One in five students in D.C. have mental and physical disabilities and families of these students with special needs said they continue to experience school bus disruptions this school year.
7News first reported the transportation issues back in January -- long delays and canceled bus routes due to hiring and retaining challenges, and drastic driver call-outs and retirements.
The Office of the State Superintendent of Education also changed the scheduling routing system which caused mass disruptions. For the past two months, no routes have been dropped but these children are waiting two, three and four times longer than last year.
School bus issues are still affecting between 30 and 50 bus routes daily. Some students are on buses for 90 minutes to two hours one-way. For some families that also means often missing after-school doctors' appointments.
State Superintendent Christina Grant said wait times are no longer exceeding 30 minutes. However, Elizabeth Daggett tells 7News her son Henry, a non-verbal special needs student at Saint Coletta Public charter school spends on average 90 minutes to two hours to get home every afternoon.
“Two hours on the bus for a non-verbal student who is also strapped in his bus and can’t tell you how he’s feeling, I can tell you when he gets home to my house he’s discombobulated and running all around,” said Daggett.
During a D.C. Council oversight hearing in earlier this month, Grant explained that OSSE is addressing issues with a $5,000 hiring bonus to attract prospective employees. During a recent hiring fair, the agency received 2,400 applications, but only 35 bus drivers were hired.
“We know we must do better to provide transportation services for students with disabilities. I can confidently say that we are making improvements,” Grant told the oversight committee. Just Monday, more than 30 school bus routes were affected by delays and drivers having to make extra routes.
At least 3,800 D.C. children with special needs use transportation to get to and from school. Months after a major transportation issue that left hundreds of school bus routes grounded or delayed, parents said many of the issues remain.
The OSSE was hit with 60 driver retirements at the start of the academic year. OSSE has created attendance incentives for its bus drivers with a $5,000 hiring bonus. The agency is also partnering with more than six private contractors to try to cover routes.
“We were caught off guard and we must do better to regain the trust of you, our families, and our school leaders," said Grant.
And for parents driving children themselves, the agency has doubled the parent transportation reimbursement rate and increased the capacity of its parent resource center. Yet, most parents 7News spoke with said payments are backlogged and getting through to someone at the center is very difficult.
“Families are still not made whole. Families that have had to lay out money either to provide their own transportation, have had to not work because they are busy waiting on buses that are still late,” said parent Elizabeth Mitchell, whose special needs son James, takes a bus from D.C. to Baltimore every day.