Penny Wise, Pound Foolish

I respect the difficulties that are encountered by the teachers and other school staffers who are responsible for my daughter on a day to day basis. In her case, autism manifests itself in behaviors that can be very trying. These include echolalia, which is “the uncontrollable and immediate repetition of words spoken by another person,”  OCD, the tendency to repeat phrases, particularly from movies, incessantly and the inability to answer questions about her current environment.

There are also behavioral issues associated with her condition. While it is possible to get her to follow rules, doing so requires constant reminders to stay on task. At her current level of progress these rules must be set in the present and must be broken down into basic steps.

Yesterday, my daughter’s school bus driver politely asked me to have a talk with her about her constant talking on the bus, which the driver found to be distracting. While I understood the problem and appreciated her concern for safety, I was a little surprised by her request. If my daughter had had a physical disability, would she have asked me to talk to her about walking to the bus faster?

This is not the first time that my wife and I have received this type of request. During the last school year the driver complained that our daughter had engaged with another special needs student and was repeatedly saying “you’re a donkey,” which she had heard in Shrek. Without the skills to cope with his annoyance the other student tried to leave the bus mid-trip. In another incident, debris that had been left on the bus was triggering her OCD and she disposed of it by throwing it out the window. Unfortunately, this hit another car on the freeway.

I do not blame the bus drivers for their inability to deal with these situations as they have been put in untenable situations by the LAUSD. They are not special education professionals with the associated training, they are bus drivers trained to safely transport students. On the summer route the driver is the only adult on the bus. During the school year there was one aid, but he was specifically assigned to one student and was only on the bus when that student was present. Drivers need to pay attention to the road and deserve assistance by someone with the formal education needed to handle the special needs of these students.

The district also needs to rethink their consolidation of these routes. They are currently using large buses to pick up students from wide areas, which increases the number of students the driver must deal with and the amount of time the students need to spend on the bus. In the last school year the route included both a middle and a high school and these were not in the same neighborhood. On days where one school had early dismissal and the other did not, the students would have to wait around for the others to be finished.

The failure to fix this problem comes with great financial risk to the district. The dangers of distracted drivers from the use of cellphones and other devices had been well documented. This danger is greatly magnified with a bus full of students. The potential liability of the district would quickly overwhelm the costs needed to fix the problem. This says nothing of the potential human cost.