HopSkipDrive Debuts CareEngine, the Technology Platform Built to Keep Every Student Ride Coordinated

As specialized transportation need rises and driver shortages squeeze capacity, HopSkipDrive's coordinated technology platform connects districts, schools, families, riders, CareDrivers, and its safety team so rides stay coordinated, not just visible

LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--HopSkipDrive, the leader in safe, fast, and simple supplemental student transportation, today debuted CareEngine™, the technology platform that powers every HopSkipDrive ride. Purpose built for the complexity of school transportation, CareEngine connects school districts, schools, families, riders, CareDrivers, and HopSkipDrive's Safe Ride Support® team before, during, and after every ride, so everyone gets the information they need at the right time.

Districts today are too often stuck stitching coordination together with disconnected systems that don't speak to each other, can't move at the speed students need, and aren't sustainable over time. When something changes, coordination breaks down exactly when it matters most.

CareEngine was built to close that gap. School transportation is unlike any other transportation, involving far more than a car and a driver moving a rider from one place to another, and every ride is personal: a seven-year-old who depends on a consistent pickup routine, a teenager experiencing homelessness in her third school placement this year, a student who is non-verbal and relies on a familiar greeting. A late pickup can affect a classroom, an outdated handoff instruction can create a safety concern, and a missed update can lead to uncertainty and a chain of phone calls.

When a student's home address changes at 10:30 at night, CareEngine puts a new plan into motion, and coordinates everyone in real-time. The CareDriver's route updates automatically in the CareDriver app. RideIQ gives district staff real-time visibility into the change, the school's Daily Queue shows the day's updated pickups and dropoffs, the student can follow their own ride through Track My Ride, and the family's Caregiver app confirms the new pickup, all without a series of phone calls, left messages, or lost sticky notes that plague current processes.

CareEngine brings that coordination to every part of the ride:

• Seamless coordination, always in sync: Districts can book a full school year of rides in minutes. When a pickup time, address, rider instruction, or any other detail changes, CareEngine automatically routes the update to everyone who needs it, the district, the family, and the CareDriver, so one update replaces five phone calls.
• Proactive, human-centered safety: CareEngine brings the CareDriver app, HopSkipDrive's Safe Ride technology, and the Safe Ride Support team into one connected system that can flag unsafe driving while a CareDriver is still on the way to pickup, giving Safe Ride Support the chance to intervene before a child ever gets in the car.
• Individualized care at scale: CareEngine’s unified system captures each student’s specific needs and preferences, and seamlessly communicates them to the CareDriver at the right time, every ride. This creates a consistent experience tailored specifically to each student, even when the CareDriver changes. CareEngine makes it possible to deliver this level of individualized care consistently across thousands of students and millions of rides.
• Speed when it matters most: New rides are guaranteed in as little as six hours, and location changes in as little as two. For a student whose housing placement changes unexpectedly, that means getting to school the next morning, not the next week, protecting their attendance and continuity at their school of origin.
• A system that improves with every ride: Every ride adds useful information: how long a pickup actually takes, where delays keep repeating, and which instructions reduce confusion. HopSkipDrive's team uses those insights to make coordination smoother and more reliable over time.

"We've spent more than a decade building purpose-built technology for every person involved in a student's ride: districts, schools, families, riders, CareDrivers, and our safety team," said Joanna McFarland, CEO and co-founder of HopSkipDrive. "CareEngine is what happens when all these applications connect with each other in one unified system. It helps transportation teams spend less time chasing information and more time serving their students. It's not a new fix for the driver shortage. It's what makes sure the capacity districts do have isn't wasted on coordination they shouldn't have to do by hand."

CareEngine arrives as student transportation faces two forces at once. Need is rising: More students require specialized transportation than ever before, from students in temporary housing to students in foster care to students with IEPs who need consistent, individualized care. At the same time, capacity remains constrained and issues like budget restrictions and school bus driver shortages persist. HopSkipDrive's 2026 State of School Transportation Report found that 71% of districts experienced at least one tangible operational consequence of driver shortages in the past year, including longer ride times, missed or late pickups, and staff pulled in to cover gaps. Nearly a quarter, 23%, say they can no longer offer transportation for extracurricular activities or field trips at all.

More information on CareEngine can be found here.

About HopSkipDrive

HopSkipDrive is the leader in safe, fast, and simple supplemental student transportation. The company is modernizing the $30 billion school transportation industry through two core solutions: a care-centered transportation marketplace and an industry-leading transportation intelligence platform, RouteWise AI™. HopSkipDrive's marketplace supplements school buses and existing transportation options by connecting kids to highly-vetted caregivers on wheels, such as grandparents, babysitters, and nurses in local communities. RouteWise AI helps schools and districts address critical challenges, including budget cuts, bus driver shortages, and reaching climate goals. HopSkipDrive has supported over 14,500 schools across two dozen states, with over 2,000 school districts, government agencies, and nonprofit partners. Millions of rides across 130 million miles have been completed through HopSkipDrive since the company was founded in 2014 by three working mothers.