents, students, drivers and districts with safer, greener, more reliable, transportation services," said Ritu Narayan, founder and CEO at Zum. "With this decision, Metro Nashville Public School District demonstrates its commitment to a future where student transportation advances equity, accessibility and environmental stewardship for the community."

"Metro Schools is committed to ensuring the continuity of learning for students experiencing special and unique circumstances that create transportation challenges," Sean Braisted, Executive Officer of Communications. Having partners like Zum who can be on-call to service their unique transportation needs will help us to meet our district's goal of ensuring every student is known and cared for."

Zum offers its drivers competitive pay, strong safety and training programs, resulting in excellent job satisfaction, the highest safety standards students and drivers, and a positive work culture. Zum's culture, driver satisfaction and modern benefits have already helped existing partner districts overcome obstacles in the face of a nationwide driver shortage.

School districts and families across the U.S. are already starting to see the benefits of working with Zum: San Francisco Unified School District is on track to save $15 million over the next five years. In Oakland, the number of students spending more than one hour on a bus has dropped from 70 percent to less than 10 percent.

Zum is available nationwide, serving 4,000 schools, including the nation's second largest school district, Los Angeles Unified School District, across the U.S. For more information, visit: www.ridezum.com.

Zum has reimagined student transportation, the nation's largest mass transit system. Our integrated end-to-end cloud-based platform provides a modern service for school districts purpose-built around the needs of kids and the expectations of their families. Zum provides one seamless, real-time interface for parents, drivers, schools, districts, administrators, and operators, to transport children safely and with increased visibility and personalized care. Our multi-sized vehicle approach includes an electric vehicle-first commitment, reduces student commute times by up to 20%, and coupled with our marketplace, delivers added fleet efficiency and optimization. We have been driving the industry forward since 2015, and with more than 8 million miles completed to date. Recognized for leading a new era of safe, reliable, efficient and sustainable transportation, Zum was listed as CNBC's Disruptor 50, Fast Company's World Changing Ideas and a Gold Stevie winner for The 20th Annual American Business Awards. Learn more at www.ridezum.com.

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