Data Collection, Processing & Visualization; Stakeholder Relations, PR, Training, and

New 7- & 12-Route Bus Systems

One of my roles at Denver Language School was Director of Transportation. This was a huge responsibility as attrition is a major concern for language immersion schools. It is very difficult to find students with the language skills needed to replace any students who leave. In addition, nearly half of all students relied on bus transportation each day.

When we first opened a second campus, it was necessary to find a way to accommodate the ~22% of families who relied on bus transportation, especially families who would now have children at two different campuses. It was crucial for us to provide families with a single drop off location at a price point that wasn't cost prohibitive, particularly for our lower income families, all while staying within the school's extremely tight budget. Scheduling and safety considerations were of the utmost importance as well.

Working with a small team of volunteers from the school community, I was able to create a highly-successful bus system that met all of the KPIs for the project. The process for this included:

• Surveys of families, staff, and local community members
• Population density maps
• Meetings with Denver Public Schools' Transportation Department, with the City of Denver, with Denver Police, and with neighbors
• Complex budget and forecasting analyses
• Town halls, weekly newsletter updates, and website updates
• Dozens of in-person meetings with families and staff members

Some of the more innovative aspects of the system included being able to double-up on routes rather than having separate buses running the same routes, and creating a strategic partnership with the Vickers Boys & Girls Club. This partnership was particularly successful as it allowed parents a safe, highly-affordable after school care option for students and allowed lower-income families to continue to have access to the school's amazing programs despite the challenges that come with the opening of the new campus.

There were many indicators that this program was a huge success:

• Attrition was significantly lower than expected despite the move
• Sign ups almost exactly matched capacity
• Transportation was the highest-ranked program at the school according to the end-of-year survey of families
• Denver Public Schools requested information on our process so that it could be replicated at other schools throughout the district
• The original campus experienced nearly 60% decrease in traffic despite the school being used as a drop off point for both campuses
• On the last day of school the year that the system had been implemented, the neighbor across the street from the original campus brough the school flowers to say thank you for the huge decrease in traffic