Garden City Public Schools cuts maintenance costs by 66% with Samsara Connected Asset Maintenance

Legacy systems and manual processes strained district resources

Garden City Public Schools operates one of the largest student transportation fleets in Kansas, transporting more than 2,000 students each day. Unlike many districts that rely on third-party transportation providers, Garden City owns and maintains its entire fleet. While this model gives the district greater control over safety and operations, it also places significant responsibility on the transportation team to manage vehicles, drivers, and maintenance at scale across a vast geographic area.

However, legacy systems made it difficult to maintain consistent safety standards, respond quickly to incidents, and operate efficiently across the district’s wide service area. The district relied on DVR-based camera systems that required manual video retrieval, a time-consuming and unreliable process. In several critical situations, video footage was unavailable, leaving administrators without answers during serious safety investigations. “After a student incident on a bus, I plugged the DVR into my computer and the footage wasn’t there. It was the hardest phone call of my life to tell the superintendent we didn’t have video evidence,” said Shane Burns, Transportation Director.

Maintenance operations were also burdened by manual workflows. Drivers completed pre- and post-trip inspections on paper, while admins spent two days each week manually entering data. Maintenance requests moved slowly through phone calls and paperwork, increasing vehicle downtime and creating opportunities for errors. At the same time, the district lacked real-time insight into driver behavior and emerging vehicle issues, making it difficult to proactively manage safety and costs.