Peer Best Practices: Special Needs Transportation

There’s no instruction manual for student transportation, despite ever-changing expectations and regulations. Best practices help provide a framework of compliance and ethical conduct when navigating the field’s complexities. We spoke with transportation professionals from three Ohio districts who have helped pave the way for the responsible transportation of students with special needs:

• Branden Calhoun, Transportation Coordinator at Dayton Public Schools
• Dr. Andreas Johansson, Superintendent at Newton Falls Exempted Village Schools
• Theresa Vazquez, Transportation Supervisor at Canton City School District

Read on to hear their tips and learn from their successful operations.

Build Community and Establish Continuity of Care

When it comes to transporting students with special needs, it really does take a village. Fostering relationships, maintaining a flow of communication, and building trust with families and other district teams who work with these students help create the best possible transportation experience.

Vazquez: “I truly believe in continuity of care. It’s important to have the same people with the students day in and day out so they can be an advocate for those students … It’s OK to care. It’s OK to be part of their village because when you see something that should change — maybe little Johnny doesn’t need the safety vest anymore, for example — the trust you’ve established can help you have difficult conversations with families and other district teams, which will ultimately lead to a better situation for the student.”

Calhoun: “I’m really big on village, community, and just understanding we are a part of each other’s lives. We have an impact just by getting kids to school. I’ve been able to see kids interact and engage just by them being in the classroom, and they’ve grown beyond what we thought they could do because of that.”

Be Creative and Understand What’s Possible

For transportation teams, finding creative solutions for their students is the norm. Our panel of Ohio transportation professionals emphasized the importance of thinking about and leveraging resources — including personnel, technology, vehicles, and more — in unconventional ways to help keep students with special needs comfortable.

Johansson: “You can’t make assumptions about how kids are going to react or what’s going to work for them, you have to work with them. Often, that means collaborating with another team or an intervention specialist. They can’t say, ‘Well, she’s on the bus, so it’s not our problem.’ We have to work together, because our transportation team doesn’t always know everything. If another team has a trick to help that student, we have to work together to get it done.”

Vazquez: “Rather than using buses, I want our special needs transportation to be van-based. We’ve started that at our district and it’s been successful for a few reasons: being an inner-city district, the roads are narrow and vans are more nimble; for students who need a curb-to-curb stop, vans can get to places buses can’t — even into driveways; the vans are more similar to what students are used to in their parents’ vehicles, like temperature control and noise level; and with fewer stops to make, the rides are shorter.”

Calhoun: “With our onboard tablets, when the driver looks at their route, they’re notified about students who need safety vests or other accommodations. Technology helps us give the students what they need, but it has to be paired with strong communication between different departments who work with those students. If I can make sure I’m in the room with the right people, we can identify when there’s a problem and figure out how to address it together. Then we can use technology to help us make it happen.”

Find the Least Restrictive Environment, Advocate for Student Needs

Helping students with special needs have the best transportation experience possible may mean having awkward conversations with other district teams and families. However, a bus driver is often the first and last adult a student interacts with during their school day. Each of our panelists told stories of students who love the bus and drivers who helped shape students’ educational experiences. Their unique and impactful position gives them an opportunity — and a responsibility — to be the voice for students, providing what they need and combating feelings of exclusion and isolation.

Calhoun: “I don’t want a child to be put in a safety vest just because someone thought they needed it in preschool, and then for however many years of their educational experience, they’re in that vest. We might have a different solution. By having our transportation team in Individualized Education meetings, I believe we can continue to educate drivers, families, and communities about the best options for students from our perspective. Being part of that conversation and showing parents that we care about their kids, we can help put students in a better situation. For example, we can explain to parents that a wheelchair bus isn’t just a special needs bus — anyone can ride this bus as long as it meets their accommodations. And if we can put a child on the bus with their friends, we want to put them on that bus.”

Vazquez: “When planning a field trip, they might order two buses — one of them with a lift for a wheelchair to accommodate a student. But there aren’t any other students on that lift bus. The student is all the way in the back while other people are all the way up front. The student is alone, and they already feel alone often enough. The people planning the trip don’t think about that sort of thing, so I want to bridge that gap and be an advocate. I want to help people look at these situations from the perspective of the student.”

Johansson: “These students aren’t just numbers on a spreadsheet or in your routing software — they’re actual people with real needs. Think about working with a student who’s nonverbal. Let’s say it’s November and the temperature is getting colder. If that student can’t tell someone they’re cold, how do we work through that? How do we make sure they have what they need? For me, that starts with building relationships and connections with every student and family so I can be a better advocate for them.”

Support Drivers With Connected Transportation Technology

Tyler Drive tablets eliminate guesswork for drivers with turn-by-turn directions that follow the exact assigned route, identification of students assigned to each stop, and even rerouting as needed while following pre-determined safety protocols.

Learn, Teach, Grow

The value of learning from school transportation peers is immeasurable, and every interaction is an opportunity. Even during their discussion, our transportation panelists learned from one another and gained strategies they plan to implement in their operations. They emphasized the importance of keeping an open mind to new approaches and sharing knowledge and experience with peers.

Johansson: “For any leader, I think it’s important to have an open mind and try to learn by doing. Until you’ve experienced a 6 A.M. pickup in the dark in late December, freezing your tail off while getting a wheelchair loaded onto a bus, you might not truly understand the reality of special needs transportation. You can sit in your office all day long and talk about what we should and shouldn't do in transportation, but until you get on that bus, you can’t get the flavor of what that actually looks like. That firsthand experience will make you start thinking differently.”

Calhoun: “Being willing to learn is so important because there are many things that you don't know, and things are always changing in our environment, but it’s also important to be willing to teach. I don’t believe in information being in a silo. I don't want our operations to fall apart just because one person is gone. At the same time, I’ve learned so much from those around me who were willing to share knowledge that took them years to learn. If we continue to pay it forward, if we continue to teach those who have not been in the situation we're in, they don't have to make the same mistakes we made. We can be better, and we can grow.”

Empathy and Flexibility Make a Team Exceptional

Each of our transportation panelists came into their roles with a personal connection to the world of special needs transportation, and they’ve also spent years honing their student transportation knowledge and building exceptional teams. They summarized their best advice for transporting students with special needs with calls for empathy and flexibility.

Johansson: “Be willing to learn and adapt. School transportation today is not what it was five years ago, and it won’t look the same five years from now. You can’t be stuck in your ways, because there are always new regulations and compliance. You’ll have new kids and new parents who will have different thoughts about what you should and shouldn’t do. The best thing we can do is be ready to move, adapt, and overcome.”

Vazquez: “People who are willing to show up every day with an open mind, heart, willingness to learn and to work together, to truly be a part of the students’ village and raise up students throughout their school experience will create bonds with these students they’ll remember forever — and so will the students. They appreciate that we’re willing to do whatever it takes, and that’s what makes our team exceptional.”