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SEPTEMBER 2025 | CONTENTS
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COVER STORY
10 Transforming Transportation in Lewiston, Maine
Alisa Roman, the district’ s Director of Nutrition and Transportation, inherited a transportation department running on Excel sheets and intuition. She has led a strategic overhaul centered on Transfinder’ s suite of routing and communication tools
FEATURES 9 Strategy Matters
As we kick off the 2025-26 school year, everyone is in full swing! We are focused on numerous details, including meetings, emails, onboarding new employees, and ensuring the retention of our drivers and teams
By Molly McGee Hewitt, PhD, CAE
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14 Celebrating Excellence: NAPT Announces 2025 Annual Award Winners
The 2025 NAPT Annual Award Winners represent the very best of what our industry has to offer, and it’ s an honor to share their achievements with the readers of School BUSRide Magazine
17 Prioritizing Power Safety in Electric School Buses
Safety remains the most important concern for school districts transitioning to electric vehicles
By Brad Beauchamp
18 Engineering Confidence in Electric Vehicle Power Safety
Transportation teams need a grounded, practical understanding of how electric school bus power systems work, and more importantly, how they’ re engineered to keep drivers, technicians, and students safe
By Joe Jenkins
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19 Powering Safely: What School Districts Need to Know About EV Bus Safety In today’ s climate, where every incident involving an EV bus becomes a headline, trust and transparency matter more than ever
By Bella Ma
COLUMNS
6 FROM THE NAPT EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR AND CEO
By Molly McGee Hewitt, PhD, CAE
DEPARTMENTS 7 DISPATCH
4 | SCHOOL-BUSRIDE. COM | SEPTEMBER 2025