Transportation Routing System

July 20, 2026
RFP Number: 7254.1
Due Date: August 31, 2026
Open Time: 2:00 p.m.
To: Prospective Respondents:
Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) is issuing this Request for Proposals (RFP) to
solicit qualified vendors to provide a comprehensive transportation routing system solution
and all associated services. The selected solution will serve as the primary system of record for
student transportation routing across the district and will replace the routing platform currently
in use by the Division of Transportation Services.
The contractor must submit their offer per the instructions under the RFP, Section 9.0
Mandatory Submissions. The submission must be signed by an official having authority to
contract with MCPS. The firm and official's name shall be used. This solicitation does not
commit the district to pay any costs incurred in the submission of proposals or guarantee that
an award will be made.
In the event of emergency closing of the MCPS Board of Education offices, this RFP will open
at the same time on the next regular working day.
Sincerely,
Angela McIntosh Davis, Director
Department of Procurement
AMD: se
Copy to:
RFP File

Division of Financial Management
MONTGOMERY COUNTY PUBLIC SCHOOLS
Department of Procurement, Suite 3100
45 West Gude Drive
Rockville, Maryland 20850
Request for Proposal #7254.1, Transportation Routing System
1.0 INTENT
Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) is issuing this Request for Proposals (RFP) to solicit
qualified vendors to provide a comprehensive transportation routing system solution and all associated
services. The selected solution will serve as the primary system of record for student transportation
routing across the district and will replace the routing platform currently in use by the Division of
Transportation Services.
The objectives of this procurement are to:
* Acquire a modern, configurable routing platform that supports general education, special education,
vocational, magnet, out-of-district, McKinney-Vento, and mainstreamed student transportation.
* Improve the accuracy and timeliness of routing, scheduling, and reporting through automation,
geographic information system (GIS) integration, and direct interfaces to district systems.
* Provide reliable hosting, strong data security and privacy protections, and clear service-level
commitments.
* Deliver dependable implementation, data conversion, training, and ongoing support, including a
managed transition from the current system.
* Extend timely transportation information to parents, guardians, and school-based staff through
secure portals and a parent application.
* Establish MCPS ownership of its data and a clear path for data portability at the conclusion of any
resulting contract.
2.0 INTRODUCTION
Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) is the 15th largest school system in the United States,
and the largest in the state of Maryland. During the 2025-2026 school year, it is projected that MCPS
will serve more than 156, 000 students from 157 countries speaking 162 languages. With a Fiscal
Year (FY) 2026 Operating Budget of approximately $3.6 billion, MCPS employs more than 25,000
employees. Among the 211 schools that MCPS operates, 39 are National Blue-Ribbon schools. Six
MCPS high schools rank in the top 200 of The Washington Post's 2015 High School Challenge, and
all 25 MCPS high schools appear on this list, which only includes the top 11 percent of high schools
in the country. MCPS has one of the highest graduation rates among the nation's largest school
districts, according to an Education Week report. In 2010, MCPS was the recipient of the Malcolm
Baldrige National Quality Award, the highest presidential honor given to American organizations for
performance excellence. The student demographics of MCPS in 2016 are as follows:

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Hispanic/Latino: 35.3%
White: 23.9%
Black or African American: 21.6%
Asian: 13.7%
Two or more races: 5.3%
American Indian or Alaskan Native: 0.2%
Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander: 0.1%
The Division of Transportation Services, within the Division of District Operations, manages a fleet
of more than 1,300 school buses and provides daily transportation to a large and diverse student
population across Montgomery County and, for certain placements, to locations in the surrounding
Washington, D.C., Maryland, and Virginia (DMV) area.
Routing operations at this scale require a system that can manage complex eligibility rules, hazardous-
road and walk-zone logic, special education and program-based routing, multiple daily and midday
trips, redistricting and boundary planning, and direct data exchange with the district's student
information system and fleet, dispatch, and field trip systems. This RFP and its appendices describe
the functional, technical, security, and service requirements that the proposed solution must meet.
3.0 SCOPE OF SERVICES
The selected Contractor shall provide a complete transportation routing software solution, including
all software, configuration, hosting (as proposed), data conversion, integration, training, maintenance,
and support services necessary to place the solution into full operational use and to sustain it
throughout the contract term. The capabilities summarized in this section are stated in full and itemized
form in Attachment F, Technical Requirements. Offerors shall respond to each requirement in
Attachment F. individually.
3.1 Priorities and Response Convention
Each requirement in the Attachment F. carries a priority of High, Medium, or Low that reflects
MCPS operational need. Priorities are informational and do not limit evaluation; all requirements
are subject to review and scoring. For each requirement, the offeror shall indicate one of the
following: Comply, Comply with Exception, Future Release, or Does Not Comply, and shall
provide a brief explanation, product feature name, or document reference. A response of Comply
means the capability exists today in the proposed release. Responses of Comply with Exception or
Future Release must be fully explained, including any target availability date.
3.2 Routing - General Functionality
The solution shall provide a comprehensive routing engine capable of creating and maintaining
routes for all MCPS student populations and programs. At a minimum, the solution shall:

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* Analyze non-eligibility and walk zones for each school based on district criteria, with walk-
distance eligibility configurable as a rule by school level (for example, elementary one mile,
middle one and one-half miles, high two miles);
* Create and maintain special education, vocational, out-of-district, multiple-school drop-off, and
McKinney-Vento (homeless) routing, including cross-district placements, without
workarounds;
* Support routing of mainstreamed students across multiple schools on the same day in a defined
sequence, school pairing, and ride-throughs;
* Provide role-based access rights, including a depot-level permission that lets depots manage
general education routes, including Pre-Kindergarten, while protecting special education routes,
and fine-grained view, edit, and print controls, including function-level security for the map;
* Run what-if scenarios, such as bell-time or bus-capacity changes, against a copy of production
data; and
* Support a nine-digit unique student identifier, a separate family or household identifier, and
printing or export of maps to a variety of printer and plotter types.
The full set of general functionality requirements is provided in Attachment F.
3.3 Routing - Map Functionality
The solution shall provide an interactive, map-based routing environment that supports concurrent
editing, automated optimization, and manual control. At a minimum, the solution shall:
* Allow multiple users to view and edit routes simultaneously, with map edits governed by user-
based security, and allow users to view all students and all routes and stops serving a school or
program at once;
* Provide point-and-click rerouting, street-network distance measurement, editable turn-by-turn
directions, and per-route adjustment of speeds, stop times, and load times without affecting
other routes;
* Support automated optimization along definable criteria, such as reducing the number of routes,
loads, time, or miles, with the ability to revert to manual assignment, and automated ranging
that assigns new students to the nearest stop;
* Provide capacity tools that define each bus type and its capacity, including wheelchair positions,
wheelchair riders seated in seats, and additional staff on board, and that alert the user and
prevent further routing when capacity or equipment limits are exceeded;
* Maintain calendars for the standard school year and summer school, including holidays, early-
release days, and non-public school schedules, and support differing schedules by day and by
school;
* Support in-house bulk street and address edits, new streets and developments, attendance-zone
redistricting and boundary planning, and route-level audit logging stamped with user and time
of change; and

4 RFP 7254.1
* Support multiple addresses per student, dual bus assignments, A and B schedules, overlapping
midday trips on different days, and stop coding for side of street and unsafe streets.
The full set of map functionality requirements is provided in Attachment F.
3.4 Geographic Information System (GIS) Mapping
The solution shall provide robust GIS capabilities suitable for a large, hazard-aware routing
operation. At a minimum, the solution shall encode hazardous roads so that students are not routed
across them on foot, apply hazard rules by grade level, and encode transportation attributes such as
one-way streets, travel speeds, no-travel roads, bridges, railroad crossings, restricted roads, and
vehicle-size and turn restrictions that are enforced automatically. The solution shall maintain
compatibility with the Esri ArcGIS platform, allow MCPS staff to load county-maintained Esri
centerlines and addresses without vendor intervention, provide surrounding DMV-area county
maps for out-of-area students with out-of-county reporting, and support a satellite imagery overlay.
3.5 System Integrations and Interfaces
The solution shall integrate with the district's information systems through manual import and
export, application programming interfaces (APIs), or prefabricated or custom connectors, with
scheduled automation for data refresh. At a minimum, the solution shall:
* Exchange enrollment, demographic, and transportation data with the Synergy student
information system, including updates to the Synergy parent portal and ParentVUE, and
authenticate MCPS users against Active Directory with support for Single Sign-On;
* Provide an API for data integrations and for in-house reporting and dashboard creation;
* Integrate with the Transportation Information Management System (TIMS) and with fleet
management data (for example, FASTER Web), including route-change alerts to the TIMS
group, with the fleet data source to be confirmed during implementation;
* Pair with global positioning system (GPS) software, such as Samsara, for vehicle tracking and
for the use of traffic patterns to refine pickup and drop-off times;
* Interface the field trip billing component with Oracle Cloud Business Hub for accounts
receivable and general ledger posting; and
* Share data, as appropriate, with Synergy, TIMS, the fleet management system, and the field trip
management database.
3.6 Reporting, Dashboards, and Data
The solution shall provide comprehensive, self-service reporting and data capabilities. The solution
shall reproduce the information contained in current MCPS reports, including Bus Summary and
Detail, editable Parent Letters for the Extended School Year and Current School Year, Student
Record, Route and Trip Detail and Summary, arrival and departure schedules for Special Education,
General Education, and Magnet programs, manifests, and student lists with census information. Bus
reports shall include route number, vehicle identifier, Transportation Cluster Manager or Bus Route
Supervisor, Router, Driver or Attendant, parking space number, and revised or saved dates.

5 RFP 7254.1
In addition, the solution shall allow users to define, sort, save, and reuse queries; create custom
reports and dashboards, including ad-hoc reports; generate and print reports directly from the map
without switching applications and without first generating a PDF; export reporting data for analysis
and archiving; customize the run sheet; report on distance-specific stops added to a route as a
deviation, such as McKinney-Vento and daycare stops; provide real-time system status monitoring;
and retain student routing history that is restorable until the student reaches twenty-one years of
age.
3.7 Dispatch and Depot Communications
The solution shall provide a dispatch capability that allows dispatchers to adjust routes for different
operational scenarios, and a messaging capability that allows depots to receive updates and route
changes. These capabilities shall be consistent with the role-based security model described in
Section 3.1.
3.8 Field Trip Management
The solution shall include calendar-based field trip management integrated into the routing
software, sharing the same calendar, vehicle, and driver data. At a minimum, the field trip capability
shall support configurable request forms and approval paths; blackout dates; service invoices and
electronic invoicing to MCPS accounting; historical tracking of the approval process with date,
time, and processor stamping; automated driver rotation by availability, seniority, or alphabetical
order; GPS visibility of in-progress trips; a color-coordinated dispatch calendar that flags conflicts
and monitors driver hours; mileage and hours estimation for cost calculation; workflow approvals
to principals, directors, or assigned staff; delivery of itineraries with turn-by-turn directions to bus-
mounted tablets; centralized cost tracking with export to Excel; and integration of billing with
Oracle Cloud Business Hub for accounts receivable and general ledger posting.
3.9 GPS, Onboard Tablets, and Student Tracking
The solution shall integrate with GPS to support operations and safety. The offeror shall explain
how its routing software integrates with GPS, whether through its own solution, third-party GPS
vendors, or both, and shall describe best practices for routing and GPS implementation. GPS data
shall include speed, door-open events, stop-arm deployment, hard stops, and historical
breadcrumbs, and shall support a planned-versus-actual comparison for routers and a school-facing
arrival board that displays estimated times of arrival for inbound buses only.
Bus-mounted tablets shall receive all routing and field trip routes through a nightly push, display
student information such as behavioral protocols and allergies at an appropriate privacy level, and
provide audible turn-by-turn directions to reduce reliance on paper route sheets. The solution shall
support student log-on and log-off through the tablet and other technologies, pair ridership events
with GPS position, generate ridership reports by student, route, school, and date range, and make
ridership data available within the routing, parent application, and field trip modules.

6 RFP 7254.1
3.10 Parent Application and Public and School Portals
The solution shall provide a secure parent application that displays the status, location, and
estimated time of arrival of a child's bus using onboard GPS data, along with relevant depot contact
information. The solution shall also provide a public website where a member of the public can find
a student's regular bus and stop by entering an address and grade, and school-facing tools that allow
staff to look up routing information, view a map with home, stop, and school icons, and search for
and print stop lists, rosters, and student lists directly from a browser. Parent-facing and school-
facing interfaces shall preferably meet Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) standards
and be compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
3.1 Student Medicaid Tracking
The solution shall provide a mechanism to collect and track student transportation Medicaid-
reimbursable services on a daily basis, capturing per-student, per-day service events with date,
service type, and attestation fields, and shall allow the resulting data to be downloaded in PDF and
Excel formats.
3.12 Implementation, Data Conversion, and Migration
The Contractor shall manage the implementation, including the conversion and migration of all
necessary data from the current MapNet system and other legacy sources, and shall provide at least
one full test conversion for MCPS review and sign-off before production cutover. The conversion
plan shall support a defined blackout period during cutover and shall produce a report identifying
any changes made during the blackout so that they can be reapplied after conversion. The solution
shall support search by street name, persistent map pins across successive address searches, and
editable notations on stops and route segments.
3.13 Training, Customer Support, and Maintenance
The Contractor shall provide implementation and post-implementation support while annual
maintenance is current, software training for core routing staff using live MCPS data, distributable
materials for school-based staff, additional web-based and on-request training, and unlimited
refresher and new-employee orientation in at least an online format. The Contractor shall provide
electronic user and technical manuals, including documentation of the database and map database
structure; a named project manager who serves as the primary point of contact throughout
implementation; customer service callbacks within two hours or before 2:00 p.m. EST on the day
the call is placed; extended service before and after each annual startup and during redistricting;
and all software upgrades, future releases, and bug fixes at no additional charge while annual
maintenance is current.
3.14 Hosting, Architecture, and Technical Environment
The Contractor shall propose hosting options, which may include cloud-based, on-premises, or
hybrid models, with encryption at all layers using current Transport Layer Security standards (TLS
1.2 or higher) for data in transit and strong encryption for data at rest. A Microsoft SQL Server
database environment is preferred. The solution shall support, at a minimum, fifteen named or full-

7 RFP 7254.1
function users and three hundred web users, and shall scale to MCPS operational volumes. Offerors
shall describe their architecture, database platform, hosting locations, and any client or device
requirements.
3.15 Data Ownership, Security, and Privacy
MCPS shall own all data generated under any resulting contract, including data pertaining to routes,
students, buses, schools, addresses, and maps. That data shall be available for MCPS custom exports
for MCPS use and reporting, and shall be made available to MCPS upon termination for the purpose
of converting to another product. At a minimum, the solution and the Contractor shall:
* Encrypt all data, and specifically Personally Identifiable Information (PII), at rest and in transit,
and comply with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and all applicable
federal, state, and local privacy laws;
* Provide audit capabilities that record the time and identity of data access, views, edits,
additions, and deletions;
* Provide a current System and Organization Controls (SOC) 2 Type 2 report, support regular
security assessments and vulnerability testing, and provide disaster recovery and business
continuity plans;
* Enforce Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) and support Single Sign-On for MCPS personnel;
* Disclose how and where MCPS data will be stored, hosted, and accessed; and
* Commit to not selling, sharing, or using student data for any purpose other than providing the
contracted service, and collect only the data essential to the solution's functionality.
3.16 Artificial Intelligence Transparency and Governance
If the proposed solution uses artificial intelligence (AI), the offeror shall disclose that use and shall
describe the data on which the AI is trained and the data the AI collects, the accuracy of the AI
system and how errors are reviewed and corrected, and how the AI system addresses student
privacy. Offeror responses shall align with the district's acceptable use, data privacy, and academic
integrity policies, and with the AI governance provisions of the MCPS General Contract Articles
in Appendix A.
3.17 Service Level Agreement
The Contractor shall provide a Service Level Agreement (SLA) for the hosted or production routing
service that includes, at a minimum:
* Availability: guaranteed uptime of at least 99.9 percent measured monthly (approximately 43
minutes of allowable downtime per month), with 99.95 percent targeted during peak operational
periods, defined as the route-creation period of June through September (Monday through
Friday) and, for dispatch-related functions, the morning rush during the school year; available
means the service is both accessible and functionally operational for all critical features;

8 RFP 7254.1
* Scheduled maintenance: performed within defined, pre-announced maintenance windows
(minimum five business days' notice) and excluded from downtime calculations;
* Support response and resolution by severity: Severity 1 (system down or critical function
unusable, no workaround), response within one hour and continuous effort to resolution (four-
hour target); Severity 2 (major function impaired), response within four business hours and a
one-business-day resolution target; Severity 3 (minor issue, workaround available), response
within one business day and resolution in a future release;
* Support coverage: defined business-hours coverage with emergency and after-hours escalation,
including extended coverage during startup and redistricting periods;
* Remedies: escalating service credits applied against fees when committed levels are missed,
claimable within thirty days, with sustained or material breach constituting grounds for
termination;
* Monitoring and reporting: real-time status and availability reporting and a monthly SLA
performance report; and
* Data protection: defined backup frequency, recovery point and recovery time objectives, and a
disaster recovery and business continuity commitment.
3.18 Performance Requirements
In addition to the SLA, the Contractor shall meet the following minimum performance expectations:
customer service callbacks within two hours or before 2:00 p.m. EST on the day the call is placed;
generation of a typical student record in one minute or less; nightly delivery of routes and field trips
to bus tablets with verifiable receipt; and resolution of data-conversion discrepancies identified
during test conversions before production cutover.
4.0 CONTRACT TERM
The initial term of contract shall be for two (2) years as stipulated in the RFP. However, the contract
may not begin one day after approval by the MCPS Board of Education and will conclude as stated
under the contract term. MCPS reserves the right to extend this contract at existing prices, terms and
conditions for up to three additional terms for one (1) year each. Written notice indicating MCPS'
intention to pursue the extension of the contract will be issued to the successful vendor 90 days prior
to the expiration of the original contract. The vendor shall have ten (10) days from the date of
notification to return the notice acknowledging its intent to accept or reject the extension.
Once all responses are evaluated, MCPS staff may make a recommendation to the MCPS Board of
Education to extend the contract or decide to rebid. If the contract is extended by the MCPS Board of
Education, a contract amendment will be issued.

9 RFP 7254.1
5.0 CONTRACT TERMINATION
MCPS reserves the right to cancel the contract in whole or in part at any time in accordance with
Article 12 of the MCPS General Contract Articles. MCPS also reserves the right to cancel the contract
with a Respondent for failure to comply or failure to fulfill the terms of this contract in accordance
with Article 13 of the MCPS General Contract Articles.
6.0 PRICING STRUCTURE
Offerors shall provide detailed pricing for all software, services, and deliverables described in this
RFP. MCPS invite offerors to propose more than one pricing model so that MCPS can evaluate the
most cost-effective approach over the life of the contract.
6.1 Pricing Models
Offerors may submit pricing based on one or more of the following models, and may propose a
hybrid that combines elements of more than one:
* Annual subscription (software-as-a-service), inclusive of hosting, with implementation and
conversion priced separately;
* Perpetual license with annual maintenance and support;
* Hybrid model combining subscription and licensed components; and
* Any alternative pricing model, which must be fully explained.
6.2 Required Pricing Detail
For each proposed model, the offeror should provide a detailed breakdown that includes, at a
minimum:
* Software licensing or subscription fees, stated for at least fifteen (15) named or full-function
users and three hundred (300) web users;
* Implementation, configuration, data conversion, and migration services;
* Hosting and infrastructure (if applicable);
* Training, including initial, web-based, refresher, and new-employee orientation;
* Annual maintenance and support;
* Optional or add-on modules, priced separately, including the parent application, bus-mounted
tablets, field trip management, GPS integration, and student Medicaid tracking; and
* Any other fees or charges.
6.3 Pricing Assumptions and Total Cost of Ownership
Offerors shall base pricing on a fleet of approximately 1,500 buses and a district serving more than
156,000 students and shall provide a total cost of ownership that covers the two-year initial term
and each potential renewal year. Offerors shall specify proposed payment terms and any cost-