By Linda F. Bluth, Ed.D.

Since my return to a large urban school system last December as Assistant Superintendent of Compliance, I have been investigating factors contributing to the failure to provide special education and related services to students with disabilities in accordance with Federal, State and Consent Decree order requirements. This past September the provision of transportation services for special education students became one of the areas that I have been requested to investigate.

Currently a survey is being sent to 182 Principals to examine the extent to which transportation compliance is an issue under special education regulations. This activity is the result of concerns that have been brought directly to my attention by parents of special education students, principals and plaintiffs attorneys representing approximately 16,500 special education students. Before initiating this survey I acknowledge being acutely aware of transportation budget restraints contributing to the inability to comply with transportation requirements under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in urban, suburban and rural school districts across the nation.

It is common for me to receive phone calls from transportation supervisory personnel across the nation describing their frustrations regarding lack of adequate funding to serve special education students. From the calls received last year, I estimate that while approximately ten to twelve percent of the school districts transportation population is comprised of special education students, these students may require twenty to forty percent of the total transportation budget to receive their IEPs.

This situation clearly points out that the rapidly escalating transportation costs for children with special needs require careful study in order to identify the magnitude of the problem and the impact on the total transportation budget for school districts. The time is right for fact finding.

The following are some of the factors contributing to budget problems associated with transporting special education students: (1) the selected location of schools in which students with disabilities are provided their special education services; (2) the failure of the Multidisciplinary Teams to make appropriate decisions based on IDEA requirements as to who is eligible for the related service transportation; (3) the decision-making process determining when and how to assign bus monitors; (4) bus routing, including the lack of written policies regarding pick-up and drop off points: (5) purchasing decisions for new equipment, as well as maximizing equipment use; (6) adequate inservice training for driver personnel and monitors to reduce costly turn-over and (7) lack of education regarding special education requirements.

I learned from a group of special education high school students assigned to use transit buses that they received virtually no specialized training about how to use transit buses. This problem will surely contribute to existing budget problems because their parents and legal representatives, will request a return of these students to yellow bus service if appropriate skills are not provided to successfully ride transit buses. In reality, the transit bus will be the mode of transportation for adulthood, as training is timely during the high school years and should be made on an individual basis at an IEP meeting.

In a position paper by the National Association of State Directors of Pupil Transportation Services titled "Transporting the Nation's Children," the following statement caught my attention. "The first vehicles used to transport students were nothing more than horse-drawn wagons which were borrowed from local farmers." If we examine today's challenges regarding our nation's transportation costs, are we putting the horse before the cart without viable solution? Is the school transportation community too narrow in their solutions to fix growing budget problems? This position paper goes on to state: "It is unlikely there will be sufficient increases in future education budgets of state and local school districts to allow all students to be transported to and from school in school buses."

This statement is reality for urban school districts as well as other school districts of all sizes in communities across the nation. Are we adequately attending to the warning signs before us?

For well over two decades, I have advocated, when addressing transportation budget issues, that transportation supervisors not isolate the cost of serving special needs students. Budget issues are not resolved by discussing transportation for regular and special education students as two separate service populations. While I acknowledge that special needs transportation is costly, not serving this population would not resolve all the budget concerns faced by school districts today. Improved management practices is the preferred solution.

The following information from the 17th Annual Report to Congress on implementation of The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) by the U.S. Department of Education, clarifies some of the challenges encountered by transportation personnel dealing with the escalating cost of the special needs population.

• A total of 5,373,077 infants, toddlers, children, and youth with disabilities from birth through age 21 were served under IDEA. This figure represents an increase of 4.2 percent, the largest yearly increase since the inception of IDEA in 1976.

• Although students with traumatic brain injuries, other health impairments and autism account for less than 3 percent of all students with disabilities, these are the most rapidly growing categories.

From my perspective, students with traumatic brain injuries, other health impairments and autism account for the most rapidly growing population and a costly population to transport, because of the need for specialized buses and equipment as well as the need for highly trained personnel. Not to be under-estimated are the daily discipline problems faced by drivers transporting non-disabled and disabled students, which increases the problem of costly staff turn-over.

In conclusion, the time is right to study the facts, and revisit the management requirements necessary for the next century. This school year, much of my time will be spent investigating and providing for the reduction of non-complaint transportation practices for special education students. The beginning point is educating the IEP Multidisciplinary Teams about eligibility standards for receiving the related service transportation and addressing IEP requirements and service delivery recommendations that have the potential to reduce escalating costs for transporting students.

The challenge for school districts is how to transport all the students within a school district in new and different ways that will comply with special education mandates and increase cost-efficiency without compromising safety. The focus is on management.

Over the past year, I have listened to the words, "For every problem, there is a solution". Convincing words.

Linda Bluth is the chief of the Community and Interagency Services Branch at the Maryland State Department of Education. She is a regular contributor to STN and can be reached 410/767-0264 or by e-mail at Lbluth@aol.com.

Source: Reprinted from School Transportation News, November 1996. All rights reserved.