Training systems that extend your best people — not replace them.
Built by someone who's been in the seat, managed the crisis, and knows what your members actually face every day.
Our system doesn't replace you. It extends you when you're not in the room.
This is a training partnership that combines live instruction, ready-to-use materials, and a lightweight platform your members can adopt at their own pace.
Most training systems hand you a platform and say "good luck." This one is different. It's built around live training, real relationships, and the kind of trust that only comes from someone who actually understands the work.
The platform captures and sustains what happens in person — so your best practices don't walk out the door when the trainer does.
How It Works
JAK is the optional platform that houses and tracks the training — there when you need it, invisible when you don't.
Manager's Minute: Safety Meeting Planning
Everything a transportation manager needs to run effective, compliant safety meetings — without starting from scratch every time.
Done-for-you training content
Managers receive ready-to-deliver materials. Drivers receive consistent, quality training. Everyone's hours are tracked and documented. Most managers can run the meeting straight from the packet with 15 minutes of prep.
This is Module 1 of 14. Additional modules address maintenance tracking, incident command, student behavior systems, stop evaluation, and more. Available to partners as the platform expands.
Partnership, not just product.
We're looking for organizations who want to bring something genuinely useful to their membership — not another vendor booth or sponsored pen.
What We're Proposing
A partnership where your organization becomes the distribution channel for training materials and platform access that actually help your members do their jobs better.
- Speaking and live training at your events
- Conference packet inclusion for A Crash Course workbooks
- Member pricing for platform access
- Ongoing content your members can use immediately
- A real relationship — not a one-time transaction
Founding Partners (those onboarding prior to June 2026) get preferred pricing locked in for the life of the partnership.
This gives your organization a tangible, year-round member benefit — not just an annual event.
Kari Hoglund Kounkel
I've spent 35 years in school transportation — not observing it, doing it. My grandparents first served students in 1947. I've managed operations, trained drivers, and built systems that actually work in the real world.
In 1997, I managed crisis response for a fatal school bus crash in Monticello, Minnesota. That experience shaped everything I've built since — not as a story, but as systems that help people prepare before something goes wrong.
I've won awards, trained drivers, driven buses, negotiated contracts, and spoken to bus drivers for decades. I know this field. I know your members. And I know what they need — because I've needed it too.
Where do we go from here?
Not sure which step fits? Let's just talk. Sometimes the right path becomes clear in conversation.
Let's Talk
Kari Hoglund Kounkel
CARES Consulting Inc.