School Bus Driver Unions and the Need for Special Understanding

By Peggy A. Burns

We all know that drivers of students with special needs have to be special themselves. At a recent conference, one school transportation administrator bemoaned the fact that the union doesn’t seem to recognize this, and it demands that seniority alone be the deciding factor in who can bid successfully for a special needs route. In this district, the union was the barrier to choosing the right person for the job. In another district, the board of education’s policies – or your own – may have created the unintended consequence of limiting the pool of drivers for this critical work without regard to true qualifications.

As with so many areas, the “fix” is likely to be related to your efforts to educate necessary people. I wonder what would happen if union representatives or board members accompanied you on several real special needs routes. Perhaps they would begin to understand the unique challenges that ride along on these routes. Show them “The Road to Compliance for Special Needs Drivers.” Expose them to the wide variety of equipment that travels along with special needs students. In short, let them know what’s behind your insistence – and you must be insistent about this – that the right people be in the right positions.

Peggy Burns is an attorney and consultant, owner of Education Compliance Group, Inc. and a regular contributor to School Transportation News. She is the developer of four video training programs, “The Road to Compliance for Special Needs Drivers," “Putting the Brakes on Harassment: Training for School Bus Drivers,” “Steering Clear of Liability: Training for School Bus Drivers, and “Confidential Records: Training for School Bus Drivers.” Peggy can be reached at (888) 604-6141 or ecginc@qwestoffice.net.

Mainstreaming Special Needs Students Takes on a New Meaning in Kansas District

An interesting blog today from Education Week's Christina Samuels touched on an innovative new program being implemented in Wichita, Kan., that changes the way traditional area "alternative" schools for special education students are run. Principal Jackie Hultman tells the Wichita Eagle that only 10 percent of students ever transfer out of the school's concentrated special-education environment, so to meet federal guidelines, more special ed kids are moving out and about 20 regular-education kids, many of whom have been previously expelled or suspended, are moving in.

The article states:

School board members said Guthrie and district officials have answered their concerns that dangerous students would be placed with mentally ill students.

"We're not wanting to place any (students at Sowers) involved in gang activity or aggressive behavior," Guthrie said.

See, it seems many of these students were guilty of "unintentional battery of school employees but have a second chance at graduating." Really. Hence the "alternative" moniker rather than the previous names of special education centers. But it's not like these bad apples will be running amok and terrorizing those special ed students who remain, as the new transferred-in students will be using their own bathrooms, at least so says the school.

It's interesting to see another form of "mainstreaming" at work. From the school transportation perspective, it has been a trend for the less severely disabled students to be incorporated onto regular route school buses to save schools money, as special needs transportation can be 10 times more expensive. But now we see the reversing happening, where regular education kids albeit with some very real temper problems are being introduced into the special needs population that needs patience and understanding.

And, like on the transportation side, it's being done to potentially save money, or, more aptly put, save the school from shutting down. he district faces cutting at least $21 million from its budget of more than $600 million. It likely will have to cut more, as Gov. Mark Parkinson last week announced deeper cuts to state aid for public education.

The program is championed by Alexa E. Posny, the commissioner of the State Department of Education and the former director of the U.S. Department of Ed's Office of Special Education Programs. The same woman President Obama recently tabbed to be the next assistant secretary of the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services. She says special education kids learn better when they're regular education classroom peers push them to succeed.

Breathe Easy, Ye Who Rely on Medicaid Reimbursements

So said Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius when she rescinded a final rule that would have taken the . As governor of Kansas, keeping Medicaid alive was one of Sebelius' major platforms, according to OntheIssues.org.

Sebelius warned that neither Congress nor the Bush administration planned to extend a one-time increase in Medicaid funding. If the emergency aid is not renewed, Kansas will be forced to cut its Medicaid budget. Sebelius also complained that federal officials have slowed payments to the states in the wake of Medicare and Medicaid reform efforts. If states are forced to cut Medicaid budgets, numbers of uninsured are sure to increase.

The issue was raised back in September of 2007 when then HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt proposed schools be stripped of federal and state reimbursements of Medicaid-eligible reimbursement costs, such as transporting some students to and from therapy sessions and doctor visits, after the Government Accoutability Office discovered some $3.5 billion in fraudulent claims over the previous five years.

Fraud might be the correct term to use in some cases, but certainly not all, as many cases, some involving schools turned out to be paperwork errors. Still, $3.5 billion is $3.5 billion. As for some the alleged perpetrators, Sebelius and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced that 53 people were indicted for schemes to submit more than $50 million in false Medicare claims.

But penalizing schools didn't sit well with Sebelius. In May, HHS and the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services issued a proposed rule to rescind the transportation rule as well as other that would limit the ability of states to issue reimbursements to agencies and medical services.