Transportation Routing System

Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) in Maryland is requesting proposals for a comprehensive transportation routing system solution to replace its current MapNet platform under RFP 7254.1, with proposals due September 16, 2026 at 2:00 p.m. The RFP requires offerors to complete Equal Opportunity Certification (Attachment A), Certification of Nonsegregated Facilities (Attachment B), Minority Business Enterprise certification (Attachment C), and Non-Debarment Acknowledgement (Attachment D) as mandatory compliance prerequisites.

The scope covers routing optimization, real-time GPS tracking, driver and student management, parent portals, field trip management, and bus-mounted tablet integration for a district serving over 156,000 students across 211 schools with approximately 1,500 buses. The solution must support general education, special education, vocational, magnet, out-of-district, and McKinney-Vento routing. The system must achieve 99.9 percent uptime availability with SOC 2 Type 2 certification, comply with FERPA, and support multi-factor authentication and single sign-on. All data generated under the contract—routes, students, buses, schools, addresses, and maps—must remain the property of MCPS with portability required at contract conclusion. MCPS data must be stored exclusively within the United States, and contractors are prohibited from using student data to train AI models without express written consent from the Chief Technology Officer.

Offerors may propose annual subscription models, perpetual licenses with annual maintenance, hybrid models, or alternative pricing structures with detailed breakdowns for software licensing (minimum fifteen named users and 300 web users), implementation and data conversion, hosting, training, annual maintenance and support, and optional modules. Pricing must include total cost of ownership for the two-year initial term and each potential renewal year, with escalation tied to a recognized index such as the Consumer Price Index. The initial contract term is two years with MCPS reserving the right to extend for up to four additional one-year terms at existing prices and conditions, requiring 90 days' written notice before expiration.

MCPS anticipates award in October or November 2026. Contractors must maintain cyber/privacy liability insurance of not less than $5,000,000 per occurrence and general liability coverage of $1,000,000 per occurrence. Questions were due August 19, 2026; a Q&A document has been posted. Technical requirements and data elements are defined in Attachments F and E respectively.