Transporting Students With Special Needs

Tyler Podcast Episode 34, Transcript

Our Tyler Technologies podcast explores a wide range of complex, timely, and important issues facing communities and the public sector. Expect approachable tech talk mixed with insights from subject matter experts and a bit of fun. Host and Content Marketing Director Jeff Harrell – and other guest hosts – highlights the people, places, and technology making a difference. Give us listen today and subscribe.

Episode Summary

We kick off a new series on School Transportation by focusing on transporting students with special needs, and how alternative modes of transportation are important as we consider the needs of the students, the parents, the drivers, and the community at large. Tyler Technologies' own Kim Rentner, a school transportation expert in her own right, interviews subject matter experts on different topics school transportation faces today. You won't want to miss this discussion on the positives that alternative modes of transportation bring to the industry, and hear Dr Linda Bluth's tips for what messages should be sent to parents regarding these modes.

Transcript

Dr. Linda Bluth: It's not about what you can't do, it's about how are you going to do it? And I think that that was a different platform, saying, "How are we going to do it?" And that's what I was so pleased to have the opportunity to be a part of. And I never underestimated the importance of health, the health of the driver, the health of the child, the health of all people involved in school transportation.

 

Jeff Harrell: From Tyler Technologies. It's the Tyler Tech Podcast, where we talk about issues facing communities today and highlight the people, places, and technology making a difference. I'm your host. I'm Jeff Harrell, the Director of Content Marketing for Tyler Technologies, and I'm so glad you've joined me. Well, I'm very excited today, because we are kicking off a series that we will sprinkle in throughout the rest of 2021 on school transportation. Now, when I was a kid and rode the bus, or even when my kids would get picked up by the bus, I just figure, "Hey, the bus shows up, kids hop on, off they go." But there's much more to it than that. When should the bus arrive? Where should it arrive? How does it arrive so that students don't have to cross the street and have a dangerous situation? There is a lot that goes into school transportation, and so we are very excited to bring you great conversations with subject matter experts throughout school transportation over the next several months. Now, this series will be hosted by Kim Rentner, and you've heard from Kim before. She has been on the podcast. She is part of Tyler Technologies and an expert in school transportation. She will be having conversations with different subject matter experts. You're going to love this first one with Dr. Linda Bluth. Kim will talk about her impressive resume. You won't want to miss this discussion on the positives that alternative modes of transportation bring to the industry, and Dr. Bluth's tips on what messages should be sent to parents regarding these. Here's Kim Rentner with Dr. Linda Bluth.

Kim Rentner: Dr. Linda Fran Bluth has more than 56 years of experience as a special educator, and she is our guest today on our podcast. And in case you're wondering why we would want her to be our guest, I'm going to give you just a very small bit of information about her expertise. Her past experience includes work at the United States Department of Education, a university professor, school systems administrator, and a policy specialist in the Maryland Governor's Office for Children, Youth, and Families. Dr. Bluth has presented on a variety of transportation topics in 44 states, Canada, and Dubai, since 1981. She received her doctoral degree in special education from the University of Illinois in 1972. Dr. Bluth is currently employed by the National Association for Pupil Transportation as a Special Needs Transportation Consultant. Like I said, that is really only a little soundbite of some of her expertise, so we are more than honored to have you here with us today. Dr. Bluth, welcome.

Dr. Linda Bluth: Thank you so much. It's a pleasure to join you.

Kim Rentner: We are so thrilled, and I could just pick your brain for hours, but I'll try to whittle it down. So let's get right to it. And I want to start with the first question. How did you get into transportation? You have all of this wonderful knowledge, education background. Why transportation?

Background on Dr. Linda Bluth

Dr. Linda Bluth: I was very young as a teacher. I had a master's degree, and I was teaching special ed students. And one of the requirements, and this is before 94-142. I'm talking now around 1960, just in the sixties, early sixties, middle sixties. I had a student who wet the school bus seat. And the bottom line was, if you weren't toilet trained, you couldn't ride on a school bus. I went to the Director of Transportation. I said, "It's my fault." And it was. "I forgot. I was running late, and I forgot to let the kids go to the bathroom." I always had the kids go to the bathroom before they got on the bus, because some of them had long routes. It was a special ed classroom in a regular school. And he said, "Sorry. That's the rule." And wait a second. We're talking about the sixties. We're talking about no 94-142. And so we're talking the sixties here, and I begged and pleaded with him. Father was killed in Vietnam, mother worked in a factory. Every day I picked up that kid and brought him to school, and every day I took that kid home from school. And one of the things I said to myself is, as stupid as this may sound, "I'm going to make a difference when it comes to inclusion of kids on school buses." So this is before the word mainstream, before the word inclusion was ever spoken. And as a result of it, I had a post-doctoral fellowship at the US Department of Education. You'll see it on my resume. I was so emphatic that transportation become a related service. And I was emphatic that these children would no longer be excluded.

Dr. Linda Bluth: My parents always said, "It doesn't matter what you do, but make a difference." And I decided I was going to make a difference. And so, I've never had much competition because it's not where most special educators go. They go to curriculum, they go to extracurricular activity. And I have just focused because transportation is the key to access to education for many children.

Kim Rentner: That is so awesome. Do you think that COVID-19 influenced the thinking of transporters of children with special needs across the nation, with regard to utilizing alternative modes of transportation?

COVID's Influence on Transportation

Dr. Linda Bluth: I think that if we talk about education in general, I think that education was caught completely off guard when it came to COVID-19 and this pandemic. And I think that as educators, regardless of what capacity they were serving in, they were faced with a number of realistic issues to deal with. Special education is interesting, because special education is an entitlement. It's based in the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act. And so, we are talking about something that has a longstanding of entitlement with a free appropriate public education for children with disabilities, who are eligible. What COVID-19 did, is it really threw the special education community, into a crisis. And the reason I say this is that as school systems were beginning to develop virtual learning for children, there were many children with disabilities that really could not benefit. So I'm talking about children with autism. I'm talking about children with emotional disturbance. I'm talking about children that were severely intellectually limited. So while other children were being able to be served via virtual education, there were tremendous gaps in the disabilities community. I was very fortunate, because as the Maryland State Department of Education was beginning to discuss the return of children with disabilities to school, the Assistant State Superintendent said to me, "Linda, what about transportation?" And so, we were among the first to really address this issue formally in the Governor's report on how to return children. And what this said to me, is that we have got to look at every mode of transportation for these children. And so, the Maryland State Department of Education, as early as May, 2020, I think it was the first in the nation, we participated in a webinar with NAPT, and we had developed a matrix of questions that we asked. And we were very pleased that this really took off and started a national dialogue.

Dr. Linda Bluth: While this was occurring, there was a group known as the STARTS group, and this was Student Transportation Alignment for Return to School guidelines. And Susan Shutrump and myself were asked if we would participate in assisting with guidelines. I liked the fact that for the first time I saw transportation personnel really thinking outside the box. I don't mean this derogatory, but education is very institutionalized, and so is transportation. You can say this from the 1939 beginning of the National Congress on School Transportation. So I think what really occurred is people were forced to think in a different way. And I want to make sure that people understand this. This doesn't mean this is the first time alternative modes of transportation were really being utilized. What it meant is that it expanded the concept of utilizing it and expanding it.

Giving Best Quality Service

Kim Rentner: I think you bring up several good points. One, right there towards the end, this is not the first time we've used alternative modes of transportation, many of us in transportation, right? That's what we do. Sometimes we change the plan based on equipment needs, certainly, or because of going out-of-district, McKinney-Vento all types of things. Now we just have to do it for different reasons. But I wanted to elaborate and kind of highlight something that you had said, the word entitled, right? Entitlement for these students, meaning really, they're entitled to the service. And I don't want to create that meaning for you. I'm thinking that's what you mean. I think that's what I think of it, is they're entitled to the service. So I think they're entitled to us figuring out how can we give them the best quality of service? Could you elaborate a little bit more on that as well?

Dr. Linda Bluth: Sure. I think it's important to understand, the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act has been around since 1975. With the beginning of the regulations, transportation is one of the related services. It's no difference than physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy. So now, while people will begin to talk about how to virtually do OT, PT, speech therapy, you actually had occupational therapists and physical therapists working with parents. And these were services on what's known as the IEP, Individualized Education Program. But how are you going to now implement the related service transportation? That was the one service that could not be implemented. And I'm saying that because schools were closed down. So parents of children with disabilities were shouting louder than any other parent saying, "Look, my child is not benefiting. I have a child who's autistic. I have a child that's nonverbal. I have a child that's emotionally disturbed that will not sit in front of a computer." What this did is it forced the transportation community to come back and have as its highest priority, interestingly, children with disabilities. And I've never known the population of children with disabilities to really become such a high priority. And I have to say, I give credit to the transportation community for beginning to think about, "What can we do?" So with the CDC guidance, in terms of six feet, what do you do about the child who doesn't wear a mask, has an entitlement to the related service transportation? Now the transportation community had to work with the health community and say, "You know something? What are we going to do? We can't say that we're going to have a denial because someone doesn't have a capacity to wear a mask." And I think that what I saw was tremendous interdisciplinary cooperation. I never saw the transportation community move out to the health community, move out to the psychology community.

Dr. Linda Bluth: And what I kept emphasizing in webinars, it's not about what you can't do, it's about how are you going to do it? And I think that that was a different platform, saying, "How are we going to do it?" And that's what I was so pleased to have the opportunity to be a part of. And I never underestimated the importance of health, the health of the driver, the health of the child, the health of all people involved in school transportation. So I think that we linked the entitlement, the definition of the related service transportation, which begins with travel to and from school, and other disciplines to really bring these children back to school.

Kim Rentner: It's amazing how many things have to be taken into consideration, and it's been amazing to see the collaboration through all of this. Speaking of that, do you see implementing alternative modes of transportation a larger part of the IEP process, IEP meaning Individualized Education Plan? Sometimes there's a meeting, and certainly if transportation services are needed, then we need to include those folks, right? So do you see this becoming really more of the norm?

Dr. Linda Bluth: I see it becoming much more of the mainstream, and not just only for children with disabilities. I see it for the children on the McKinney-Vento. I see it for children in rural areas. I think what the challenge is, is there's no argument about the fact that school bus safety is a very prominent part of our culture. The question is, how do you get the alternative modes of transportation to hold the same safety track record? And I really think that we're underestimating that challenge right now. It's easy to talk about something, but when you begin to go more universal into the school system mode of transportation, I think that people are not really recognizing how much of a challenge this is going to be.

Kim Rentner: So, what kind of things do you recommend really, in preparing, knowing that this is going to be a challenge? So we know that. What kind of things can we do or outreach really to prepare for these alternative modes of transportation?

Dr. Linda Bluth: First thing I think that's so important, is look at some of the companies that have been doing alternative modes of transportation, and look at what are the successes and the concerns. If I'm looking at this, I'm very interested in what is the selection, what is the actual vehicle that's going to be used? So vehicle selection is one thing. The second thing is, what students are going to be on these vehicles? The third thing that I look at is also, there's a great amount of availability of resources in terms of computerized data resources, data solutions. We're going to have to educate the community to expand this knowledge to include the alternative vehicle. When you are talking about solutions and using data-driven decision making, a lot of times they'll do this for what they call the normal fleet. And I think that's kind of interesting terminology, but they will not include alternative vehicles. So they have a few alternative vehicles, they never include that in the same routing, in the same data solution. I think there's going to have to be a real mindset change.

Kim Rentner: That makes a lot of sense. Do you have some concerns though, for changing this landscape and getting ready for this?

Dr. Linda Bluth: Well, I have a number of concerns, actually. The first is the resistance to change. Whether it's favorable or not favorable, I feel it's a reality and fair to say that there's a resistance to change, and educational institutions are no exception. The other thing is there's a tremendous variance of service delivery models across the nation. When I look at transportation in all 50 states, it's so, so different. You can't compare urban, rural, suburban. The thing that people have to think about is the cost for implementing change. There is a cost, whether it's a cost of resources, a cost of management, I think there's a cost associated.

Dr. Linda Bluth: The other thing is you have responsibility for moving along children on your current fleet, and where's your time for planning? People always say, "I can't do it because I don't have time for planning. I've got to get the kids on the vehicles. School is starting up." The other thing is, I think there's a real discrepancy in sophistication across the nation. I know that in states I've worked in, I am just in awe of the sophistication of some transportation personnel, and I am always shocked when other transportation personnel are still literally using pins on a map to route kids. I find this just astonishing. So drivers shortages compete. But if you ask me what my greatest concern is, and I'm speaking now as an expert witness who started work in 1979 doing this kind of work, is driver knowledge. I am deeply concerned. I'm not as concerned about the technology solutions. I'm not as concerned about the vehicles if good vehicle selection is made. I am concerned about the amount of driver knowledge and driver understanding. Let me give you an example. Let's say a driver has not been fully informed about characteristics of autism, and they have an autistic child on the bus. And the child is not interfering with the ride, but rocking back and forth. And this rocking back and forth is really distractive. The driver can hardly stand the rocking back and forth. And the driver is spending their entire route time telling the child to stop rocking. Well, believe me that they are not going to be successful. So I think that if you don't do good driver training, that there will be an inability to really maximize alternative modes of transportation. I think that's a key to the success.

Kim Rentner: Do you have suggestions though, about driver training?

Dr. Linda Bluth: The thing about drivers is I have to compliment their performance with how little effort is given. Think about the teacher who serves a child in a classroom, in a building, and has a lot of resources. Think about the driver who is always serving someone behind them, never in front of them. And I think that we really owe it to drivers to really respect what they do, and to enhance their knowledge and let them better understand our support of them. I spend a lot of time interviewing drivers, and I haven't of course for the last two years, but I ride buses. And I always ask to ride a bus route with the best driver so I can learn. And I do this a couple times a year traditionally, and it's amazing to me what I see people doing who have had no instruction on how to do it. And so, what I want to say is I think it's respective drivers, and it's the willingness to share information. FERPA, the Family Educational Rights Privacy Act, says that a driver has the right to know legitimate information. We, in school systems, are still lacking of that understanding, although in the regulations of FERPA that was reauthorized, it speaks to transportation specifically about sharing information. So I hope that we put in the effort that we need to in driver training, and that we don't short change drivers so that they have the opportunity to be successful.

Kim Rentner: And I was thinking of asking you next about positives associated with alternative modes of transportation. And I think that for drivers, alternative modes could be a positive. Maybe there's someone who definitely wants to have a school bus permit, but not necessarily drive that really large vehicle and obtain the CDL and all of those things. So I'm thinking there's some positive to our industry for the drivers themselves. Do you feel like that?

Dr. Linda Bluth: I think there are some definite positives. One is this provides an opportunity to drive a vehicle that you're more comfortable with. This provides an opportunity if you like serving an individual child or fewer children, you can serve fewer children. This provides an opportunity to know families and know children. So I think that's one real positive. I think it also has the opportunity to bring into the workforce people that do not necessarily want to drive what's known as the big bus. And I think that if this group is really respected as an individualized population, that they can enhance the opportunity for service delivery. What I really think is that we have to look at alternative modes of transportation as part of a system of service delivery. And I think that we have to not think of it as two systems, this is our regular system, this is our alternative. When we no longer talk that way, I'll be pleased. I would like to see people saying, "We have a continuum of service delivery that meets the needs of our community." And so, there's not the stigma of you ride what they call the small bus. I think it's time to really enhance our thinking and break the stereotypes.

What Parents Need to Know

Kim Rentner: I could not agree more. Actually, sometimes when I see special needs, I think, "Don't we all have special needs, really?" So I could not agree more. I love that. What information do you think parents should know regarding considering alternative modes of transportation? That is something that I think is so important, because unless you work in transportation, there's a lot of things that you wouldn't know, and we want to arm the parents with some information, right?

Dr. Linda Bluth: I think it's important that you don't just have a flyer on alternative modes of transportation. I think the best way to communicate with parents is to really have a one-page fact sheet that is a question/answer type of thing. What does transportation services look like in whatever name, school system? What is the continuum of services? What type of transportation vehicle can my child be expected to ride on? I think that parents really need to have a question/answer one pager so that they understand, "Wow, this is part of the regular system. This isn't something that they're doing because my child has a disability. This is something that's being done to meet my child's needs." I also think that parents should be encouraged and allowed to ask a lot of questions about the vehicle that is being utilized, the training of the driver using the vehicle, the length of time the child should be on the vehicle. The number one question when I was employed by the State Department of Education for many, many years, and dealing with transportation that I received, and I just retired this last October, and the Directors of Transportation in Maryland, because I work as a consultant to the Maryland Association for Pupil Transportation, the number one question parents say to me is, "Who can I call within the school district if I have a question about transportation?"

Dr. Linda Bluth: So I think that parents will be a lot more comfortable about an alternative mode of transportation if they know it's part of a continuum, it's not something separate because their child has a deficit. If they see it as something that is utilized to meet a child's need, whether it's a child that's homeless, a child that's on a rural road, a child that is in a wheelchair, there's just a lot there. So I think parents need to be asked, "What do you want to know?" And I would do a focus group with parents, honestly, and say, "What do you want to know?" And that's how I would develop my fact sheet.

Kim Rentner: I think that's excellent advice for any operation. Thank you. So, I always save the tough question for the end for all of my guests, and I ask the same question. So in wrapping up, I want to ask you, what was your absolute favorite lunch when you were in school?

Dr. Linda Bluth: Well, it's kind of interesting. When we talk about lunch, I grew up in Brooklyn, New York, so the bottom line was you basically walked home for lunch, which was a block and a half. And I actually had a grandmother who watched me cross the street, or once a week, I received 25 cents and I could go to Ruthie's little diner, and that was one street across from the school. And my favorite lunch was interestingly enough, grilled cheese and tomato.

Kim Rentner: Thank you for sharing that with me and our audience.

Dr. Linda Bluth: Sure. A proper lunch. Thank you for this opportunity.

Jeff Harrell: Well, I hope you enjoyed that conversation with Kim Rentner and Dr. Linda Bluth. We're going to have more, as I mentioned at the open, more conversations around school transportation. In fact, the next episode is with Todd Watkins. Todd is the Transportation Director of Montgomery County Schools in Maryland. In Montgomery counties, they provide school transportation for over 200 schools and special schools in Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, DC. They transport, get this, over 103,000 students to and from school daily. So Todd will be sharing strategies that make his operation so successful. So make sure you look for that episode coming in the next several weeks.  Well, thank you for listening to the Tyler Tech Podcast. We drop new episodes every other Monday, so look for that. Also subscribe. Again, I'm Jeff Harrell, Director of Content Marketing for Tyler Technologies. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you soon.