WALL, N.J. — Student Transportation Inc. (STI) has formed the School Transportation Group, which will focus on STI’s core school contracted transportation operations, the company announced on Monday.

Patrick Vaughan, currently the chief operating officer of STI, will lead the new group as president.

"Pat's almost 30-year experience as a leader in the school transportation industry has been evident, and we look forward to his continued leadership in this new capacity," said Denis Gallagher, chairman and CEO of STI. "Pat is visible in the field visiting with our over 175 locations across North America and works closely with the regional and local teams, as well as driving new initiatives in safety, driver staffing, and technology with our innovation and technology teams.”

Vaughan said that the School Transportation Group “will build and improve upon our current efforts of developing and recruiting new drivers and maintenance technicians while maintaining our high retention rate of those already here. We need to continue implementing and leveraging the new technologies we have recently developed to reduce costs, all while having a profound strategic focus on improved safety."

The company’s technologies include the SafeStop app, which provides school bus status notifications for parents and performance data for transportation staff.

Gallagher said that he will continue to work closely with Vaughan and his team on the school transportation business and will also focus on ways to further grow STI’s newly created Managed Services Group (MSG).

"We will be looking to leverage the businesses we started and recently acquired in MSG over the past two years to grow our non-asset and asset-light businesses that are directly related to our key core competencies of safety and fleet services,” Gallagher said.