FRISCO, Texas — With more school districts turning to private companies to provide non-school bus transportation for students with special needs, the time is now for public-sector professionals and non-profit safety advocates to develop standards for service, driver training, background checks, oversight and more, according to panelists who discussed essential considerations when contracting with such firms.

That was the message from a panel that discussed necessary considerations for selecting non-school bus vehicle providers to open Monday’s agenda at TSD Conference.

While several states have developed regulations governing these services, consistent standards are lacking nationwide amid a lack of school bus drivers and the school buses themselves not always being the most feasible vehicle, or the one that provides the least restrictive environment. As a result, the National Association for Pupil Transportation (NAPT) issued a statement earlier this year that it is “important to enumerate clear and reasonable criteria to help school districts assess these services and ensure that they meet their operational needs and the needs of their children.”

And the National Congress for School Transportation has brought the topic to its state delegations to vote on potential guidelines next May in Des Moines, Iowa.

“We’re not used to options,” said Launi Schmutz-Harden, a TSD Tenured Faculty member and retired director of transportation for Washington County Schools in St. George, Utah, during the general session sponsored by EverDriven. “They came in very quickly and they transported students quicker than we were able to put policies in place, procedures in place, training. I think the cart was before the horse and now we’re [playing] catch-up. As a transportation community we have new partners and we need to grow together.”

NAPT public policy liaison Peter Mannella, who moderated the panel discussion, said the pupil transportation industry is “in a grown-up moment having a mature conversation about what do we want for the kids.”

“The lobbyist in me always looks for opportunities for people I work with, my clients, to advance themselves to empower themselves. I think that’s kind of where we’re at with this,” he continued. “When you’re empowered, you don’t let things happen to you. You get involved in making what’s supposed to happen, happen. Your voice is there, your strength is there, your knowledge is there.”

He added that the industry now has “some amazing services that are being provided, that cropped up because we’re an entrepreneurial economy. … This community is saying, that’s good but it would be better if we could shape it differently, if we could put some restrictions or regulations or requirements around it to help us be sure we’re doing the right thing.”

Susan Shutrump, also a TSD Tenured Faculty member president and a recently retired supervisor of occupational and physical therapy services for the Trumbull County Educational Center in Niles, Ohio, said the discussion was a recognition that the conversation about transporting students with disabilities and special needs has “finally gotten to the point where we are looking at individualized transportation plans that go beyond a child’s individual education plan.”

“We’re calling groups together, we’re getting everyone to the table to sometimes write very complex individual transportation plans, and what I’ve heard for many, many years is when we talk about the vehicle, the transporter will say, ‘That’s not the purview of the IEP team. You don’t have that say. That’s one of the things we keep to ourselves.’

“But what we’re finding, as we know, is there’s certain equipment that can’t be used in all these different vehicles,” she continued. “And, so, in some sense, if we have to have certain specialized procedures, certain equipment, it is vehicle specific.”

She said the industry must work together to make appropriate, safe decisions, and alternative transportation is just another tool in the tool box to consider.

“It can work toward the needs of our children. So, thank goodness, we have this option,” she added.

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Still, Shutrump said one districts are especially vulnerable when private companies believe that because they are transporting students they are exempt from safety restraint laws that apply only to yellow buses.

“It was never intended to be utilized or waived in these other vehicles where it’s even more important because they aren’t big and yellow and [aren’t] going to push anything out of their way in a crash,” she said. “You’re going see incredibly more high forces, G-forces and injury-producing forces in a smaller vehicle.”

Alexandra Robinson, the third TSD Tenured Faculty member and former executive director at the New York City Department of Education, expressed concern about the potential pitfalls of districts entering into agreements without the full involvement of transportation professionals.

“I get worried that we have people who are not experts in the room making decisions for us and then, while we are technically meeting the law because we are getting students to school, we are not meeting the intent of the law,” she said.

She warned school districts are being sued by parents of children with disabilities or special needs because transportation departments aren’t aware of contract details with alternative service providers.

“Often times, your contracts are written at your procurement and purchasing level or written at your (community-based organization) or superintendent level, and the department for which the contracting services are being purchased aren’t even at the table,” Robinson said. “You need to know for what you are contracting and do you have any input. … Our performance expectations should not be any different than the (key performance indicators) we set up for our own fleets.”

She insisted that monitoring and compliance of alternative transportation services needs to “hands on, observable, in person, being able to actually screen a wheelchair, meeting with parents, all of that stuff before a child even begins a service.”

“You need to build into compensation that when there is a lack of performance there is a violation or a liquidated damage because that will encourage your contractor, if at all possible, to be on time,” she continued. “You need to make the violation and/or liquidated damage important enough that the contractor will not just say, ‘It’s only $250 today if we don’t have a driver. We’ll take the hit.’ You want to ask for enough indemnity, liability, damage and property insurance that would cover not just you, not just them, but all of the neighbors, families and rest of the district because it will get expensive if something happens. If a company cannot get bonded and/or insured for the amount you’re asking then that might be a problem because they don’t have a track record with their carrier to get that kind of coverage.”

Along that line, Schmutz-Harden said transportation departments professionals need to make sure that alternative companies train employees to the district’s standards “because that kid deserves the best driver.”

“They need training on what to do on a day-to-day basis, but they also need to know what to do in an emergency. There’s a big difference in what to do what to do when evacuating children,” she said, emphasizing the importance of annual fitness tests.

Robinson also said districts should insist upon complete, regular updates from alternative providers about the number of hours their drivers are logging not only with them but in other jobs to prevent accidents caused by fatigue.

The post TSD Panel Offers Necessary Considerations When Selecting Alternative Transportation appeared first on School Transportation News.

FRISCO, Texas — Several federal laws that define the transportation of students with disabilities and special needs have been updated recently or may be amended soon demand the attention of school districts and private contractors, said a lawyer who specializes in the subject area.

Betsey Helfrich opened the TSD Conference on Sunday. She has successfully represented school districts against a variety of claims in state and federal courts as well as in administrative and special education due process hearings. She also conducts local and national training on Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and all areas of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.

Helfrich began by pointing out changes earlier this year to Title IX, which is commonly associated only with women’s sports. However, the law has broader implications for sex discrimination in federal programs that also affect school districts and transportation departments.

The new guidelines took effect on Aug. 1 except in 21 states that filed lawsuits to block their implementation. Helfrich encouraged audience members to research the law’s current status in their states.

Noting that Title IX requires the investigation of sexual harassment or sexual assault complaints, Helfrich cautioned against rote practices that could create legal hazards for a district, such as coding into the discipline system an incident on the school bus as an “assault.”

“Be really mindful if you or a driver are writing and coding something as sexual assault or sexual harassment … that we are also passing that info along to our Title IX coordinator,” she said. “Don’t code something as sexual harassment and end it there.”

She also cautioned resting on the laurels of simply reporting it, for example to a principal. She advised ensuring an investigation is completed an that a Title IX coordinator has made a determination that the misconduct rises to a legal level. “Sexual harassment has a very specific definition. So, just because something inappropriate happened it must mean it rose to that level.” she added.

Every school that receives federal funds is required under the law to have a Title IX coordinator. An overhaul is likely coming to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA, which protects children under the age of 13 from the distribution of their personal information without parental consent. Proposed legislation would raise that age to 17.

“We should have new regs by this time next year. How does it affect your daily life? Probably not a ton, except it really impacts the vendors that we contract with that keep student information systems,” Helfrich said. “Our vendors are going to have to be very careful going forward after these new regs about the information they have. … We can only contract with someone who promises not to sell our students’ information to someone else.”

Like COPPA, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) protects the privacy of student data. Amendments are pending. Because the law was enacted in 1974 and sets guidelines for how records must be kept, its provisions largely revolve around the keeping of paper records.

“Hardly anything is paper anymore. We keep our records electronically, everything’s in the cloud, we have apps, we have student information systems, so FERPA really does need an overhaul,” she said. “There’s new proposed regs, nothing new right now, but keep in on your radar for next year. We might have some new requirements about how we keep records.”

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Related: (STN Podcast E229) October Updates: Green Funding, Cellphone Bans & Special Needs Legalities
Related: Gallery: Legal Advice & More on Day 4 of TSD 2024
Related: TSD Keynote Speaker Brings Special Needs Transportation Legal Expertise

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Helfrich said a U.S. Supreme Court ruling about an issue totally unrelated to education could also have an impact on litigation involving school districts. The landmark case, Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, involved whether the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) could require commercial fishing operations to pay the cost of government monitors assigned to their boats.

The justices concluded the NMFS did not have the power to make the rule, overriding the principle of the longstanding “Chevron deference” that directed courts to defer to an agency’s reasonable interpretation of an ambiguity in a law that the agency enforces.

“You might see more schools challenging statutes and regulations directly in court. It’s a little bit more school-friendly to not have Chevron deference,” she said. “So, what does that mean in the Department of Education? They might not have as much power to issue these guidance documents that schools have to follow.”

Free Appropriate Public Education (FAPE) guidelines under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) require school districts to meet the unique needs of students with disabilities, including transportation. Of the 50.8 million K-12 students in the U.S. as of the fall of 2022, about 21 million rode school buses and approximately 7.5 million students were covered by the IDEA.

“It’s highly regulated and really unwavering,” she said. “There’s not a lot of flexibility with the IDEA,” Helfrich said. “It always goes back to FAPE.”

Meanwhile, Section 504, passed in 1973 as part of the civil rights movement, protects students and adults with disabilities from discrimination in places of public accommodation.

“Schools often say we don’t have to do this in our before-school or after-school programs because they’re voluntary, [for example] summer school, we don’t have to worry about that because it’s optional. That is definitely not true,” she said. “You see more cases in that area than really anything. If we opt to have a program, it has to be nondiscriminatory.”

The danger to school districts is that Section 504 “is loose-goosey, it’s not as regulated but it’s more dangerous” because it includes monetary damages for people who have been discriminated against.

“Parents can file discrimination lawsuits under Section 504 and seek monetary damages,” she continued.

The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights processed the highest number of such cases last year, resolving 45 percent more cases than the past record.

“It’s free to file. It’s very easy to file an OCR complaint. You don’t have to be represented by an attorney and then the OCR comes in and investigates. Let’s say an incident happened on the bus so they’re claiming discrimination against the bus driver. That driver will be interviewed. You as the director will be interviewed. The special education director will be interviewed,” she noted.

“Usually the superintendent, too. Anybody involved in this case will be interviewed. They always say, ‘Who is your 504 coordinator? Who’s in charge of investigating discrimination cases in your district?’” she continued. “And, literally, nine out of 10 times, the principal says somebody else, the counselor says somebody else, the bus driver says somebody, and the superintendent always says, ‘It’s not me. I don’t know who it is. It ain’t me’ and the OCR investigator is writing furiously. That is one easy thing to control.”

She urged audience members to return to their districts and train drivers about the district’s coordinator in case a parent mentions a potential disability complaint. Sharing that information on a single slide and keeping that slide “will go a long way to start out on the right foot,” she said.
Helfrich outlined a handful of recent court cases, including several that went against districts. She contended that the districts’ cases could have been strengthened by transportation departments being more involved in the writing of individual education plans.

Instead, all too often, those plans are written without such expertise and districts become locked into unrealistic requirements. And, many times IEPs include services that aren’t even needed yet lock the transportation department into expensive commitments.

“And once it’s in the contract, it’s there,” she warned. “Even if a parent is saying, ‘we didn’t want it’ at first, they’re going to want it.”

She cautioned case outcomes often tilt in favor of the parents of children with disabilities and special needs, particularly when school personnel mishandle interactions and neglect to properly document actions. “Juries and courts hate when schools say, ‘We don’t do that because if we do it for you, we’ll have to do it for everyone,’” she added.

Helfrich concluded with the joking rejoinder, “Do not let this scare you into resignation. Honestly, as long as you act reasonably, really think through, individualize, each student’s situation you honestly are going to be OK in this area. Keep your good common sense. Keep being good people, and it’s all going to be OK.”

The post Special Education Attorney Navigates Legal Bumps in the Road for Student Transporters appeared first on School Transportation News.

FRISCO, Texas — School transportation professionals at every level can ease the extreme fear and stress that students with autism experience each day and help them reach their full potential by shifting conventional thinking about service delivery.

That was the message from keynote speaker Patrick Mulick to start Saturday’s session at TSD Conference. Accomplishing those goals are part of the transportation department’s duty but will create a tremendous sense of joy and accomplishment said Mulick, who is also the director of student engagement for the Auburn School District in Washington and a board certified behavior analyst.

“We get to be part of their stories. We get to help shape their worlds and help unlock the autism they carry around with them. I feel such joy when I reflect on the faces that I’ve had a change to impact and I look at the work ahead and I look at the faces we have now,” said Mulick who relayed the stories of students that he played has helped over the years. “For you, you have faces, you have names in front of you every single day. What you do for them matters. So, feel that sense of purpose but that sense of responsibility that we need to step up and do what’s right for these kids that not given everything they need for life. These kids need us to be at our best in supporting them. So, continue to go the extra mile for them. They’re certainly worth it.”

Mulick, a popular speaker delivering his fourth keynote address at a TSD Conference, said one reason his remarks focused on autism was due to its rising prevalence. In 1975, one in 5,000 children. “Today, it’s one in 36. This data is four years old and there’s great variance from state to state. California is one in 26,” he stated.

He encouraged his audience to remember that every person with autism is an individual and they should never have a preconceived based on well-known people on the autism spectrum, such as Elon Musk, or someone they personally know. “If you know one person with autism, you know one person with autism. That’s it,” he added. “We need to be careful not to categorize persons with autism.”

Mulick said that he spent the summer of 2000 working with a non-verbal, 4-year-old girl with autism who had behavioral issues related to her disability. Within weeks, she began to speak three-word sentences. Children with autism “know what they want to say but can’t get the words out,” Mulick said.

“There’s a person in there dying to get out but they do not understand the world and the world does not understand them. When she could speak, it gave her autonomy,” he said. “What I was able to do was unlock autism,” he continued.

The experience convinced him that he wanted to devote his life to helping autistic children succeed.

Mulick explained that the education system has broken down numerous barriers to equality over the decades. However, he added, considerable work remains in the realm of services for children with disabilities and special needs.

“For (them), the conversation goes to the kid as the problem,” he said.

Noting that school buses have been redesigned to accommodate students with accessibility challenges, he insists school transportation needs to be rethought and redesigned to better serve children with special needs, including autism.

Mulick cited a quote from psychologist and author Ross W. Greene, “Behaviorally challenging kids are challenging because they’re lacking the skills to not be challenging.”

He added, “When we think of students with autism on our bus, instead of asking, ‘What’s wrong with them?’ We really need to be asking, ‘What are they experiencing and how can we help them?’”

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Related: (STN Podcast E223) Challenges & Consistency: Patrick Mulick Unlocks Autism on the School Bus
Related: TSD Conference Opens with Message of Empathy for Challenging Behaviors on School Buses
Related: School Districts Explore Ways to Reduce Behavior Problems on School Buses
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He shared a 12-point strategy to improve the transportation process and everyday life for students with autism:

1. Get out of our silos. School personnel and transportation departments can and should use all appropriate technology tools to communicate proactively and more effectively when problems arise. It is not helpful for drivers to receive a 26-page individualized education program. Instead, drivers need to receive a student transportation plan with the necessary information to help them safely transport students and support positive behavior.

2. Visualize expectations with pictures. Students with autism may miss words but a laminated sheet with pictures of instructions will provide a child with guidance and reassurance day in and day out. Mulick shared the story of a boy with autism who had been hitting himself because of the stress of his daily school bus rides. Individualized instructions for “show safe hands” included a picture of a hand firmly planted on the bus seat. The boy drew an outline of his hand on his usual seat, too. “Yes, that’s graffiti but it’s much better than him hitting himself,” Mulick said.

3. Give voice. “Behavior is communication. If you don’t give your student a voice, then you leave them with no other choice.”

4. Engage. Give children with autism time to process information. Always state their name first and be careful with phrasing.

5. Value the routine. Surprises are scary. “If it is routine, then it is predictable. If it’s predictable, it’s reliable. If it’s reliable then it can be trusted. And if it can be trusted then it’s safe,” he said. For that reason, don’t tell a child on a random day that they have to sit in a different seat.

6. Warn about changes. Let the child with autism know well in advance if the school bus driver is going on vacation or there’s a change of bus number, assigned seat, route or other riders.

7. Get them engaged. The biggest transition and potential anxiety in an autistic child’s day is the ride to and from school. Ensuring they have something to engage with is a source of comfort. “The engaged mind forgets to misbehave.”

8. Be careful with the collaboration at the handoff. Avoid chit chat. If the conversation is about the child, bring them into the conversation. Even if they’re nonverbal, don’t pretend they aren’t there.

9. Be Mindful of unique fears and fixations.

10. Reframe deficits into strengths. Convert lessons into child’s favorite fixation. Mulick shared several effective examples, including creating a “Jedi Tool Kit” that provided a range of de-escalation actions for a child fascinated with “Star Wars.”

11. Use today’s knowledge for today’s challenges. “When we know better, we can do better. There are old ways we need to move away from,” he said. Mulick shared that when he took a job in 2011 there was a 1980s-era cassette tape in his desk. Several in the room gasped when he showed a slide with its title: “Working with Angry, Rage-filled Children.” He noted that the increase in board certified behavior analyst (BCBA) positions – from 780 in 2010 to 65,366 in 2023 – is an example of a new resource that can be accessed.

12. Don’t force it. Forcing a child with autism to do something they don’t want to do will often lead to behavioral outbursts. “If it’s not going to work for the student, it’s not going to work for the student.”)

Mulick offered one final piece of advice: “When you work with kids with autism, you should be learning with them every day.”

The post Mulick Returns to TSD Conference with Keys to Unlocking Autism appeared first on School Transportation News.

FRISCO, Texas – Stressful situations and conflicts involving students with disabilities or special needs are best de-escalated with dignity by “remembering that these children are individuals first” and understanding how the human brain works, consultant Jo Mascorro said.

“I want you to walk out of here seeing and thinking just a little bit differently … about how you’re going to choose to respond to challenging situations,” she added during the Friday opening training session at the Transporting Students with Disabilities and Special Needs Conference held at the Embassy Suites by Hilton Dallas Frisco Hotel and Convention Center.

Mascorro, a child behavioral expert, explained that the part of the brain known as the amygdala — which is Greek for the word “almond” — is found in all brains. Emphasis was placed on its role as the emotion center when she shared the phrase “screaming almonds” as a reminder of its intense response during challenging behavior demonstrations. “When the brain is anxious or angry, the screaming almonds experience a huge chemical release that results in the executive functioning of the frontal lobe to be highly affected, and it may start to shut down,” she noted.

That result is more acute in children since their frontal lobes are not fully developed, resulting in their thinking and reasoning through the screaming almonds, Mascorro added.

“Why is this such a big deal? Because children are not fully myelinated yet and still learning how to understand the long-term consequences of their behaviors. When you add the complications of a disability, the results can be devastating,” she continued.

She said there was not a brain in the room that doesn’t want to anticipate, to know what is expected, who, what, when, and how. She told the attendees they could count in double digits the things they had control over when they woke up Friday morning.

“Think how important control is to you,” she said.

She shared there are two primary things that, universally, all brains want and need and that is the ability to anticipate and control some aspect of what is happening in our daily lives.

“On the other hand, think about children with special needs. Typically, they don’t get to decide when they’re getting up, what they’re going to wear, what they’re going to have for breakfast,” Mascorro observed. “The second their day begins, an adult is more than likely determining their life choices. What is the one thing they can control? Well of course, It’s their behavior, so why would they want to give that up?”

Because children’s brains are constantly changing, both drivers and educators should have daily conversations with children about expectations for bus behavior. One point to ponder, said Mascorro, would be that when a behavior simply won’t go away, consider giving it a time and place where it CAN happen.

She shared one driver’s successful ploy. He was trying to determine the “loudest group ever” and challenged the children to sit quietly, save their loud voices, and pay attention to traffic along most of the route. They were to watch for a specific cue, and when given the signal, could scream their loudest at a designated spot the driver predetermined each day.

Approximately 80 percent of what we communicate is through nonverbal visual expression, she added, so to assume that a student who is nonspeaking is not communicating efficiently is false. Children who struggle with expressive/receptive language skills are extreme communicators if educators would learn to listen to what their body and/or vocalizations are saying.

“Whenever a student who is nonverbal makes vocalizations, that is a cue for the driver or aide to acknowledge and engage with that student,” Mascorro said. “Perhaps, validate their feelings by saying things like ‘I’m so sorry I need to be so close while I help buckle your seatbelt.’ Or, ‘This will just take a minute. I need to keep you safe” when you’re securing their wheelchair”

“If we get in there and just start manipulating the child with no regard to proximity or not speaking to them first to explain what is happening, we’re just fueling the ‘screaming almonds to release chemistry and elevate the emotional response. You must listen to their behavior because behavior is communication.”

She shared that research bears out that anger is the emotion that humans recognize first and hold onto most firmly. Children who face communication challenges understandably may feel angry when they’re frustrated, resulting in outbursts that may seem baffling but shouldn’t. For example, drivers and aides can contribute to helping students alleviate some of the more stressful moments requiring compliance by clearly communicating to the student what they’re about to do, are doing, when it will almost be over, and when they are done.

“Talk to the student using verbal artistry,” Mascorro recommended.

Every time a child misbehaves, she told her audience to respond as if they see a “Y in the road.” The bottom of the “Y” is the targeted behavior. The middle of the “Y” is the fork in the road. She said some adults choose one way that begs the question of what immediate, negative consequences should the child face as a result of their noncompliance?

“Consider that it should prompt a bigger question. Is there a void in the skills of what the child SHOULD do so they wouldn’t have gotten into trouble in the first place? In other words, I wonder if they know how to … and how do we TEACH to that void?” she said.

She recalled the story of a man with autism who explained his emotions when, as a 12-year-old, he got into trouble for throwing rocks after the teacher told him at recess to go out and play. In his mind, and since he had no friends, he was playing, by throwing rocks! She confronted him to stop, he was then confused by the mixed message, and as a result, hit the teacher. “When I asked him, at that moment, what was he thinking, he responded by saying, ‘I didn’t hit the teacher because I was mad at her. I hit her because she didn’t know I couldn’t find my words, She was the adult, she was the teacher, and since she knew I had autism, she should know I couldn’t find the words,” Mascorro recalled, noting that the man provided a profound moment of clarity.

She also recounted the story of adults who had transported a girl for 10 years and emphasized her cognitive impairment instead of recognizing her abilities. In just one bus ride with the child, Mascorro saw that she knew and reacted preemptively to turns on the route and her approaching home, and even raised her feet before the bus reached a set of railroad tracks.

In another case, Mascorro found a solution for a boy with autism who was constantly disciplined for hitting others and running. She learned he was fixated on farm-to-market roads, so she requested a schematic of the school campus, renamed all the hallways farm-to-market roads, then taught the staff to change their directives from “remember, no running” to “head down farm-to-market road such and such to get to music class.”

This resulted in the student imprinting in his brain every day what to do instead of what not to do.
Mascorro said the words chosen during a conflict can make all the difference in whether a difficult situation escalates or is defused, noting that all too often adults, with the best of intentions, make statements where their intent does not match the outcome they wish to experience.

“A lot of the times we make statements that make us the bad guy and we don’t even know it. … When someone’s angry, what in heaven’s name possesses us to say, ‘Calm down?’ Calm down is not a de-escalation phrase. It’s an escalation phrase,” she added. “We’re the adults. We need to have a better understanding of how to step up. We need to land on what we want, not what we don’t want.”

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Related: Gallery: Specialized Training, Ride & Drive at TSD 2024
Related: (STN Podcast E227) Talking to a Brain: Expert Addresses Special Needs Student Support on the Bus
Related: School Districts Explore Ways to Reduce Behavior Problems on School Buses

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The environment of any human interaction also plays a role in how it plays out.

When it comes to the transportation environment, Mascorro said there are “three guarantees” whenever a driver steps on a bus to transport children. “Every day, you’re always going to be older than the kids on it. By default, you’re smarter. And, third, everybody’s got a brain. … You need to use that information,” she added.

Children, like adults, alter their behavior based on where they are and who they’re with, which means they may act differently on the school bus than elsewhere. “Parents say, ‘They don’t do that at home.’ There’s a remote possibility they don’t, so why are you comparing the two environments?” Mascorro said.

As a result, she said it should come as no surprise that children who come from homes where routines and rituals don’t match those of the school environment, react negatively on the bus when they’re expected to wear a seatbelt, speak quietly and follow the rules. Consequently, a situation with a swearing child may best be dealt with by teaching that “there are school words and non-school words … non-bus behaviors and bus behaviors,” Mascorro added.

Among Mascorro’s other advice:

• Validating an individuals’ feelings first is of paramount importance. (“When a student tries to punch, the adult may attempt to say instead of no hitting, ‘Hitting says you’re really mad right now.’When a student is crying, rather than the adult say stop crying, they may try and say, “I’m so sorry you’re sad. Crying tells me you’re really hurting right now!” Also, she recommended telling students what behavior you want to see happen, rather than what you don’t want or saying things like no, don’t and stop.
• Distraction and disengagement are the greatest methods to defuse a brewing conflict. “The minute you draw your line in the sand and have your Davy Crockett moment, something bad is more than likely going to happen,” she said. “Try instead to say things like, ‘You really need to see this!’ ‘Oh, wow! You’re not going to believe what I have in my office!’ or “’You’re not going to believe what you’ll get to see sitting in this row. Sometimes you can generate distractions by using imagination, music, or mystery moments.”

Jon Boyles, a driver/trainer with the Montana Association for Pupil Transportation, said he learned a number of new ideas from Mascorro’s presentation and looks forward to testing and sharing them with colleagues. “I’ve made a list. I think the best think people can do is implement one thing at a time. Don’t try to change three things at once,” he said. “I’m a bow hunter and when I’m changing the way I shoot, I try one thing at a time. If I change everything at once, how do I know what worked?” he said.

The post TSD Conference Opens with Message of Empathy for Challenging Behaviors on School Buses appeared first on School Transportation News.

Brian Joyner and Karim Johnson, two seasoned pros in the school transportation business, find themselves in new roles but dealing with the same challenges as they joined peers across the nation working to achieve a smooth start to the new academic year.

Meanwhile, surveys released over the summer by two transportation companies shed light not only on those challenges but some of the high expectations expressed by parents nationwide.

Zūm, which serves more than 4,000 school sites with end-to-end transportation technology solutions and electric fleets, found that 84 percent of parents surveyed said the U.S. school bus system could stand to improve.

“This new survey shows that most parents are looking for increased safety and transparency on the school bus, as well as healthier, more sustainable rides for their children,” said Ritu Narayan, the company’s founder and CEO.

Meanwhile, the HopSkipDrive 2024 State of School Transportation Report found 91 percent of the 400 fleet managers surveyed said their operations are “constrained by school bus driver shortages, staying steady from 2023 and increased from 88 percent in 2022.”

Additionally, 64 percent of parents said coordinating school transportation is “the most stressful part of the back-to-school season.” (HopSkipDrive said it provides
more than 10,000 school sites in 13 states with alternative transportation options. Its employees also build software and provide advisory services that solve districts’ transportation challenges.)

The HopSkipDrive survey of 500 parents of school aged children around the country also found that 62 percent said driving their children to and from school or activities has caused them to miss work. “Among parents, more than three-quarters (79 percent) say they or their partner/spouse drive their children to and from school, and 41 percent of their schools have eliminated or reduced their children’s school bus services,” a company news release stated. “(Twenty-one) percent say transportation challenges are the biggest contributor to chronic absenteeism, more so than family decisions regarding student health.”

The Zūm survey suggests parents are searching for more flexibility, with 63 percent of them saying their kids would miss less school if “more convenient school transportation options were available.”

More than eight in 10 expressed interest in using a mobile app to stay informed of their child’s location on the school bus and would use a mobile app to “know their child’s bus arrival time, similar to tracking an Uber driver’s arrival.” In fact, the Zum survey noted that, “Out of those who don’t use the school bus to transport their children, 40 percent said they would reconsider if they could track their child’s arrival and departure.”

Neither Joyner, who was promoted to transportation director of the Union County Public Schools in North Carolina, after 16 years in the department, nor Johnson, who is in his second year as transportation director for the Stafford County (Va.) Public Schools after serving in a similar position in New York state for several years and before that as a transportation operations and routing supervisor for several school districts in South Carolina, were surprised by those results. Joyner described the driver shortage as “our biggest struggle.”

It’s not as bad as what it has been, but we’re definitely not where we need to be,” he said. He attributed an uptick in applicants and success retaining drivers to an hourly pay increase for all drivers, including a $20 minimum hourly rate in place of a previous per-semester attendance bonus. The move puts the district on a more competitive footing with surrounding districts and area bus companies.

“Each semester, they could miss up to five days excused and get the bonus, but the bonus was never guaranteed year to year depending on finances. So, I asked them, ‘Would you rather have an attendance bonus or an increase in pay?’ The majority of drivers said, ‘We want an increase in pay,’” Joyner said. “We talked to finance and the school board and everyone agreed that we could pull off $20 an hour. Our existing drivers were making more than that, and we adjusted our whole scale.”

HopSkipDrive CEO and co-founder Joanna McFarland said her company’s annual survey “shows a continued need for inventive thinking, and a stalwart commitment to our students and parents, to work to overcome real, significant challenges like this continuing bus driver shortage.

“It shouldn’t be this hard for our hard-working educational leaders when new options are at hand,” McFarland continued. “The current state of our school transportation system demands we all work to ensure students and their families can access the same opportunities of education and school support.”

Johnson acknowledged a “marketplace for the alternative transportation providers. “As with any new emerging type technologies or systems, you got to start looking at all those pieces. It’s a balance,” he continued. “Unequivocally, the safest form of travel is the yellow school bus. Nobody will deny that. When you start trying to dial back from that, how does that look? How can you replicate what makes the yellow bus safe in that alternative transportation space? The industry is working through that because I don’t think alternative transportation is going to go away and there’s a niche for it.”

Interestingly, the two surveys revealed a gap between parents’ expectations and school leaders’ priorities on bus electrification. Eighty percent of parents in the Zūm survey expressed concern about the dangers of diesel fumes and 64 percent said they believe it’s important to convert to electric. Meanwhile, 73 percent of school leaders told HopSkipDrive that electrifying their fleet is either not very important or not important at all.

Johnson said the gap is not as stark as those numbers suggest. “I honestly think nobody in the industry disagrees on anything that benefits the health, welfare and
safety of a child. So, if it’s electric buses, propane, hydrogen fuel cell, if we get there, whatever technology that’s going to make it healthier and safer for school children, everybody is 100 percent on board,” he said.

Johnson, who oversaw the addition of five electric buses and supporting infrastructure at the Bethlehem Central School District in Delmar, New York, in 2021, said an issue is the practicality of deploying those technologies. “It’s not that simple. Now the transportation director has to put on his contractor hat, become an electrical engineer, figure out how to pay for it. In Bethlehem there was a team, not only me, but it was also the facilities director, our business official in the central office, the school board, the community. We were able to successfully deploy the project and it worked for that particular school system but the situation is different in different places,” he said, noting for a variety of reasons that none of the Stafford district’s 311 buses run on alternative fuels.

“You’ve got to look at all those pieces, and then when you start getting into the budgets, how is that sustainable? You can basically buy two (diesel) buses for one EV, and you’re struggling just to be able to buy buses for your fleet. How can you justify to your taxpayers that you’re basically buying one bus for every two?”

Joyner agreed. “We do have some propane buses, but I haven’t heard any interest at all on electrification…,” he added. “For electrification, we’d have to hire a different type of technician, and I also worry about how long is that bus going to last us.”

The HopSkipDrive poll also found 60 percent of school leaders said they’ve eliminated or reduced bus services this year, up from 40 percent last year. Joyner said the Union County district consolidated routes coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic, including pulling service from gated communities. “We changed bell times up to about 20 minutes to some schools. That way allows us to go back and run quick doubles morning and afternoon, if need be,” he said. “So, we went from roughly 289 buses pre-COVID to 202 this year and added seven minivans to our fleet to help with our EC and McKinney-Vento kids.”

A New Approach
Last year’s school start was anything but smooth for the Jefferson County Public Schools in Louisville, Kentucky. Classes were delayed one week due to a “pretty catastrophic opening day… where we had routes that were way too long, a huge lack of bus drivers, and our service was pretty bad,” said Rob Fulk, the district’s chief operations officer. “We spent a year in that hell, where we had schools that were waiting two to three hours after the bell to have kids picked up. We had students going late to school. We had a very clear impetus to change, and we felt by focusing entirely on good service and good communication between our schools, our parents and our bus drivers that we could solve the problem.”

The result was a complete overhaul of the district routing plan and a procedural rewrite of how the transportation department supports schools, tracks buses and responds to issues. “There wasn’t any aspect that we didn’t change dramatically in our transportation department, including going back to geographic regions, starting a district-based routing team as opposed to using any outside vendor, and our own internal routers,” Fulk said.

“We completely changed how we did our intake, call center and communications with parents. We added significant technology to all of our buses. One of the big game changers for us was Samsara technology, which gave us several cameras on every bus that allowed us real time [access] to see where students were, what stops they got off, as well as real-time GPS on the bus that gives us exactly where it’s at, what their timing is on the route, and a whole host of other things.”

Another plus was driver input sought by Fulk, transportation director Marcus Dobbs, and their teams. “We really partnered with our bus drivers’ primary union, Teamsters Local 783, as we made changes and we would solicit a pretty significant amount of feedback,” Fulk said.

Meanwhile, the district’s communication department created a system including a call center, to receive parents’ feedback and quickly inform them of transportation changes. A crucial change was to address the need to increase driver ranks, which numbered roughly 1,100 a decade ago but ended last year at around 550.

“One of the huge issues we had last year was we were running in excess of 70 routes that were uncovered every day because of lack of drivers, which creates an extremely inefficient system,” Fulk said. “We had drivers putting in 10 hours, 11 hours a day, which is nice for a paycheck in terms of overtime, but when that’s what you do on the regular, that really burns them out. And at the time, I would say that our bus driver pay was not really competitive with some of the other industries in the city that require a CDL.”

Today, the district pays drivers a starting wage of $29 an hour, with extra pay on some routes such as an early childhood run. “We also pay them all at eight hours now and we don’t do the traditional [payment] model that a lot of districts do. If you come to us with no CDL, we train you on the CDL, and we train you on the S [endorsement]. And if you come to us with one or both of those, we’ll give you a bonus after you’ve worked with us for a certain amount of time.”

He praised the district’s human resources staff for holding targeted driver-hiring fairs that were “one-stop shops where you could get your physical done, get your dock card and go through all the steps so that it was less likely that we lost the applicant from application to their first certification class,” he said

Navigating School Start Up
Back in North Carolina, Johnson said the role of attendants or monitors on special education vehicles cannot be underestimated in the smooth delivery of transportation services.

“We talk a lot about school bus drivers, but I definitely want to put out there that attendants are definitely required and part of the team, and we sometimes forget about them,” he said. “But for transportation directors that have lots of SPED routes, you find out that not having that attendant sometimes means that bus can’t roll. Some people think that because they don’t have a CDL, they’re easier to get, but an attendant is not just someone you put on the bus. They need to be trained as much as your driver in order to support students and that’s not a fit for everybody. So, sometimes there’s a shortage of attendants, too.”

Jim Hessel, transportation director of the School District of Cameron in Wisconsin, said new transportation directors (and experienced ones, for that matter) should remember to take care of themselves, know when enough is enough and look for help when considering how to get the academic year off to a smooth start and keeping it on that path.

“The best advice I have to offer is to learn how to manage the stress of the job,” he said. “There are always problems that are going to come up, but how do you deal with them? The first step is to determine if there is even anything you can do about the problem. There are situations that are just out of our control and are not worth wasting time worrying about. You also need to resist the pressure to work on something constantly until you solve it.

He noted that sometimes the focus remains on old solutions, despite those already being ruled out. He advised taking a break or working on another project to clear one’s mind. This can be when a solution, that should have been obvious from the start, presents itself.

“Remember that you are surrounded by other school districts with personnel that are going through most of the same things you are going through. Get to know at least one or two of them and share your ideas and your problems,” Hessel advised. “Finally, I would suggest that you don’t let your job become your whole life. No matter if you are a school district’s transportation director, a bus driver, or the owner of a bus contracting company, you need to have time for yourself that has nothing to do with school buses. The same would apply to anyone in any career. You’ll be more energized and focused when you get back to work after allowing some of the clutter in your brain to escape.”

Editor’s Note: As reprinted in the October 2024 issue of School Transportation News.

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Related: (Recorded Webinar) Collaboration, Cooperation & Change: Realigning Transportation to Meet Student Needs
Related: The Route to Safer School Buses
Related: Webinar Reviews Community Benefits of School Bus Electrification
Related: What Do You Really Need from Technology?

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