Building Equitable Education Access: Reducing the Care Burden with HopSkipDrive

5 min readJul 12, 2024

The Artemis Fund believes technology can create prosperity for all, but it’s not possible without diverse perspectives. Artemis leads seed rounds for diverse tech founders with wild ambitions in fintech, commerce, and care building the economy of the future.

In the U.S., there are 53M unpaid family caregivers, 23% of whom are taking on debt to cover care costs, and an average of $300K in savings lost by caregivers who leave the workforce. The care burden disproportionately impacts women, as 80% of unpaid caregivers are women who spend 20–40 hours per week providing family care.

The Artemis Fund is particularly excited about the mission of HopSkipDrive, a technology company that reduces the burden of care so that women and families can reach their full potential. We’re proud to put a spotlight on their success.

The Starting Line: HopSkipDrive

Headquartered in Los Angeles and founded in 2014, HopSkipDrive was established to support busy parents facing transportation challenges. Traditional school transportation is costly and often inefficient, causing students to miss educational opportunities and enrichment activities, which increases inequalities in schools.

Today, HopSkipDrive connects school districts and parents with highly vetted CareDrivers to safely and efficiently transport children. Their strategic routing software, RouteWise AI™, creates optimized routes to maximize resources and is currently used in about 20 school districts and counting.

With HopSkipDrive, districts can serve more students, reduce their bus fleet sizes by 16%, cut costs by up to 40%, and reduce commute times by 50%. In 2023, the company served 32,000 children and logged 25 million safe miles driven.

Mapping the Route: Meet the Founder

The inspiration for HopSkipDrive came from Joanna McFarland’s personal experiences as a busy mom balancing a demanding career and parenting. Along with her two co-founders, who are also mothers, Joanna faced the common challenge of ensuring their children could get where they needed to go safely and reliably. The idea was sparked at a birthday party, where a conversation among moms highlighted the difficulties of transportation in Los Angeles. One mom shared how she had to turn down a great job opportunity because she couldn’t manage her child’s transportation needs. This resonated deeply with Joanna and her co-founders, underscoring how transportation can be a significant barrier to opportunity.

At its core, HopSkipDrive is driven by the mission to create opportunities for all by ensuring equitable access to education through reliable transportation. Joanna’s vision and dedication have transformed the company into a vital resource for families and school districts alike, helping to remove transportation barriers and open doors to new possibilities.

Of her entrepreneurial journey, Joanna says, “No matter how many obstacles you face, how many people tell you ‘no’, every day is a new opportunity to do better, be courageous, and do what it takes to get a ‘yes.’”

Accelerating Innovation: Incorporating AI

As the company continues to grow, Joanna and the team have turned their focus to leveraging AI to further enhance their services. The bus driver shortage, exacerbated by COVID-19, has created a structural challenge in the transportation industry. HopSkipDrive’s research revealed that 40% of the schools surveyed were reducing transportation options for families due to these shortages. This has resulted in longer bus rides for children, expanded walk boundaries, and in some cases, the complete elimination of services — posing significant problems for kids and families.

Joanna and her team are now looking to innovate at the foundational level, using AI to optimize school transportation routes from the start. By analyzing each student’s needs and determining the most suitable vehicle, stop, and route, HopSkipDrive aims to create tailored transportation solutions that go beyond just school buses.

This AI-driven approach opens up new possibilities for schools to develop effective transportation strategies that address various challenges, including cost savings, driver shortages, and environmental goals.

Hitting Milestones: The Customer Impact

Colorado Springs School District 11 (D11), has been serving the community for 151 years, educating over 23K students across 58 schools. Despite its long history, D11 faced a modern challenge: a severe bus driver shortage. D11 struggled with reduced services, routine lateness, and widespread frustration among families, students, and educators.

The HopSkipDrive team collaborated with D11 to optimize their transportation plan, focusing on improving route efficiency and better utilizing bus routes.

Optimized Routes and Vehicle Mix: HopSkipDrive helped D11 consolidate bus routes, allowing them to operate efficiently with fewer drivers. Underutilized routes were replaced with HopSkipDrive rides, enabling drivers to manage fuller buses without increasing the operating budget.
Increased Efficiency and On-Time Arrivals: Thanks to RouteWise AI’s recommendations, D11 increased its share of high-utilization bus routes by 46%. On-time arrival rates soared from 85% to 99%, reclaiming over 17K hours for students in the classroom.
Financial Benefits: Right-sizing operations allowed D11 to reallocate savings toward a significant driver pay raise, closing long-vacant budgetary lines. This led to cost savings, with D11 identifying opportunities to reduce their transportation capital budget by 40% over the next decade.
Reduced Carbon Footprint: Route consolidation and the use of more efficient sedans in place of under-utilized buses resulted in a 31% reduction in transportation carbon emissions.
Returning Administrative Team to Core Roles: With a balanced staffing model and planned coverage, D11’s administrative team could step back from daily driving responsibilities and focus on their core roles, such as routing, training, and supervision.

Through their collaboration, D11 is securing a brighter future for its students, ensuring they have access to quality education and valuable experiences, embodying HopSkipDrive’s mission to create opportunities through equitable access to education.

The Artemis Fund is proud to back innovate founders like Joanna, who are solving the problems that keep your mom or grandma up at night.

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