Hispanic Children with Disabilities:
Recommendations on School Transportationin the United States and Mexico

Access Exchange International

Prepared and published byAccess Exchange International
San Francisco, California, USA<www.globalride-sf.org>
tom@globalride-sf.org
telephone 1-415-661-6355
Major funding for this publication was provided by
the United Methodist Church in San Francisco.
Front cover: The drawing below the title is an illustration of children, with and without disabilities,
arriving at a school using different modes of transportation including walking, bicycle riding, andvehicular transport (ramp-equipped bus and taxi, and smaller vehicles sometimes used in many
countries in Latin America). Pedestrian accessibility features include continuous level sidewalks,a zebra-striped raised crossing and a zebra-striped crossing using curb ramps. This image wascontributed by Eli Noyes in San Francisco and also appeared on the cover of AEI's internationalguide titled Bridging the Gap: Your role in transporting children with disabilities to school in developing
countries. Information on this and related AEI publications is found in Appendix 6 of this report.

© Access Exchange International
This material may be translated or reproduced for
non-commercial purposes only, provided that
Access Exchange International (AEI) is acknowledged as the source.
Please send a copy to AEI.
Disclaimer
This work includes different practices and examples of numerous methods oftransportation. Such practices, methods, or modes of transport vary from country to country andno endorsement is implied. Instructions on how to perform any specific procedure may not applyin every circumstance. Always follow all laws and regulations in your country, state, andmunicipality. Always follow manufacturer's instructions when using any equipment related to
student transport.
First published 2021

Table of Contents
4

Notes on vocabulary, abbreviations, and reviewers

5

Introduction.

6

Key Recommendations.

11 Part 1:

Regional context.

21 Part 2:

United States.

22 Population, culture, and school attendance of Hispanic students with disabilities
25 Transportation by school bus in the United States
31 Using public transportation to travel to school
34 Case study: San Francisco, California
37 Case study: Dallas, Texas
39 Part 3:

Mexico.

40 School transportation is a missing link
42 Taking public transportation to school in Mexico
44 Case study: Tijuana, Baja California
46 Takeaways from four school transport surveys
49 Case Study: CAM 19 in Pachuca de Soto, Hidalgo
54 Part 4: Appendices.

55 Appendix 1: Sample driver training curriculum
56 Appendix 2: Student information for drivers and schools
57 Appendix 3: Travel training
58 Appendix 4: Seeking transportation for your child with special needs
59 Appendix 5: Encouraging parent initiatives
60 Appendix 6: More information on school transportation from AEI
61 Appendix 7: Sources for further information3

Notes on vocabulary, abbreviations, and reviewers
Some caveats about vocabulary . . .
• We use the term Hispanic in the English version of this report to align with the term used bymany of our sources for persons with a Spanish-speaking heritage. Latino is less precise, andLatinx is not favored by colleagues in Mexico, who prefer to be known as Mexicans. We use theterms Americans and United States while being aware that the USA is part of the Americas,
which includes most of the western hemisphere, while the formal name of Mexico is Estados
Unidos Mexicanos, that is, the United States of Mexico. In this report we use the terms children
with special needs and children with disabilities interchangeably.
• The term school transportation is typically used as a general category including travel by a
dedicated school bus, by different modes of public or private transportation, by walking or
rolling in a wheelchair, or through parent initiatives such as car pools.

Abbreviations used in this report . . .
ADA

The Americans with Disabilities Act, including regulations specifying accessibility
standards for transportation vehicles and facilities in the United States

CAM

Centro de Asistencia Multiple (Center for Multiple Assistance) is the term used forspecial schools for children with disabilities in Mexico

ENADID Encuesta Nacional de la Dinámica Demográfica 2018 (National Survey of
Mexico's population dynamics taken in 2018)
IDEA

The USA's Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, mandating free schooltransportation when required by children with disabilities

IEP

Individualized Education Program required for each student diagnosed with adisability in the USA by the IDEA legislation

INEGI

Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía (National Institute of Statistics andGeography) in Mexico

SEP

Secretaría de Educación Pública (Secretary of Public Education) in Mexico

USAER Unidad de Servicio de Apoyo a la Educación Regular (Service unit to assist regulareducation) is the Mexican abbreviation for units within regular integrated schools
which provide assistance for students with disabilities

We thank the following reviewers for their valuable comments . . .
Appreciation is expressed to Sofía Alquicirez Tellez, Andrés Balcázar de la Cruz, Nicolas Finck,
Manuel Hernández Sánchez, Olga Maldonado, Gerhard Menckhoff, Suzanne Moore, Jane Stahl,
Annette Williams, and Susan Worts for their review and comments on all or parts of this report.
The contents and recommendations in this report are the work of many hands and may not reflect
the opinion of specific reviewers.

4

Introduction.

This report looks at factors impacting school transportation for Hispanic children andyouth with disabilities in the United States and Mexico. Our goal is to suggest ways toimprove school attendance through improvements to school transportation,
walkability, different modes of public transportation, and parent initiatives. Our teamhas conducted personal interviews with practitioners in various locations in the UnitedStates and Mexico and also examined regional concerns such as shared geography,
climate change, cultural differences, cross-border activities, and the dislocations that
occur around the world when a frontier separates a wealthier country from a markedly
less-wealthy country. All populations of students should enjoy similar opportunities
and resources when it comes to getting to and from school, whether defined by acommon ethnicity or, as is the case with Hispanic students, by a shared language orcultural heritage. May our observations on transportation for Hispanic children and youth
in the United States and Mexico be helpful to students with special needs everywhere.
The World Bank issued a report four years ago concluding that "gaps in education
outcomes between children with and without disabilities have been increasing overtime" in less-wealthy countries.1 Our research leads us to believe that in Mexico thisgap largely results from a lack of school transportation. School transport concerns in
low-income areas of the United States also contribute to a lack of attendance.
This report has been prepared by an international team headed up by three Americans
and three Mexicans. In Mexico: Janett Jiménez Santos, an architect in Mexico City, isa consultant who works internationally and with Mexican federal and state
governments on inclusive transportation. Javier Guerrero Aguirre has a researchbackground in issues of special education at the University of Mexico and Mexico's
Secretaría de Educación Pública. Daniela Briseño Arriaga has provided research aswell as technical help in preparing this report. In the United States: Tom Rickert, thefounder of Access Exchange International more than thirty years ago and coordinatorof this report, has prepared public transport guides for the World Bank and once
served as manager of accessible services for what is now the San Francisco,California, Municipal Transportation Agency. Pete Meslin served for twenty years as aschool transport manager, most recently as Director of Transportation for the
Newport-Mesa Unified School District in southern California. Rachel Carp provided
research in Texas and currently continues to work with children at risk.
Go to www.globalride-sf.org for more AEI materials on school transport including
videos, posters, and our guide, Bridging the Gap: Your role in transporting children
with disabilities to school in developing countries. These materials also include
pandemic-related toolkits for education and transportation officials. All of ourmaterials are in both English and Spanish.
1Male, C., and Q. Wodon (2017). Disability Gaps in Educational Attainment and Literacy, The Price of Exclusion: Disability and Education Notes
Series, Washington, DC: The World Bank.

5

Key Recommendations.

to improve school transport for Hispanic children
with special needs in the USA and Mexico
Increase cooperation between USA and Mexican stakeholders
Governments, educators, transportation agencies and staff
Learning plans should cross borders: Depending on circumstances, both documented andundocumented children and youth with special needs may relocate between the USA and Mexico
for part or all of their education. Where possible, records of student education plans should
either travel with the parents or otherwise be available to the former and future school districts. In
the case of students leaving the USA to continue their schooling in Mexico, this could include a
Spanish translation of the Individualized Education Program (IEP) required by the USA's
Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). The appropriate document for Mexican
students moving to the USA could be the Propuesta Curricular Adaptada of the Secretaría de
Educación Pública in English translation.
Accessible pedestrian infrastructure and travel to school should be assured for students withspecial needs who cross the border on a daily or frequent basis – from Mexico to the UnitedStates, or from the United States to Mexico – in order to attend school.
Non-profit agencies and associations
NGOs and non-profit agencies serving Hispanic children and youth should train their staffs inawareness of the special needs of children with disabilities and the resources available in theirrespective countries to meet these needs. The cross-border work of non-profit agencies which
promote school transportation should be encouraged and other stakeholders should learn fromtheir experiences in this field.
School transport associations should take the initiative in planning for cross-border cooperation
while sharing knowledge and skills in the school transportation field.
Advocates, parents, caretakers, and older students
Connecting with resources: Parents, caregivers, and older students should be given information
on how to connect with resources needed by younger students. They should be given the tools
to be effective advocates.

USA: A focus on the specific needs of Hispanic children with disabilities
Government agencies, school districts and their transportation departments
Immigrant children: All jurisdictions should fully respect national legislation requiring all children
living in the USA to receive an education. All Hispanic immigrant children with special needs
should be included. Educators should not inquire about immigration status of parents orstudents. Educators should recognize that undocumented Hispanic parents may face difficult
decisions about school transportation, fearing that use of transportation might bring theirimmigration status into question.
Transportation is included: Transportation solutions and attention to homeless students must be
provided as part of the Individualized Education Program (IEP) for students with disabilities.
Special attention should be paid to any parental language issues which might fail to inform them6

of their rights under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Parents may wish to
identify a person to join them in IEP meetings if language barriers are a concern. The IEP meetingis also the time to carefully evaluate whether the student's school transport needs can be met bypublic transit or if the student will have to ride on a school bus.
Assessment of children: Hispanic parents should be encouraged to seek assessment of theirchildren for special education, while avoiding false placement in special education due to Englishlearning difficulties. The cost of failure to assess these issues can be enormous over the lifetimeof the child.
Spanish-speaking staff: School district transportation departments should address language andculture issues by adding Spanish-speaking staff when needed. Districts often need to improve
recruitment of school transport personnel to address staffing shortages that have grown during
the pandemic and were common even before the pandemic.
Qualified drivers: In some cases National Guard troops are being assigned to drive school buses
without the important training that regular drivers receive. When and if this is done, they should
not be assigned to buses carrying students with special needs. Transportation services forstudents with special needs are mandated by their IEP and untrained drivers, no matter how wellmeaning, are not qualified to serve them.
Performance indicators based on measureable goals should be put into place to monitor thequality of school transportation for children with special needs. Examples include standards foron-time service or for response time to parent queries about school bus service.
Real-time information for parents: School districts should take full advantage of technicalprogress in providing real-time information in Spanish and other needed languages, while
assuring full second-language capabilities in their in-house or contracted school bus services.
These students need to be identified so that they can be served. (Note the concern of parents
regarding communications in Spanish in the San Francisco case study on page 36.)
Affordable public transportation: School districts should work closely with city departments,
public transit agencies and others serving low-income, homeless or migrant students in order tosubsidize their public transportation fares when needed.
Training is essential due to the special needs of many Hispanic children and their families:• Recognize and respond: Drivers and staff should be fully trained to recognize and respond to
the needs of students with disabilities. The "Child Find" mandate within the federal IDEA
legislation requires that all school districts identify and evaluate all children and youth withdisabilities from birth through age 21.
• Cross-training: Transportation and special education departments should cross-train to
reinforce the work of each in assisting students. Equality and equity in the treatment ofstudents with special needs should be assured.
• Bullying: Drivers and aides should be trained to react to and prevent bullying.
• Behavior support plans should be used on buses and integrated into classroom instruction.
• Travel training should be provided to students with special needs to assure a more inclusive andintegrated school travel experience. Travel training increases safety and confidence, while
enabling many students to transition into a more independent adulthood by achieving greater
mobility. Failure to provide training may doom students to the most restrictive setting and failto prepare them for life beyond high school.

7

Public transit agencies
Promote cooperative agreements between school bus and public transport agencies in USA cities.
Incorporate disability awareness modules into the training, retraining, and cross-training of public
transport drivers and staff.
Educate passengers to respond appropriately to children with disabilities and their caretakers.
Affordability: City departments should work with public transportation agencies and non-profit
agencies to assure that low-income or homeless youth can afford public transportation to school.
Advocates, parents and caretakers, and older students
Advocacy: Parents should be assisted to advocate when it comes to their children with special
needs. They should seek training on representing their children at required meetings prior toestablishing an Individualized Education Program (IEP) for each child with special needs. This
especially applies to non-English speaking parents. (See also Appendix 4)
Researchers
Research is needed when it comes to school transportation: Education researchers have paid
scant attention to school transportation. Examples of work needed include• Establishing correlations between school attendance and riding time
• Objective measurement of the quality of contracted vs. school district operated
buses (e.g. comparing the documented number of incidents on board school buses)• Parent attitudes concerning the length of bus rides need to be measured• Comparisons of percentages of Spanish-speaking personnel vs. the education experiences of
Hispanic students• The impact on student success of decentralized (multiple) school sites vs. a more centralized
school site(s) for students with specific disabilities needs to be measured. This research would
clarify the need for students with specific disabilities to be bused to multiple schools vs. asingle school, while taking into account factors such as the tradeoffs when transportation isrequired to multiple sites. If indicated by research, transportation costs could be offset by thebenefits to students.

MEXICO: A focus on pilot projects and implementing concrete plans
Government agencies, school districts, and researchers
National legislation is needed to mandate a process to create comprehensive schooltransportation for children and youth with disabilities in both urban and rural areas, in line with theUnited Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. This legislation should
require that goals be set with corresponding performance indicators at state and municipal levels.
National guidelines need to be followed by training at state and municipal levels on how to phasein both dedicated school bus services as well as more inclusive public transportation.
Legislation should encourage capacity building, including international cooperation through theexchange and sharing of information, experience, training programs, and best practices.
Funding school transportation: Seek new sources of revenue for school transportation from theprivate sector and from foundations to supplement existing sources.

8

Accessible bus routes need to be initiated with schedules available to students with disabilities,
both in high-density urban areas and, where possible, in rural areas without available
transportation. Parents should be able to contact a single agency to access information on travelby their children on public transport and/or dedicated school transport.
School site selection: Require that site selection for Centers for Multiple Assistance (CAMs)
consider the long-term costs to parents or others of student transportation for the life of the
facility. Site selection should take these transportation costs into consideration.
Plan, implement, and evaluate current projects and create pilot projects relevant to children withdisabilities, with broad dissemination of findings concerning both benefits and challenges facingthese projects. Examples follow:• Dedicated school buses: Examine the benefits and challenges facing school districts whichhave implemented systems of dedicated school buses, assessing what has been learned frompublic and from private schools as well as from efforts sponsored by NGOs. Seek guidancefrom existing systems in Mexico and Latin America. See the case study from Curitiba, Brazil, in
AEI's Bridging the Gap guide.
• Informal means of transportation: Examine existing projects utilizing three-wheeled motorcycletaxis or other less formal means of providing lower-cost transportation, weighing the pros andcons of such approaches in terms of their safety, the use of additional safety features such asseat belts and safety panels on doorways, driver training, limitations of use to streets withslower moving traffic, and the ability to deliver year-after-year lower-cost school transportation.
See page 42.
• Use of aides on public transportation: Requirements that parents accompany their children to,from, or during school hours create grievous obstacles for low-income parents. These parents
often must care for other children or work to sustain their families and this often results in theirchildren with special needs not attending school. Different approaches to training and funding
aides, including the use of volunteers, need to be explored.
• Pedestrian infrastructure: Accessible features are needed for sidewalks and intersections
between home and school for children walking to school, with a special emphasis on the use of
curb ramps, marked intersections, traffic signs and lights, and other features on routes between
public transportation stops and nearby or adjacent schools. A focus is needed on Centers forMultiple Assistance (CAM) and USAER (Service Units to Assist Regular Education) schools.
See the case study of CAM 19 in Pachuca de Soto.
• DIF: State and municipal Systems for Integral Family Development (DIF) may wish to share theirsuccesses as well as the challenges facing their efforts to assist with school transport in anenvironment where multiple demands are made on their vehicles and staff. Their accumulated
experience is valuable.
• Funding: Assess current approaches by individual schools and school districts to raise funds
for school transportation from the business community, foundations, and other institutions. The
emphasis should be on long-term funding sources that enable low-income parents to plan theirchildren's education with confidence.
• Carpools and subsidies: Investigate approaches including promotion of carpools by parents ofchildren with disabilities, as well as subsidies to assist low-income parents with the costs ofschool travel. See the case study on Costa Rica in AEI's guide, Bridging the Gap.
• Learn from others: Review experiences of other entities, such as internal transport and specialtransport for students with disabilities at the National Autonomous University of Mexico(UNAM), as well as from sources in other countries.

9Make information available, by agency, following such practices as the federal "911 format" of theSecretaría de Educación Pública (SEP), with basic data including total students registered.
Indicators to measure progress: Work at state and federal levels to measure the performance ofspecial education programs, including the percentage of school days actually attended by
students with disabilities registered for school in each municipality and state. Performanceindicators are also needed to monitor improvements in school transport. This work should
consider a common model that results in a reliable database, taking as a basis the social modeland the experience of Mexico's National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI).
Review census information by locality or municipality based on its area of competence. This
could include a census of accessible school transport vehicles, routes, average use, and othertransit indicators. In coordination with the Secretary of Public Education (SEP), it could also
include the number of students with disability who attend an educational center and theirattendance rate, educational lag, and graduation rates.
Investigate use of smaller vehicles: Consider agreements with localities to provide low-costaccessible school transport using pedicabs, three-wheeled motorcycle taxis, and other small
vehicles that can reduce transportation costs and link to main transport routes. Basic safetyissues should be addressed, and safety concerns should be weighed against the alternative ofchildren with special needs not attending school, for example the benefits and challenges ofmotor-taxis in Chimalhuacán.
Public transit agencies
Train drivers: Require and monitor training and periodic retraining for the drivers and staff ofpublic transport agencies in order to address school transportation for children with disabilities
and their caregivers. Ideally, drivers and staff could be certified as especially trained in serving
students with disabilities.
Improve public information and visible and audible signage on board transit vehicles and attransit stops and stations, keeping in mind the needs of school children and youth as well as
adults with disabilities and, indeed, all passengers. Municipalities should publicize contact
information for a central point where parents can seek information. These activities can be linked
with community awareness campaigns and public service announcements in the media.
Commend good drivers: Consider approaches to commend outstanding drivers, based onparent compliments. This could be done at municipal, state, or even national levels.
Law enforcement, advocates, parents and caretakers
Prevent bullying: Raise awareness and involve the community in the care of children and youth
with disabilities so they do not suffer violence or discrimination on the way to or from school.
Children and youth with disabilities
Consultation with children and youth with disabilities: Individuals with disabilities and theirorganizations should take the lead in promoting inclusive school transportation and inclusive
public transportation. Transportation agencies should take the lead in reaching out to disability
NGOs and to individual passengers with disabilities to learn, at first hand, about the needs of theircustomers with disability.

10

Part 1: Regional Context.

The larger forces impacting school transportation for Hispanic students
with special needs in the United States and Mexico

11Regional Context:
The larger forces impacting school transportation for Hispanic students
with special needs in the United States and Mexico
This section explores some of the school transportation concerns in and between
American and Mexican border states as well as the countries as a whole. These
concerns are impacted by larger environmental, social, and economic realities which mustbe acknowledged because of their impact on transportation issues.
For too long, discussions of equity for poor people, when it comes to education, haveignored issues of how children and youth are able (or not able) to get to and fromschool buildings. When it comes to children with disabilities, the focus around theworld has been on making the school buildings accessible and has often ignored how
children are expected to get from where they live to the school. Part of this is anatural reluctance to deal with problems that are clearly expensive to solve.
Transportation costs money, either for parents and caregivers or for governments or
school districts if they are charged with addressing this problem.
The problem becomes more acute in those portions of the Spanish-speaking world
where Hispanic families often live in poverty, such as Mexico or the United States.
Low-income parents (often the mother in a single-parent family) are thrown on themercies of whatever public transportation may exist in Mexico, while in the UnitedStates access to the ubiquitous yellow school bus must overcome language issues
and, for many, the unique barriers facing those who have fled north to the USA or to
Mexico in order to escape poverty and violence elsewhere.
Add to this a pandemic that never seems to stopand the politics of a chaotic world and we would dowell to step back, pause, and look at some of thelarger contexts within which we need to figure thingsout. One such approach is to look at regions before
looking at political borders. We are choosing such aroute by first looking at some of the forces that
impact both Mexico and the southwestern UnitedStates.

1. The entire region is under assault by
forces unleashed by global warming

The Sonoran Desert region and its
subdivisions appear in different colors.
- Map from Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum.

The region which is a focus of this study shares a
hot climate several months a year. And it is getting
hotter and drier due to global warming. This isespecially true of the Sonoran Desert, a major
geographical feature of the region which overlaps
12portions of the states of California, Baja California, Arizona, and Sonora. The Sonoran
Desert in both countries is showing some of the most profound increases in summer
temperatures in the world, threatening the livability of portions of these areas forfamilies which cannot afford air conditioning and do not have access to air
conditioned vehicles. Transportation impacts flow from issues of extreme climatechange, including the ability of children to walk or be carried to school in very hot
weather, as well as the cost per trip of transportation if global warming causes muchof the border region to become less habitable. Unless global warming is brought
under control, drought conditions are expected to increase in future years as rainfall
decreases.
Meanwhile, drought conditions
to the south of Mexico inCentral America are causing
crop failures which are a key
reason why desperate families
are fleeing north with theirchildren, ending up in Mexicoor the United States. 1 Most
Hispanic
immigrants
fromoutside of Mexico are from El
Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras (in that order). As climate change increases
northbound migration in years to come, the resulting increase in the number of
Hispanic school children, including those with special needs, may in turn require
additional school transportation to get these children and youth to and from school.

2. As with similar borders around the world which divide countries ofdisparate wealth, the sharp disparity in wealth between the USA andMexico has driven migration to the north
The challenges of global warming increase the problems brought about in both theUnited States and Mexico by sharp inequalities in distribution of wealth. In Mexico
the top 1% of the population owns over 40% of the wealth and the top 1% in the USA
owns at least 40% of the wealth.2 However, 56 million Mexicans, or about 44% of the
population, fall below the poverty line by Mexican standards, compared to only 10.5%in the USA by American standards. The poverty levels in adjacent Central Americancountries are also a major concern. For many years, the desperation of families living
in poverty helped drive migration to the north, increasing the level of need of Hispanic
1

Gotlieb,Y., Pérez-Briceño, P., Hidalgo, H. and Alfaro, E. (2019). The Central American Dry Corridor: a consensus statement and its background.
Revista Yu'am 3(5): 42-51. The accompanying map, above, is based on digital cartography by Paula M. Pérez-Briceño and the source is noted as
CIAT-World Bank-UNEP (1999).
2
Among the many sources of data, we point out USA data cited in the December 6, 2017 Washington Post, based on research by economist Edward M.
Wolff, and Mexican data cited in Statista, Latin America: wealth inequality based on income concentration by country 2019, published by Teresa
Romero, July 5, 2021. The 10.5% figure for Americans below the poverty line is from 2019 US Census Bureau data, while the 44% figure for Mexico isfrom Mexico's Consejo Nacional de Evaluación de la Política de Desarrollo Social (CONEVAL). Definitions of poverty vary between countries.

13

children during their initial years in the USA. In more recent years, even before thepandemic, migration to the USA may have been overrated as a cause of population
increase. During the past decade, the United States experienced the slowest
population growth rate in eight decades because of plunging fertility rates andshrinking immigration.3

3. Mexico and the USA have similar structural approaches to special education, but there is a big difference when it comes to transportation to school
Both countries support the concepts that education should be as integrated andinclusive as possible and that children with special needs should benefit from a policyof free public education for all children and youth, including those with disability.
While Mexico falls short on implementation, both countries share a common
commitment that different levels of government should fund most or all of school
construction costs and of teachers salaries for children with special needs. One of themost glaring differences is that Mexican policy frameworks do not include a commitment to school transportation for children with special needs, while the USA, at leastin theory, fully funds this commitment. The lack of transport to school in Mexico has
had a devastating impact on the ability of children with disabilities to attend school.
The USA has strongly enforced legislation requiring government funding of schooltransportation for children with special needs, while Mexico not only lacks such
legislation but provides little assistance to most parents and caregivers to get their children
to school. When it comes to school transportation, many problems remain in the USA (seePart 2 of this report) but the problem is far greater in Mexico (see Part 3).

4. A lack of school transportation in Mexico prevents many children with special
needs from going to school, or permits only part-time attendance at school

Even children without disabilities living a distance of 1 mile
(1.6 km) from a middle school would find it difficult to walkto school in the yellow area. - Source: "Example Enrollment Area
that Creates a Prohibitively Long Walking/Biking Trip for Some
Students," from the US EPA's Office of Children's Health Protection,

School Siting Guidelines, Oct. 20113

If a child with a disability lives too
far from school to walk, roll, or be
carried, and parents lack the means
to access a car or other alternative
way of getting to school, then a lackof transportation will inhibit orprevent that child from attendingclasses. This situation is shown in
the illustration at left, and is
depicted in detail for an actual
school in Mexico on page 50. The
further the child lives from school,
the harder the situation becomes.
Our
researchhas
repeatedly

Frey, W.F., "Just before COVID-19, American migration hit a 73-year low," Brookings Institute, December 15, 2020, citing US Census data from2019-20. See also Jordan, M., "Decline in Immigration Threatens Growth of Regions on the Rise," NY Times, August 10, 2021.

14x

suggested that the lack of safe, reliable, affordable, and accessible transport to school
accounts for nearly 25% to over 40% of the lack of attendance by children with special
needs in lower-income regions around the world. This situation is documented in ourguide, Bridging the Gap.

5. Our common border is a dynamic place with people crossing in both
directions for multiple purposes, including thousands of children and youth
who cross daily in order to attend school
The border separating Mexico and the United States is the most frequently crossedinternational boundary in the world, with approximately 350 million legal crossings
every year in pre-pandemic times. There are 48 border crossing points between the
USA and Mexico. Prior to the pandemic, the USA/Mexico land border at San Diego
and Tijuana was arguably the busiest in the world, with 70,000 northbound vehicles
and 20,000 other individuals crossing daily. Hundreds of thousands of US citizens
cross into Mexico every year to seek less-expensive medical and dental care.
Additionally hundreds of thousands of USA retirees have crossed the border to live
less expensively in Mexico.4
Several thousand Mexican children and youth, many or most of whom are US citizens
by birth, cross the border daily to attend public schools and universities in California,
New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas. Traffic is especially heavy into the San Diego and El
Paso regions. Other hundreds are USA citizens who cross daily from the San Diegoarea into Mexico, mainly to attend the technical and business courses at the CETYS
University campuses in Tijuana and Mexicali.5 Yet others from Mexico cross into the
USA to live there for the sake of their children with disabilities who need moreadvanced medical care. Issues of immigration from Mexico and Central America need
to be seen in this larger context.

6. Cultural differences matter, especially for children with special needs
who are newly introduced to schools in the USA or in Mexico
Regardless of legal status, Hispanic families who have migrated to the USA from Latin
America, as well as Hispanic families who have migrated to Mexico from the USA,experience the culture shock of being in a new environment.
Parents with children with special needs newly arrived in the USA from Mexico
enter an environment which usually provides better-funded schools, more
opportunities for special education for children with disabilities, and schooltransportation if needed for such students at no cost as required by law. However,parents may face the daunting issue of deciding if they should enroll their child in school,
4

Data on legal crossings per year come from "San Ysidro Port of Entry," Wikipedia, in turn citing data from the U.S. General Services
Administration retrieved in 2018. Figures for medical visits and number of retirees are estimates only.
5
Pre-pandemic reports in five newspapers from different US border areas totaled more than 6,000 students commuting daily to schools in the USA,but this represents a conservative estimate. The estimate of US students at CETYS is from the San Diego Union-Tribune of February 24, 2020.

15

and how to do so in the midst of cultural disorientation which may include a language
barrier, lack of employment, and a society with different cultural values.
Attitudes toward disability in Mexico tend to differ from those in North America, withgreater value being placed on disability being an internal problem to be dealt with by
the family. There may be more of a sense of shame around disability on the part ofthe parents. These values may have been learned amid societal rejection, lack ofproper diagnosis of disability, and a lack of social services and special education
facilities. The "meaning" of disability may also have been formed amidst a lack ofschool transportation. Especially in rural areas with little in the way of public
transportation, it may have been impossible to send their child to any school at all, letalone to a school prepared to provide the extra help they need. For such reasons,lower-income or rural immigrants from Mexico and Central America may not haveexpectations that specialized education is available in integrated regular schools or in
special schools in their new surroundings in the USA. This concern is aggravated by alanguage barrier and cultural barriers, and, for those without documentation, by fearthat students in special education might more readily expose parents to public view,especially while children travel to and from school.
Hispanic parents newly arrived in Mexico from the USA or Central America face
their own serious issues. Many children in need of special education are amongdisplaced students, already suffering culture shock and, in some cases, the moresignificant traumas of high-risk travel and family dislocation. Such children may haveboth diagnosed and undiagnosed disabilities made worse by their experiences as
migrants or refugees.
Hispanic children from the United States may have lost their familiarity with Spanish,
and especially with reading or writing Spanish in an environment where they aretaught to read and write in English. For a variety of reasons their parents may decideto move back to Mexico or elsewhere in Latin America. The gamut of reasons
includes reuniting families with relatives or seeking better employment. The reasons
may also include deportation to Mexico of undocumented parents and children in theUSA. Mexican schools seldom have "Spanish learner" programs, given that they haveusually had less need to teach Spanish as a second language. This can provechallenging for Mexican school districts. For example, there was a crisis in Baja
California's public school system in 2018 when an influx of children from the USA ––many deported with their parents –– reached some fifty thousand students, creating
understandable strains and leading local authorities to quickly expand their Binational
Program of Migrant Education. The newly arrived students suffer from dislocation
which may be ongoing: "The migrant child never stops moving," commented theprogram's coordinator.6 An even more severe problem may face the children of
migrants from Central America trying to escape poverty especially in El Salvador,
6

Alumnos extranjeros alcanzan los 52 mil en el estado, from Noticias/Frontera, disseminated by COPASEBC (an NGO dedicated to improving
education in Baja California), February 22, 2019. The quote is from the coordinator of PROBEM, Baja California's Programa Binacional de
Educación Migrante (Binational program of migrant education).

16

Guatemala, and Honduras, as well as other migrants entering Mexico from Haiti andother countries in the Caribbean, Asia and Africa.

7. The role of NGOs in promoting school transport for children with disabilities
There are many foundations, development banks, international aid organizations, andgovernments at all levels who should have an interest in promoting transportation for
persons with disabilities. There are also large well-established non-governmentalorganizations doing excellent work in this field. All of these agencies need to avoid"silo thinking," failing to link education with transportation to school, or failing tocooperate with a range of smaller secular or faith-based agencies promoting social
improvements in countries where many or most persons live in poverty.
Larger agencies often ignore the work of smaller non-profit agencies which are often
able to advocate for school transportation and implement pilot projects with minimal
budgets, less bureaucracy, and more flexibility. Governments and development
agencies would do well to learn from such agencies, keeping in mind that a major part ofthe social service infrastructure in many countries was initiated by such faith-based or
secular initiatives and larger organizations can learn from their experience.
There are many NGOs in Mexico itself which need support from local donors. The
following are examples of a more regional approach by cross-border agencies,
typically funded by a mix of grants and donations, that assist with school transport in
Mexico or beyond. We have selected three of these agencies as representative ofdifferent models of support for school transportation.
Rancho Santa Marta, near San Vicente in Baja California, serves at-risk students witha special emphasis on mainstreaming children with learning disabilities into their larger
school serving 300 kindergarten
through 9th grade students. Thisevangelical Christian school is
supported by donations through a
ministry
basedinsouthern
California.
With forty years ofexperience, they have refined theirschool bus operation to meet needs
beyond San Vicente (photo at left,courtesy of Rancho Santa Marta),with transportation provided by theirfleet of six buses to several villages to the south of San Vicente in rural Baja California.
Parents are asked to bring their children to pickup spots in these villages to shorten
trip times.7 Go to ranchosantamarta.org for information.

7

Information from interview with Bill Lawrence of Rancho Santa Marta support staff, on August 28, 2021

17

Mobility Worldwide (https://mobilityworldwide.org) is a large project, formally secular
but with deep roots in the United Methodist Church in various parts of the UnitedStates. Since 1994, this agency has assisted with personal mobility devices forchildren and adults with disabilities in Mexico and many other countries around theworld. Three-wheeled personal hand-powered wheelchairs with capacity to carrygoods or products are fabricated by volunteers in the USA and elsewhere anddistributed through other agencies working in dozens of countries in the Americas,
Africa, and Asia.8 In late 2021 this agency sponsored a virtual conference bringing
together leading manufacturers and promoters of wheelchairs and other personal
mobility devices to improve dissemination of mobility aids in low-income countries.
The Benjamin Bus Project (http://the benjaminbusproject.com) is an example of asmall secular non-profit agency in the western USA which provides transportation forchildren with special needs. With work focused on Panajachel, Guatemala, theagency has adopted a school in a single town. With the local government supplying abuilding and two teachers, theBenjamin Bus Project supplies a school
bus which, in non-pandemic times,
brings children from nearby villages tothe school.
Wisely, such a small
agency, funded by donors in the USA,rents the bus locally (photo at left,courtesy of The Benjamin Bus Project),leaving it up to the company to provide
fuel, insurance, and maintenance forthe vehicle. The Benjamin Bus Project pays a part-time teacher who also acts as anaide on the bus, thus freeing mothers from the burden of accompanying their child toand from school on a public bus (if it exists) while trying to care for their other children
or work to put food on the table. This model represents the integration of atransportation component into available local resources.9

8. A comment concerning on-line learning
It is not within the scope of this report to examine the complex issues raised by theon-line learning which children with disabilities faced and still face during the Covid-19
pandemic. In general, with some exceptions, children with disabilities have done far
better with in-school classes than with virtual learning. Much may have been learned
during the pandemic, but what remains clear is that children with disabilities who growup in low-income households, even assuming they have access to the internet andtechnology, have a harder time when it comes to on-line learning. On-line learning"solves" that portion of school transportation having to do with daily attendance at a
8
Information based on discussions with Scott Walters, Executive Director of Mobility Worldwide, April, 2021, and with Margot Newcomb, Chair of
their Board of Directors, on September 29, 2021.
9
Information about The Benjamin Bus Project includes discussions with Charla Wistos in August, 2021.

18

physical school building. This would be important for children living in isolated
circumstances which prevent them from attending any school. The larger need,clearly, is that children with disabilities be able to go to school, socialize with otherchildren, have direct interactions with teachers, and, like the rest of us, "rejoin theworld" after coping with the stresses of the global pandemic.

Actions are needed to address regional issues from a regional perspective
The interconnected realities of climate and global warming, wealth and poverty,
cultural differences, language spoken, and national health and education policies all
affect special education programs in the United States and Mexico. Neither country isisolated from still wider global issues. Countries may stop at their borders, but entire
regions and the entire world are impacted by pandemics, global warming, andworsening extremes of climate. Such factors in turn impact the extremes of wealthand poverty and the cultural attitudes resulting from such extremes. They impact
education in general, special education in particular, and school transport for students
with disabilities.
Prior to examining the specific situations within the USA (Part 2) or Mexico (Part 3), we
offer these suggestions for mitigating some regional concerns.
1) Much of the territory to the north and south of the USA/Mexican border is subject tomore serious global warming than other parts of the world. Unless global warming
is arrested, the loss of habitat for human beings could become more significant andnegatively impact education and school transport in the region.
2) Government agencies as well as non-profit and volunteer agencies should seek to
identify children with special needs who arrive from another country. They should
provide parents of children with disabilities with information on how to seek
diagnosis or health care for their children as well as the availability of special
education services, how to register for such services, and how to safely accesstransportation to and from such services and schools.
3) Where possible, the educational records of children with disabilities should either
travel with the parents or otherwise be available to the former and future school
districts. For example, Hispanic students with special needs, upon leaving the USA
should have a translated version of their Individualized Education Plan (IEP), while
Mexican students leaving Mexico should have a translated version of the Propuesta
Curricular Adaptada of Mexico's Secretariat of Public Education (SEP).
4) There are several volunteer agencies in the USA which foster school transportationin one or another area of Mexico or Central America. Their work, as well as thework of Mexican NGOs, should be encouraged while recognizing that scaling up
long-term solutions to school transportation must include long-term funding by
local governments or long-term investments by foundations and the private sector.

195) Trade associations, bus manufacturers, school districts, and non-profit agencies
which support school transport in the USA should strengthen their relationships
with peers in Mexico. Transport professionals in the USA should share theirknowledge and skills in school transportation when requested by their colleagues in
Mexico. Conferences in the school transportation field in the USA should beavailable to Mexican colleagues even as American colleagues attend conferenceson bus rapid transit and other topics in Mexico.

20

Part 2: United States.

A focus on the specific needs of Hispanic children withdisabilities

21

Population, culture, and school attendance byHispanic students with disabilities in four key states
This part of our report discusses school transportation concerns for Hispanic students
with disabilities in the USA, including a discussion of issues impacting children's trips
to and from school, followed by
Data from the four USA states sharing the bor- sections on transportation by school
der of the USA and Mexico: California (CA), bus and by local public transportation,
Arizona (AZ), New Mexico (NM), & Texas (TX)
and concluding with case studies fromSan Francisco, California, and Dallas,CAAZ NM TX
Texas.
General population in40
7.2
2.1 30
millions Total: app. 80
Students in the United States typicallymillion. (U.S. Census Bureau)
go to school between the ages
Hispanics in millions &15.6 2.2
1.0 11.4 of 5 and 18, attending kindergarten andas % of general popula31%
50%
38%
39%
then grades 1 through 12. Primary, ortion Total: app. 30
elementary, education typically lasts
million (U.S. Census Bureau)
until 5th grade, middle school or junior
Public school children in
6.2
1.1
.3
5.5
high school covers 6th through 8th
millions (Hanson, Melanie,"K12 School Enrollment & Student
grade, and secondary education
Population Stats" EducationData.
covers 9th through 12th grade.
org, Sept. 19, 2021)
Children with disabilities are eligible to
All students with disabilities ages 3-21 in thousands
795 135
49 540 receive free special education andand as a % of all children
related services. The Individuals with
12.8% 12.3% 16.6% 9.8%
in school. Total: approx.
Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)
1.5 million (Nat'l. Center for
defines a "child with a disability," andEducation Statistics, 2018-19;
EducationData.org; CA Dept. of Edlists 13 different categories of disabiliucation Enrollment)ties under which children can be eligible
Hispanic children in public
to receive special education and related
55%
45%
62% 53%schools as % of allservices including free transportation tochildren in school*
and from school when needed.
Hispanic students with disabilities, in thousands.**
Total: 822,000

451

65

34

272

Numbers above are rounded, approximate, and from different
recent years. See data for Mexican border states at page 40.
* CA: Cal. Dept. of Ed., Fingertip Facts on Education in Calif.,
2019-20 school year; AZ: extrapolated from Ballotpedia, Public
education in Arizona; NM: NewMexicoKidScan, State of Educationin New Mexico, 2018; TX: Texas Education Agency, 2019-20** Source: Exhibits A-3 & A-4 from the 42nd Annual Report toCongress on the Implementation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, 2020, pages 278-281.

1. Population and school
attendance trends
US Census Bureau data for 2020
reports that approximately 61 million
Americans (18.5% of the population of
the USA) identified themselves as of"Hispanic or Latino" origin.

About half of all Hispanic residents –approximately 30 million – live in the four USA states touching the common border of
the USA and Mexico, as shown in the box above and the map on the following page.
22

The great majority of Hispanic people in the region are of Mexican heritage. However,around a million persons of Central American heritage live in California, supplementing
around 11 million of Mexican heritage. At least 330,000 Central Americans are also
reported as living in the Houston and Dallas metro areas in Texas. The numbers ofCentral Americans in Arizona and New Mexico are far lower1 and of course even smaller
numbers are present with a heritage extending to every country in the Spanish-speaking
world. The overall Hispanic population of the four U.S. states on the border exceeds
the combined populations of the adjacent six Mexican states on the other side of theborder.
The majority of the 13 million public school students in the four USA states are
Hispanic. Latino students are enrolled in special education classes at roughly thesame rate as that of all students. More than 800,000 Hispanic students in the fourstates are assessed with a disability and qualify for special education services atsome level.
Texas is an exception, having
the lowest percentage ofstudents in the USA who
qualify for special education
services under the IDEA act.
In all four states, 13% to15%ofstudentswithdisabilities are classified as
Hispanic Population as a Percent of Total Population by County
having speech or language(Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2010 Census)
impairments. But only four tofive percent are classified as having intellectual disabilities, except for Texas, whichclassifies 10% of qualifying students as having such disabilities. This could indicatethat many Hispanic students in Texas are misclassified as having an intellectual
disability due to a language barrier.

2. Immigration status and culture have an impact on school transportation
For decades, concerns have existed about low school attendance by children of
migrant workers from Mexico who move from place to place with their parents.
School attendance of children of parents without documentation is a related concern.
In general, the number of undocumented immigrants in the USA has held steady or
decreased in recent years. Most undocumented individuals from all countries live intwenty metropolitan areas in the United States. Approximately 1.7 million undocumented immigrants are estimated to live in five metro areas of California and 1.1
million in three metro areas in Texas. These two states between them have a total ofaround 2.8 million undocumented residents from outside of the United States in theirlargest urban areas. See below our case studies of two of these areas: San
1

O'Connor, A., J. Batalova, and J. Bolter, "Central American Immigrants in the United States," August 15, 2019, Migration Policy Institute23Francisco, in the San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward metro area in California, andDallas, in the Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington metro area in Texas.2 The Pew ResearchCenter cites data that 12.3% of K-12 students in California schools had an
unauthorized immigrant parent.3 For information on protecting undocumented andvulnerable students, see the recommendations from Stanford University in Appendix 7.
Research by Jesus M. Barajas in the San Francisco Bay Area, although focused on
cycling as a transit mode, sheds light on the larger issues facing Hispanic parents in
the greater San Francisco urban region. Based on his finding that USA-born Latinos
may have very different travel patterns than foreign-born Latinos, Barajas discusses"the potentially large role that identity – in this case, immigrant identity – plays in travel
behavior." Barajas states that "planners often miss the critical influence that social
ties, culture, and experience also have on people's travel decisions . . . Cultural
narratives, such as taboos and prohibitions for women around cycling, or travel habitsfrom their home countries, may also inform immigrant views . . ." In a conclusion
which speaks to the situation of often-undocumented parents of Hispanic children
with disabilities, Barajas states that "The intersection of language ability and immigrant
status could be particularly threatening for those without documentation to live in the
United States and who lack understanding of traffic laws, rules, and norms. 'Whateversmall error you commit will become a bigger complication for you and your family,'
one interviewee explained. He was sensitive to giving police an excuse to stop
undocumented immigrants like him for traffic infractions that could end in deportation."4
Various researchers have commented that Hispanic families may only passively
participate in decision-making about their children due to cultural traditions that leadthem to leave such decisions up to educators. Some of these cultural factors can betraced back to the situations faced by low-income persons in Hispanic cultures in
Latin America, as noted in our earlier discussion of the regional context within states
on both sides of the USA/Mexican border. Data from the National Center for
Education Statistics indicate that the parents of Hispanic students have considerably
less educational attainment than parents from other racial or ethnic groups. Culturalbarriers can conspire against good communication when combined with language
barriers and the educational gap many Hispanic parents may feel when talking witheducators. As discussed in the following pages, this gives educators a special
responsibility to encourage Hispanic parents to take an active role in decision making
when discussing the needs of their children with disabilities at IEP planning sessions.
Alternatively, parents could notify their case manager to include other participants toattend the IEP meeting and advocate on behalf of their child. Otherwise, it would be
all too easy for parents to "go along" with whatever educators present to such parents.

2

Passel, J.S., and C. D'Vera, "20 metro areas are home to six-in-ten unauthorized immigrants in U.S," Pew Research Center, March 11, 2019.

3

Passel, J.S., and C. D'Vera, "Children of unauthorized immigrants represent rising share of K-12 students," Pew Research Center, November 17,
2016, based on augmented 2014 American Community Survey
4
Barajas, J., "Cycling Toward Mobility Justice in Latino Immigrant Communities," Transfers Magazine, Spring 2021, Pacific Southwest Region
University Transportation Center.

24

Transport by School Bus in the United Statesby Pete Meslin, Retired Director of Transportation, Newport-Mesa Unified School District in California

1. Introduction
In the USA, children with disabilities must be provided with free and appropriate
transportation if it is needed to get to and from school. This is a requirement of the
Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), a national law which mandates thatstudents with special needs are entitled to transportation when it is required to reacheducational services until they are age 22. Each student has an Individualized
Educational Program (IEP). The IEP is
Prior to the pandemic, some 475,000 updated yearly and has a thoroughschool buses transported 25 million review every three years. If students
children to and from schools and school with special needs move to anotheractivities in the United States. School school district or a district in anotherbuses are purchased or leased by some state, an IEP is still required and may beschool districts, while other school districts modified. It is within this context that
contract with other agencies to perform transportation is authorized if necessary
this function.
Approx. 40% of school to assure that the student can attend
districts in the United States use such school. The goal of special education iscontractors. The cost is high: an average to make the student as capable asof $845 per student transported per year. possible to act as a responsible adult in
A survey of more than 400 school bus the world beyond formal education. To
fleets found that on average 15% of the that end, the law requires that thestudents carried have disabilities.
Of student receive service in the least
those
with
disabilities,4%
use restrictive environment.
wheelchairs. A portion of students withFor many parents, transportation by bus
special needs are "mainstreamed," with
to/from school is a legally required
other students using a school bus. Aides
necessity for their children with special
were used by most fleets on at least someneeds. For others it is merely a matter ofof their buses, and 38% of the fleets usedconvenience and is not mandated by theaides on all of their special needs buses.
IEP. In the United States, much energy(Pre-pandemic data from February 2016 School Bus Fleet, cited
on page 60 of AEI's Bridging the Gap guide)and many hours are spent finding thedistinction between the two. Althoughstudents are not required to attend special education classes once diagnosed, they
typically do. For such children, the challenge is multiplied if they are Hispanic andhave special needs.
In more affluent districts, less than 15% of all students ride the school bus. In such
districts, a higher percentage of special education students ride the bus. In the lessaffluent districts, students are more dependent on busing.

25

Hispanic parents of students with special needs who are not documented do not want
their children to draw attention because that may bring awareness of their immigration
status and lead to dire consequences. Therefore, many parents in this situation do
not have their students assessed for special education, resulting in failure to properly
place such children in special education classes. Other parents may proceed with theassessment, but, to avoid argument, do not advocate for their students if they
disagree with the assessment.
In many cases districts may save money on school bus transportation by not following
up with parents who fail to actively seek transportation when their children need theschool bus to get to school. Nevertheless, school districts should ask every parent ofa child with poor attendance if transportation would be helpful. Overcoming parent
reluctance to ask for school bus transportation may be a key step to improved
attendance, especially for Hispanic children.
The double standard involving many Hispanic children and their relatives is
unfortunate and may be considered a blight on the educational landscape. Thesestudents tend to "disappear" if their parents
fear that they are in danger of being
exposed. This may take the form of thestudent withdrawing from school andmoving to another school district. The
whole family may move simply to beeligible for service in another district or they
may arrange for the student to betransported to a nearby district and obtaina false residence address. They also may
cease attending and have no formal
education going forward. For the same
reason, some Hispanic families may seek toavoid conflict and not advocate for needed services such as occupational or physicaltherapy for their children with special needs.
Principals and other administrators should pay special attention to their Hispanic
students whose attendance is an issue. Efforts need to be made to convince theparents that no consequences to either themselves or the student will occur becauseof the school’s services. Similarly, no parent’s complaints regarding another student’s
immigration status should be entertained. By law, all students deserve equal
treatment, and school districts should not comment on or check immigration status.
This is where leadership carries an extra amount of weight. Principals and the schoolleadership team should make it clear to staff that the district will not, in any way,assist a parent in processing a complaint regarding someone else’s immigration
status.
Transportation staff should follow up on poor or no attendance from students to see
when they are going to resume attending school. Generally, three days of no26

attendance should bring a phone call. That is, parents should provide a date they
expect their student to return and a reason for the student's absence. Until then bus
service will be discontinued. If a student is not planning to return, then transportationand special education staff need to collaborate on a plan for the student.

2. Equity in IEPs and transportation
In the United States, all parents of students receiving special education should be
alerted to advocate for their child. Not doing so can cause their child to bediscriminated against. If parents are culturally led to be quiet, they are short-changing
their student. Districts that do not have drivers who speak Spanish, or cannot answer
the phone in Spanish, typically end up providing poorer service to Hispanic parents.
Many school districts have no idea that Hispanic students are faced with these biases.
If the district contracts out bus service then special care is needed to make sure that a
Spanish-speaking provision is in the contract. Also, transportation departments
should make sure that IEPs are not simplified solely because no one speaks Spanish.
It is illegal to not provide a needed translator and transportation staff should insist thata translator is present. This person should translate directly and not embellish or
downplay what is said. The IEP meeting may take longer, but both students andparents have the right to a full IEP.
Transportation staff should be full members of the IEP team. As such they may have
input on accommodations or how a student accesses education. To a lesser degree
they might have a say in modifications of what a student is expected to learn (e.g.,transportation vocabulary). Certainly, they should have input into travel training.
Finally, they should be proactive in providing training for special education teachers
and aides. This is essential to build a working relationship that benefits students.
Staff and drivers need proper training. Some good examples can be found in the
appendices of this report. Teachers can often offer strategies for dealing withproblems on the bus. However, good working relationships need to exist for this to
be possible. Transportation staff can offer suggestions that may help in theclassroom and should consider appropriate settings to offer suggestions to teachers
who may not yet understand the important role of riding to school within the overall
education process.
The IEP, though one possibility, is not the only place that transportation and special
education staff should interact. Teachers could learn by watching videos of students
on the bus. This would provide them with a context for seeing a student’s behavior
and the bus driver’s responses. Teachers could then make suggestions, if applicable,
to assist either the student, the driver, or both.
Most students with special needs benefit from attending a physical school. Remotelearning for these students is often difficult or even impossible. They are often lostwhen forced to move from school to school and even more lost when called upon toattend classes online. Students who are significantly intellectually disabled especially27benefit from in-person learning where they can touch objects. It is particularly
important, therefore, that attendance of Hispanic students, who may be overcoming
language problems as well as their disability, be paid special attention by school
administrators. Attendance problems can fundamentally impact their education.

3. Travel training
The goal of transportation is to make the student ready for life beyond school.
However, students first need to learn how to ride the bus, as shown in the photo atleft. At first this is focused on the actual
waiting for and riding the bus. However,as the student ages, and hopefully
becomes more capable, (s)he can learn
more advanced social skills andproceed towards riding the bus with
non-disabled peers. Unfortunately, very
few districts have a teaching program toemphasize these important life skills.
Although a student may have thepotential for independent bus riding, few"Bus in the Classroom" class at Newport-Mesa,
students proceed to that level ofCA, Unified School District - photo by Tom Rickert
independence without instruction. AlsoMay 2016
single parents are penalized by having tomeet their student at the bus because the student has not learned the necessary
independence skills. Of course language issues further increase the need for travel
training, including building up a transportation vocabulary. Readers are encouraged
to turn to Appendix 3 for more information on travel training.

4. Riding times
It is often assumed that the maximum ride time for children with disabilities is an hour.
However, the ride time should be comparable when there are separate routes forgeneral education and special education. Unfortunately, in the USA, there are many
students that are bused cross-town because of the uniqueness of their disability.
These children frequently do not even meet the one-hour guideline and may not be
ready to learn when they arrive at school. Students riding home in this situation areoften very tired and have trouble doing their homework and participating in a full life.

5. Responsibilities of parents
Busing is a shared responsibility much as schooling is. It is the responsibility of local
transportation departments to communicate the situations and behaviors that the
district cannot or will not accept. That is, parents need to understand exactly what is
and is not allowed. To that end, transportation departments need to provide parents
with print, website, and social media that explain these critically important matters.

28

Many districts have this information available in the parent’s native language. If they
do not, they should remedy this defect and parents need to insist upon it. Parents
should know that, for the most part, these rules and consequences are nonnegotiable.
Many parents are concerned with student misconduct. This is especially the case if
misconduct leads to suspensions. With few exceptions, a maximum of 10 days ofsuspension for the entire school year should be observed for students with special
needs. Parents should be made aware of a potential school or school transportation
problem as soon as possible. An emergency IEP meeting should then be scheduled
to address the problem as soon as the parties are available.
Parents seeking guidance can avail themselves of a great deal of information on theinternet, supplemented if needed by local disability groups or legal services. Most
districts have a citation policy and ideally should have support plans that tie a
student’s conduct to consequences. Such plans may allow students to earn
privileges or to have privileges removed due to their behavior. Parents often get
involved in these plans. Behavior Support Plans are helpful in dealing with bullying orother behaviors on the bus.

6. Wheelchairs and other mobility devices
Wheelchairs and other mobility devices need to be in safe
operating condition. For the most part, transporters will
refuse to transport if a wheelchair is not fully functional.
Sometimes the district has a “loaner” wheelchair, but theseshould not be counted upon. Wheelchairs should be
inspected at least every year and wheelchair maintenance isthe parent’s responsibility. Progressive districts use slack
periods, such as summer vacations, to inspect all
wheelchairs and mark the specific securement spots onthem.
Specific concerns include brakes, wheelchair
restraints, and passenger restraining belts. Power wheelchairsmust have batteries secured and covered.

7. Roles of bus drivers
In the USA, both drivers and vehicles must be licensed by the state to operate. It is
illegal for a bus or a driver to operate without a special school bus certificate issued
by the state. Requirements vary from state to state, but every state has laws that arelargely the same.
Except for minor notifications to school bus drivers, parents need to contact thetransportation or special education office to ensure proper notification of impending
changes to the student’s use of school transportation.

29

In the United States some school districts choose to contract with private contractors
for their bus service. This results in many operational matters being handled by thecontractor. It can also result in all or almost all students with special needs receiving
special transportation, just for students with disabilities, versus many of them being
mainstreamed on school buses serving other students.

8. Personal information
School district transportation offices must handle a variety of personal information.
This includes medical information that is protected in the United States by the Family
Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). Students with special needs may have
behavior support or intervention plans that include travel on the school bus. Suchplans frequently help with extreme behaviors. Drivers and staff must be trained in theproper use and dissemination of student data, including medical and behavior support
information. Frequently, transportation personnel have to insist on receiving thisinformation, but even then only receive what parents want them to have. They mustcross-check with health and special education departments. Transportation staff
have a right to this information as it pertains to the safe riding and operation of theschool bus. School districts should insist upon the receipt of this information before
bus service begins.

9. Advice for NGOs
NGOs may be helpful advocates for the parent and child. They should also establish
good working relationships with school administrators and site personnel anddemonstrate that they can be an asset for all personnel. Regarding Hispanic children
newly arrived in the USA, NGO roles should include getting children to school so they
can benefit from the many available resources. It is essential that Hispanic children
with or without disabilities be at the school. Evidence shows that, with few
exceptions, students who are significantly intellectually disabled will especially benefit
from in-person learning. Many children benefit but those with certain disabilities are
more apt to receive direct measurable benefits. While at the school they can touch
objects and interact with students and staff. In addition, many Hispanic students
have language difficulties that compound the already difficult challenge of overcoming
the disability. NGOs need to take whatever actions are necessary to encourageschool attendance. They need to push back against delays caused by personnel orlogistics. Rather, they should encourage an interim placement for the student while
problems are worked out. The key, with few exceptions, is to get the student into
school as soon as possible.

30

Using public transportation to travel to school
Up to one half of all students in the United States travel or are driven to and fromschool in a private car and the remainder either go by school bus, local public transit,
or by walking or biking to school. About 60% of low-income students in the UnitedStates take either a school bus or public transportation if they live too far from school
to walk or bike. For primary school students who live at too great a distance to walkor bike to school, about half take a bus and the other half use a private car.1
The California Education Code's guidelines for required transportation services forchildren who qualify for special education state that "Considering the identified needsof the pupil, transportation options may include, but not be limited to: walking, riding
the regular school bus, utilizing available public transportation (any out-of-pocket
costs to the pupil or parents are reimbursed by the local education agency), riding a
special bus from a pick-up point, and portal-to-portal special education transportation
via a school bus, taxi, reimbursed parent's driving with a parent's voluntary
participation, or other mode as determined by the IEP (Individualized Education
Program) team."2

1. Public transit
The use of standard public transit
buses for transport to school iscommon in urban areas. For example,
New York City provides yellow school
bus service to select students basedon grade level and their distance fromthe school but relies on the public
New York City Transit bus system totransport students in grades 7-12 andyounger students where dedicatedschool bus service is unavailable.
Free or half-price transit passes are provided by the school system for this purpose.
Some public transit services may provide "tripper service" with routes designed toserve local schools. Such routes are regularly scheduled transit routes that are open
to the public and, by law, cannot be used exclusively for school transportation. Such

1

National Travel Survey, 2017, US Department of Transportation

2"Transportation Options," from Special Education Guidelines of California Dept. of Education, downloaded October 27, 2021. The
guidelines were last reviewed by the Dept. of Education on June 11, 2020.

31

routes are created to connect local schools to nearby communities and transit
centers. Many students over the age of 16 drive to school.
Children and youth in Hispanic communities may face additional transportation
inequities beyond those faced by other low-income persons. In any country, the costof public transportation can bite into the income of those living in poverty, especially if
affordable housing is not available near public transit routes. While this is especiallytrue in Mexico, it remains a key concern in the United States as well. And transit
service needs to be reliable, or students may not reach school on time and be late forclasses.
The San Francisco and Dallas case studies in this report both note the important roleof public transport for many school children. The role of public transportation mayvary for children with special needs withvarying degrees of disability.
Publictransportation has advantages for someparents and their children. The Americans
with Disabilities Act requires that public
transit buses are accessible to passengers
with disabilities. A missed school bus trip
can create a crisis for a family, while missing
a public transit bus may not if the time
between buses is short. If a city has adense network of public transit routes, thetrip to school by regular bus may be fasterthan by school bus. And city transit agencies
may have agreements in place with school
districts to provide transportation at reduced
rates or even without charge, as depicted in
the poster at left from Montgomery County
Metrobus, adjacent to Washington, DC.3
On the other hand, public transit may havedisadvantages.
School bus travel forstudents with an IEP is provided free ofcharge.
School buses have been proven safe. Aides on school buses are often
provided when required for special education students with certain disabilities, while
public transit buses rarely provide aides and parents must travel with their student if anaide is needed. In addition, public transportation operators are less able to handle
behavior problems specific to students with disabilities.
3

Flyer is from Montgomery County, MD, Public Schools, circulated on August 30, 2019.

32

Also, the general public riding public transit bus or rail lines may have minimal
understanding of the needs of students with disabilities, especially in cases where parents
may not speak English or their children are English learners. This may be especially true ofchildren with hidden disabilities. For example, focus groups with Spanish-speaking
parents in San Francisco revealed that other passengers may not understand if a child witha disability must remain in a stroller if the strollers of children without a disability must be
folded while on board. This situation would probably not occur if the child was in awheelchair which alerted other passengers that the occupant had a disability.
It is important that children with disabilities (along with everyone else subject to theAmericans with Disabilities Act) be provided with accessible pedestrian infrastructure,and this is especially true if the student must walk to a school which is far from thenearest public transit stop or station. Safe and accessible walkways to and frompublic transit stops are required, as well as between home and school bus stops
unless curb-to-curb service is required. Sidewalks need to be of adequate width, freeof obstacles, and with a continuous surface at a safe angle for wheelchair users. Curb
ramps, crosswalks, and appropriate safety features at intersections are needed if thetravel chain from home to transit stop to school is to be accessible.

2. Recommendations
To maximize public transit accessibility to school for Hispanic and all other students
with special needs, the following recommendations make sense:
1) Public transit agencies should assure that their services are provided to lower-income
areas in a fair and equitable manner including those serving communities which may
be further disadvantaged by language barriers.
2) Close liaison is needed between the public transit agency and the school district
and its in-house or contracted yellow school bus provider.
3) High priority should be given to the training of public transit bus drivers and otherpersonnel on the needs of children and youth with disabilities as well as adults withdisabilities.
4) Public education campaigns are needed to increase passenger understanding of
the needs of children and youth with disabilities.
5) Use of Spanish-speaking drivers and personnel is recommended where needed in
Hispanic communities, and of course the same applies to any community facing
language barriers.
6) Consideration should be given to commendations and awards to drivers showing
exceptional courtesy to children and youth with disabilities.

33

Case study

San Francisco, California
Persons of Hispanic ancestry compose about 15% percent of San Francisco’s
880,000 residents and around 33% of the nearly 60,000 students in the San Francisco
Unified School District (SFUSD). About 17,000 SFUSD students are in the English
Learners program and 9,300 (55%) of these students are Spanish speaking. These
data point to the high percentage of Hispanic/Latino students who may be facing
English-language barriers, and the presumably even higher percentage of theirparents who face communication issues when dealing with registering their children in
the SFUSD and its school bus program. This conclusion is reflected in the findings
from our focus groups with Spanish-speaking parents on page 36.
Turning to special education data, the California education department reports a totalof 7,400 students enrolled in special education classes in the SFUSD, which comes toabout 12% of all students. (14% of all students in the United States qualify for special
education courses.) 2,800 of the special education students in the SFUSD arereported as Hispanic, or about 38% of all special education students. This implies
that Hispanic students are slightly over-represented when it comes to disability.
The data indicates that 45% of the Hispanic special education students have a"specific learning disability," which is higher than the percentage of other ethnicities inthis category.1 This could raise a concern that the issues of English Learners may
move some Hispanic students into the Special Education category.
The data in San Francisco concerning special education, English Learners, andundocumented immigrants point to the language barriers which impact the educationof Hispanic immigrants. This problem then spills over into the issue of use oftransportation modes by Hispanic children and youth as they travel – or fail to travel –to and from school. Parent comments in our focus groups focused on theirexperiences during pre-pandemic school travel operated by the school district's
former transportation provider, such as failure to receive good service when trying tocontact school transport staff when the school bus was late. For some parents, these
problems are exacerbated by cultural and documentation issues which influence fearof travel.
As it happens, the SFUSD changed their school transportation provider prior toreopening for the 2021-22 school year. The new company, Zum, states that it is using
a multi-lingual app which provides parents with the location of their children's bus andestimated arrival time in real time. Parents may also cancel a trip in real time using thesame app. All children are checked in and out of the bus at pickup and drop-off as an
added safety feature. In theory, this should address a range of concerns on the part1

All SFUSD data cited on this page was submitted by the SFUSD to the California Education Department for school year 2019-20, with the
exception of special education data, which is for the 2018-19 school year.

34

of parents in general and parents with language barriers in particular. At the time thisreport is issued, it is premature to judge the performance of the new school bus
system. Performance indicators will assist transport staff in evaluating whether theirservice is meeting stated objectives.

San Francisco has a history of aligning its public transportation services to include
service to its public schools, as illustrated by the photo above from the website of the
San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (MTA), which operates the San
Francisco Municipal Railway, a name reflecting the city's historic commitment to railmodes as well as bus modes of transport. The "Muni" currently offers free rides for all
youth under the age of 19. San Francisco also operates light rail transport withaccess by elevator to all underground stations and by nearly a hundred raised
platforms on surface portions of the system, such as seen in the photo at top right.2
However, when it comes to Hispanic students with a disability, the language barrier
can create problems, as noted by driver and passenger reactions to a parent seeking
space for her child with a disability who needed to remain in a stroller rather thanbeing carried by the parent on a crowded
bus.
Issues of accompaniment of children who
walk to school or to a bus stop have notbeen quantified in San Francisco.
Oneapproach is that taken by a group of largely
Hispanic parents in San Francisco's lowincome "Tenderloin" region, where parents
banded together to help assure safe walking
to school in a high-crime area (photo at left).3
Since the Muni provides school trips for up
to half of SFUSD students, it sponsors a
Muni Transit Assistance Program to train members of the community who ride on
specific routes with the goal of diffusing any conflicts which may arise.

2
Photo of bus is from Muni website in 2021. Photo of Metro light rail car is from January 2021 AEI Newsletter, illustrating boarding by a parent
with children. Stroller would be folded once inside. No one has a disability in this photo illustrating access to Muni Metro street-level stops.
3
Photo by Tom Rickert, from January 2016 AEI Newsletter

35

Report from focus groups with Hispanic parents in San Francisco
Three focus groups* were conducted in Spanish and held while schools offered only
virtual education due to the pandemic. The purpose of the focus groups was to better
understand parent perceptions of all modes of transportation to the city's public schools.
Comments were made by twelve parents of children ages 5-16 who are enrolled in
SFUSD special education classes. Discussion focused on school bus transport provided
by the SFUSD's former contracted pre-pandemic school transportation provider and by
the various transport modes operated by the city's public transportation agency. A
summary of the major concerns of parents appears below:
Parent concern• Lack of real-time communication if
bus is running late
• Delays in receiving service in Spanish
when calling about the status of a lateor missing bus for one's child

Comments
These were the major concerns expressed about
pre-pandemic yellow school bus transportation.
The SFUSD contracted with a new bus provider for2021-22, which currently provides an app forfamilies to track their child and the location of thebus in real time, in Spanish as well as other languages.
This may address many parent concerns.

• Bus drivers being changed whenchildren have become familiar withthe drivers on their route

School bus agencies need to clearly inform parents
about the many reasons which require drivers tochange from time to time.

• Need for more adults, parents, oraides on bus

Reflects concerns about bullying on board buses.
Aides are expensive and need training.

• Overly long school bus trips

Especially a concern for students with autism.

Parents who speak mainly Spanish reported an especially difficult problem when theirchildren used public transportation (the "Muni") to get to school: Unless their child's
disability was identifiable, other passengers objected to a child being kept in a stroller
while on board, although Muni helps address this concern by providing special decals forstrollers used by children with disabilities. Strollers for children without disabilities mustbe folded on Muni buses, while bigger children using wheelchairs could remain in theirwheelchairs if desired. Similarly, a child with arthritis might best use priority seating, but
the need for this may not be visible to other passengers.
Overall, many bus drivers do a good job, but parents felt that more driver training wasneeded, and that drivers could be awarded when commended for good service byparents. Parents did comment on the high quality of Muni bus stops and the generally
good condition of San Francisco's sidewalks and streets, with their greatest fears relating
to the ability of their children to safely cross at intersections. Parents were ambivalent
about forming parent carpools, due to reluctance to entrust their children with special
needs to others unless they were well known to them. Too, some parents do not havecars, or have children with different needs.
* Focus groups in Spanish were held on August 21, 2020; September 12, 2020; and March 23, 2021 incooperation with Support for Families of Children with Disabilities (SFCD), a San Francisco non-profit agency.
The groups were arranged by Olga Maldonado, Parent Mentor Coordinator of SFCD, and moderated by Janett
Jiménez Santos in Mexico City on behalf of AEI.

36

Case Study

Dallas Independent School District
Rachel Carp, a Dallas resident at the time, carried out in-person interviews in December, 2019, withseven individuals in Dallas, four of whom were parents familiar with the DISD, plus other observers
including an education reporter for a large Dallas newspaper and the CEO of a non-profit agency
serving persons with disabilities in Texas.

Forty-two percent of Dallas' 1.3 million residents are Hispanic. However, 70% of themore than 150,000 students enrolled in the Dallas Independent School District (DISD)
are Hispanic.1
Of 13,900 students in special education courses within the DISD in 2018-19, 8,800
were Hispanic, equivalent to 63% of all special education students: Hispanic students
are thus somewhat under-represented. Thirty-seven percent of special education
students are English learners and 88% are economically disadvantaged.2
One observer reported that there is a stigma associated with mental health within the
Hispanic community. This stigma could lead parents to not seek out special needs
service or to refuse services when offered. Parents might also pull their child out ofschool and keep them at home as opposed to signing them up for special needs
programs. This same observer noted that most Hispanic parents in her community
drive their children to school. On the other hand, another observer stated that mostparents want to take advantage of the special education resources offered in publicschools in the USA, as they are far greater than those offered in schools in Mexico.
According to AEI's interviewer it seemed that the burden of advocating for children
with special needs falls upon parents and this could be a challenge for many Hispanic
parents due to the language barrier, racism, and fear of deportation.
The biggest issue for Hispanic students and parents is the lack of bilingual resources.
The DISD struggles to find special education teachers who are fluent in Spanish.
There is often reliance on a translator to assist such teachers. Only 32% of allteachers within the DISD were Hispanic as of the 2019-20 school year, yet English
learners, a great many of whom are Hispanic, comprise around half of the student
body.3
The DISD states it currently operates its own fleet of one thousand school buses for
those students who are eligible for transportation.4 Three of the Hispanic mothers ofstudents who were interviewed reported varied experiences with schooltransportation. One mother with a daughter with special needs reported excellent
transportation on a special needs school bus over a period of many years. A second
12
3
4

The Texas Tribune Public Schools Explorer, 2018-19 school year data from DISD
Mejan, M.C. "2018-19 Evaluation of the Special Education Program, " Dallas Independent School District
The Texas Tribune Public Schools Explorer, 2019-20 school year data from DISD
Glaze, T. "Dallas ISD Revamps Bus Fleet", August 22, 2018 PeopleNewspapers

37mother stated that no special needs school bus was available for the school her
daughter was attending and so she always drove her daughter to and from school. A
third mother stated her son is having a good experience in classes. However, she had
not realized there are buses for special needs children and her son is currently getting into
fights on the regular school bus.
Public transit operated by Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) can supplement school
bus service. In many cases, DART service reductions due to the pandemic have
reduced available transportation for Hispanic and low-income persons. There isconcern that service adjustments in 2022 could further decrease neighborhood
service to better serve high-demand areas.
The DISD serves 3,300 homeless students.5 Promise House, a Dallas agency, has
assisted some of these students with around 10,000 bus rides in a recent year,
enabling them to ride on DART to the same school even when circumstances cause
them to frequently move to different locations.6

5
6

Rowles, S. "2018-19 Evaluation of the Homeless Education Program," Dallas Independent School District.
Telephone interview with Promise House staff person on January 26, 2021

38

Part 3: Mexico.

A focus on pilot projects and implementing concrete plans

39

School transportation is a missing link
In Mexico, basic education is normally divided into three steps: primary school (primaria),
comprising grades 1-6; junior high school (secundaria), grades 7–9; and high school(preparatoria), grades 10–12. Throughout all three levels of schooling, attendance is intheory compulsory. Public schools in Mexico are free of charge, but student
transportation costs, where transportation exists, is usually paid by parents who use
different modes of formal public transportation (such as most urban bus routes), or lessregulated "informal" public transportation, often found in rural areas.
To provide special education services for students with disabilities, the Mexican
federal Public Education Secretariat (SEP in Spanish) developed two major systems:(1) Support service units for regular schools are designed to provide adaptations tocurricula and must be located in schools focusing on inclusive classes and on
eliminating or minimizing barriers to learning. Such services are provided by "service
units to assist regular education," known as USAER for the initials of the Spanish
term. (2) Multiple attention centers (known as CAMs) focus on students who have aharder time being integrated into regular classrooms. The centers focus on children
with visual, auditory, physical, and intellectual disabilities and provide specialized
resources that are unavailable in regular schools. In addition to offering primary,middle, and high school levels of education, the centers provide vocational education
for students ages 15–22 who
Data from the six Mexican states sharing the border of the USA
have higher levels of physicaland Mexico: Baja California Norte (BC), Sonora (SO), Chihuahua
or mental disabilities.
(CH), Coahuila (CO), Nuevo Leon (NL), and Tamaulipas (TM)
(Numbers are rounded and approximate)BC
General population in
millions. Total 22.6 million

SO

CH

CO

NL

TM

1. Population andschool attendance

Of Mexico's population of
128 million, approximately.
General population with a
22.6 million live in the six
219 177 229 175 245 194
disability in thousands.
Mexican states touching the
Total 1.2 million (ENADID, 2018)
common border of the USA
All school students in
732 580 760 622 1,041 695
and Mexico, as depicted inthousands (primary,secondary, & media
the box at left. This
superior). Total: 4.4 million
compares with 30.2 million(ENADID, 2018)
Hispanic residents in theStudents with disabilities
ages approx. 3-21 infour USA states touching the
25
32
17
41
56
24
thousands (both CAM &same border. The great
3.4% 5.5% 2.2% 6.6% 5.4% 3.5%
USAER) and as % of all
majority of Mexicans speakchildren in school. Total:
Spanish
as
their
first
195,000. (SEP, 2019-20)
language, but the indigenous
populations of these border states (2.5% in Sonora and 3.5% in Chihuahua) continue
to use their own languages as well. Around 4.4 million students attend the public
3.6

3.1

3.8

3.1

5.3

(ENADID, 2018)

4

40

3.7

schools of the six Mexican border states, compared to 7 million Hispanic students inthe four USA border states. However, only about 195,000 of the students in the Mexican
states were in special education classes prior to the pandemic, compared to more than
800,000 Hispanic students in the four USA states. The fact that four times more
Hispanic children and youth are in special education in the USA states than Mexican
children and youth in the Mexican states is disturbing. Only a part of this discrepancy
is explained by the presence of 37% more Hispanic students in the USA states than
Mexican students in the Mexican states. Also, a lower percentage of Mexican students
are diagnosed with a disability than in the USA. The Mexican government (INEGI)
estimated in 2019 that only 47% of Mexican children and youth ages 5-29 are in classes,
but the extended age range makes it difficult to interpret this finding.
However, a major cause of this marked divergence appears to be a lack of school
attendance by students who would otherwise qualify, largely due to the lack ofaffordable transportation to get to and from school in Mexico compared to the far morefavorable situation in the USA. Statements by colleagues in different parts of Mexico
tend to confirm estimates that only a portion of children with disabilities attend school
on a given day. "If we had the transportation we needed, average daily attendance
would be 50% higher," noted a social worker at CAM 7 in Valle de Bravo in the State of
Mexico. "I think its about 40% of the students who have to stay home due to a lack offunds for transport, especially from outlying areas," stated the supervisor of a CAM in
Huejutla, State of Hidalgo, in a video posted on AEI's website.1

2. Transport by school bus
As in most of the world, wealthier parents ofchildren with disability can afford private
schools providing special education classes.
Children, with or without disabilities, get toschool by private car, or by transportation
provided by the school. Mexico City has asystem of school bus transportation to private schools in that city, designed toprevent traffic jams caused by parents who queue up at the schools, and to improve
air quality by replacing the congestion of private cars bringing children to schools.
Urban centers in Mexico are more likely to have school bus transportation than rural
areas. For example, the municipality of Querétero reported a fleet of 57 school buses,
including accessible vehicles. The school buses in Querétero – one of which is shownin the photo above – are used by students with disabilities in both public and private
schools.2 Dedicated school bus transport scarcely exists in rural areas.
1

Quote from CAM 7 in Valle de Bravo, State of Mexico, is from social worker Sayde Guzmán Duran, during a visit to this school in March 2015, as
cited in AEI's June 2015 Newsletter. The quote in an AEI video is from a CAM in Huejutla, State of Hidalgo, in June, 2017. This is a common observation, e.g. "53.5% of children and youth with disability do not go to school," headlined a Dec. 3, 2015 edition of Milenio, a major newspaper in Mexico.
2
Photo of school bus in Querétero is by Annette Williams, from the January 2018 AEI Newsletter. This program currently continues, according toan interview on October 5, 2021, with Alberto Morales Silvera who is actively promoting this project in private and public schools in Querétero.

41

Taking Public Transportation to School in Mexico

Public buses and moto-taxis may, or may not,be available for parents of children withdisabilities. - Images by Eli Noyesx

About half of people in Mexico have accessto a personal vehicle, and poorer people
are dependent on walking or taking public
transportation. The six Mexican statesthat border the United States havepoverty rates in the 20-30% range as
defined by the Mexican government in
2018, compared to a national poverty rateof approximately 44% in 2020.
Public transportation is far more available
in Mexico City and other large Mexican
cities than in rural areas where there may
be no transportation at all.
Indeed,Mexico's modern urban bus rapid transit
systems offer an accessible option forsome children with special needs to get toschool, as illustrated in a video in English
and Spanish versions on AEI's website atwww.globalride-sf.org. Other bus systems
generally lack access features.
One approach to keeping fares low whileproviding a degree of accessibility is to
opt for smaller vehicles such as threewheeled or four-wheeled moto-taxis (apassenger cabin pulled by a motorcycle,
in top photo of box at left) which are foundin some rural areas and small towns in
Mexico as well as in several suburbs of
Mexico City, such as Chimalhuacán.

A motorcycle pulling a passenger cabin (top) is
sometimes used in Mexico to transport school
children and others. The pointers in Spanish fromtop left are "smaller vehicles equal lower fares,""low-cost cell phones call vehicles to the door,""drivers need training to provide courteous andsafe service," and "seat belts are needed for a safer
trip." The photo at bottom (not from Mexico)
shows a small vehicle with a solid passenger door
to provide safer transport for children withdisabilities. - Photo at top by Tom Rickert

But the poorest parents cannot afford
even these lower fares.
Our guide,
Bridging the Gap: Your role in transportingchildren with disabilities to school indeveloping countries, includes a cost
scenario for Mexicans living in extreme
poverty. After meeting needs for food,only about 10% of family income isavailableforpublictransportation,42

typically by bus.1 This does not go far enough to cover the cost of sending a student toand from school. While using a moto-taxi does indeed lower fares, parents living in
extreme poverty could only cover about one third of the trips needed to get their child toand from school even with this low-cost type of transport. Such parents, often themother, must balance the difficult decision of whether or not to send her child to schoolwith having time and money to care for her other children or to pay for her own
transportation if she must work outside her home in order to feed her family. (A large portionof families with a disabled child are headed by the mother.)This analysis illustrates
the importance ofTips for parents with children
Parents and children withwithdisabilities
disability
awarenessdisabilities need your help
trainingforpublic• • Have your exact fare ready.
• Always pick up passengers
transportation drivers.
• • Take a seat as soon as you
with disabilities.
It also puts a focus onc can.
• Drive safely and allow time for• • Stow any transfer or passmonetary or otherpassengers with disabilities toa after you sit down.
sit down or hold on.
disincentiveswhich• • Use a seat near the driver if• Avoid sudden starts and stops,
currently keep many
p possible.
slow down before curves, anddrivers from serving• • Hold on if you must stand.
stop as close to the curb as
•
•
Do
not
changeseats
while
intending passengers
you can.
the bus is moving.
• Call out major stops andwith disabilities. The
requested stops for blind
Transit Access Training
passengers.
Toolkit of the WorldBank is available in
English and Spanish
to assist with needed
resources for bothpublic transportation
driversandforparents, especially insmaller town or rural
areas where regulartraining
resources
may be lacking. See
the images at left of apocket card (top) or
motivational signage(bottom)forbus
drivers, adapted fromthis publication.2 Beyond issues of vehicle design and driver training, the more fundamental issues of low
incomes for public transport drivers as well as many passengers remain to be addressed.

1
2

Data extrapolated from poverty statistics in Mexico published by the Wilson Center, 2013.
Images adapted from Rickert, T., Transit Access Training Toolkit, World Bank, 2009.

43

Case study

Tijuana, Baja California
Baja California reported more than 25,000 children and youth receiving special
education services during the 2018-19 school year. Most of these students were in
regular schools with supplemental USAER programs for special education services.
Approximately 10-15% were in 60 specialized centers for multiple assistance (CAM).1
Tijuana is the largest city in Baja California, with a population of around two million. It
is part of the greater San Diego-Tijuana metropolitan area of about five million people.
The diverse population of Tijuana includes migrants from the United States due to its
proximity to San Diego and the lower cost of living compared to the United States, aswell as migrants from elsewhere in Mexico and from Central and South America.
Using various sources of data, 63,000 children and youth in Tijuana are reported tohave a disability. Within this group, the largest numbers of reported disabilities relate
to vision, the ability to walk or move, intellectual disability and the ability to speak orcommunicate, with each disability challenging at least one fifth of children and youth
with special needs. Of those with disabilities in Tijuana, about 45% have completed
primary education, 18% having completed secondary education and 15% having
completed post-basic education. Overall, the data indicates that only a very low
percentage completed a university education. Those with visual impairments have thehighest level of educational attainment, followed by those with motor or physicaldisabilities.2
In May of 2019, three Mexican and American members of the team preparing thisreport visited Tijuana for preplanned meetings with officials
and others with an interest in
school transportation for children
and youth with disabilities (photoat left).3 Those interviewed by theteam welcomed our visit, andmeetings
were
held
with
educators, teachers, a large bus
company, and a planning official, as well as with parents and persons with disabilities.
During 2020, one of our team in Mexico reviewed government and private sector websites in Tijuana to better understand the issues facing students and parents trying to
get to school. This research confirmed the lack of accessible pedestrian environ1
Data gathered by Daniela Briseño Arriaga as part of her research for this case study, citing Principales Cifras Estadísticas 2019, Secretaría de
Educación de Baja California. See http://www.educacionbc.edu.mx/publicaciones/estadisticas/2019/2
Persons with disabilities ages 5-29 years in the Municipality of Tijuana by 2020. Censo de Población y Vivienda.
https://www.inegi.org.mx/programas/ccpv/2020/#Tabulados
3
Photo this page is by Tom Rickert in May, 2019, taken at a meeting with staff of a "CAED" unit: An open system for highly motivated students
with disabilities of any age.

44

ments for persons with disabilities, finding that the problem was recognized by planningdocuments for Tijuana. However, specific plans for implementing greater accessibility
were not found. Documents also discuss the problem of inaccessible public transit
and the need to adapt transit vehicles for persons with disabilities. However,discussion of a strategy for carrying out projects to address this issue was not found.
Public transit remains generally inaccessible. No single source of information in
Tijuana was found for persons with disabilities to consult regarding fares, service
hours, or access to vehicles or transit stops. Some documents treat schooltransportation as a tool to combat road congestion or to reduce overall school
dropouts, although the actual provision of school transportation for children and youth
with disabilities is not discussed. The major government social service agency, DIF,
provides limited transport for persons with disabilities, who must contact this agency
for information or service.
It is clear that officials in Tijuana are aware of many of the problems facing persons
with disabilities. But funding and/or the will to address these problems is lacking.
Beginnings have been made in providing somecurb ramps with tactile surfaces and safer
intersections, but signage is usually not provided
to assist pedestrians and public transit users intheir way-finding from one point to another.
Generally, such improvements are lacking for
those living in lower-income areas, where a lackof sidewalks is a major concern (top photo).
There is evidence of improvements of pedestrian
infrastructure adjacent to some of the ten
Centers for Multiple Assistance (CAMs) found in
Tijuana (bottom photo).4 In others, however,there is a complete lack of access features toassist parents or caretakers with their children.
There is a lack of planning to create accessible"trip chains" which connect up each stage of ajourney from a residence to a bus stop, to being
able to board the bus, find a preferred seat, alight at a bus stop, and walk or roll to a
destination. One observer noted that it is like running a marathon for a mother toenroll her children in a CAM and get them there every day, especially if the school
insists that the mother serve as an aide to care for the child while the school is insession. These demands on the time of parents, and the time and money to getchildren to and from schools, are a major concern.

4

Photos from Google Maps gathered by Daniela Briseño Arriaga.

45

Takeaways from four school transport surveys
Here are key results from four surveys, taken at different times and places in five
Mexican states. These provide deeper insights into issues of school transportation forchildren with special needs in Mexico and beyond.
Survey # 1: A survey of parents of children with disabilities at CAM 7, a Center for
Multiple Assistance in Valle de Bravo in the State of Mexico, taken in 2015. Valle deBravo is an urban town with around 60,000 inhabitants. The State of Mexico
surrounds much of Mexico City. Survey coordinator: Janett Jiménez Santos
Survey # 2: A survey of 28 different Centers for Multiple Assistance in the State of
Hidalgo, taken in 2016. Survey coordinator: María Santa Perez Herrera
Survey # 3: A survey of CAM 19 in Pachuca de Soto, the largest city in the State of
Hidalgo with around 300,000 population, taken in 2021. Survey coordinator: ManuelHernández Sánchez
Survey # 4: Responses of five individuals who work as managers or advisors ofdifferent Centers for the Attention of Students with Disabilities (CAED). This is a
program to prepare highly motivated students with disabilities to further theirindividual studies for periods of their own choosing, perhaps leading to moreadvanced education upon completion of their bachillerato degree. These interviews
took place in 2021 with CAED staff at two schools in the state of Sonora, two in
Chihuahua, and one school in Tamaulipas. Survey coordinator: Javier Guerrero Aguirre# Responses
Main types of
disability
Use public
transportation?
Days/week atschool (mostfrequent replies)

Length oftrips
Role oftransport

Survey # 1
CAM 7
Valle de Bravo
39 parent
responses
multiple - 38%
intellectual - 36%
74% 'taxi' (aloneor shared), 13%
DIF or other unit,
5% private car
30% 1 day
29% 2 days
18% 5 days
74% have trip
length of 20-60
minutes
38% state thattransport
problems are themain reason for

Survey # 2
28 CAMs
State of Hidalgo
105 parent
responses
multiple - 35%
intellectual - 40%
55% public transit
17% private car
10% walking
62% 5 days
16% 4 days
11% 3 days
51% report trip
length of 15 kilometers or less
41% see transport
as the main factor
in their mobility toschool, but

46

Survey # 3
CAM 19Pachuca de Soto
73 parent
responses

52% private car
40% public
combi, thenmotorcycle

73% state thattransport by
combi is regularand constant inSurvey # 4
5 CAED programs in
3 states
5 interviews withstaff or advisors
intellectual, thenauditory or visual
56% public bus
24% private car
12%walking
8% taxi
students averageattendance is 3
days/week
30-60 minutes
travel time formost students
3 out of 5 statethat better roads
and public
transport would

(continued)

CAM 7

28 CAMs

CAM 195 CAED programs

low attendance,
and 69% citetransport as main
mobility problem

transport problems
are not seen as aleading factor in
low attendance atschool.

this heavily
urban area withshort headways
betweenvehicles.

greatly increase
attendance. Poor
location of CAEDs is
also a concern.

Comments

In the survey of 28 CAM schools noted above, 55% of children with special needs usedpublic transportation to get to and from school. In rural areas, much of this transportationis on trucks converted to serve as public transportation with bench seats mounted on thesides of the passenger area. Mothers are expected to accompany their children to school,as documented in June 2017 by a student video crew from San Francisco State University infilms prepared for Access Exchange International, posted on YouTube, and linked from thewebsite of AEI at www.globalride-sf.org. Safety features, let alone accessibility features,are lacking.
- Permissions by participants in videos are on file at BECA, SFSU, in San Francisco

1) Unfortunately, of the more than 200 respondents to these surveys or interviews, noone mentioned the current use of a dedicated school bus going to any of the 34
schools discussed above, nor were dedicated school buses mentioned in the inputs
into our case study of Tijuana with its 10 Centers for Multiple Assistance (CAMs).
Except for CAM 19 in Pachuca, which is a heavily urbanized area, lower-income
families mainly use public transportation to access special education for theirchildren with disabilities. Even in CAM 19, 40% use public transportation to accessthe CAM.
2) As in the United States, intellectual disabilities are the most frequent challenge
facing students with special needs. This underlines the importance of travel training
to enable students to use public transportation.

473) Although not included in the chart above, wheelchairs were used by around one infive children or youth at CAM 7 in Valle de Bravo and at the many CAMs in the Stateof Hidalgo. This does not imply that public transit is accessible with lifts or ramps.
As in most developing countries, children and youth using wheelchairs may besecured in a seat during travel. Wheelchairs may be folded within the vehicle, orthe school may supply a wheelchair upon arrival at the school.
4) Walking or rolling to school from one's home is unlikely as the location of schools
offering special education components tend to be far from most homes. Only 10%of students at the 28 CAMs in Hidalgo and only 3% of CAM 7 students in Valle deBravo walked to school. Only 12% of CAED students walked to school. No one
was reported as rolling to school in their wheelchair, although of course this does
occur when possible. When prioritizing accessible pedestrian infrastructure for
special education at regular or specialized schools, the main need is between thehome and the bus stop, and between the bus stop and the school. As discussed inour case study of CAM 19 in Pachuca, it is just as important to make pedestrian
infrastructure accessible at bus and private car stops in the vicinity of schools as it
is at the school itself.1
5) The lack of safe, convenient, economical, and accessible school transportation is
one of the main reasons why students miss school. This situation is aggravated by
not having a dedicated school bus option with aides provided on board the bus
when necessary. This forces parents – mainly mothers – to stay with their child at
school or face two round trips a day on public transport and pay for all four of theone-way trips. If necessary, the use of trained aides on high-use public bus routes
should be prioritized to enable parents to send their children to school. Ideally,transportation by dedicated school buses with safety and accessibility features should be
put in place to enable parents to send their children to school. For good practices in
Latin America, readers are referred to case studies of Curitiba, Brazil's, accessible school
bus fleet, and to the use of transportation subsidies for parents in Costa Rica. Bothstudies appear in AEI's guide, Bridging the Gap, Your role in transporting children withdisabilities to school in developing countries, posted on our website.
The four surveys in this section need to be supplemented by further studies to quantify
transportation impacts on school attendance by children with disabilities. Recommendations
at the front of this report also indicate areas where further research is needed.

1

This finding does not imply that accessible walkways, street crossings, and other pedestrian features should not also
be prioritized in other areas. The closer to any school, the more such infrastructure tends to be used by students andstaff, both with and without disabilities, who learn or teach at that school. And, of course, all persons with disabilities
living in neighborhoods without accessible sidewalks or intersections need these improvements every time they leave
their homes for any purpose. The goal, over time, is that all pedestrian infrastructure become increasingly accessible toeveryone.

48

Case study

CAM 19 in Pachuca de Soto, Hidalgo
The state of Hidalgo has a population of around three million. Pachuca de Soto isHidalgo's largest city, with a population of around 300,000. The Center for Multiple
Assistance (CAM) #19 in Pachuca is clearly led by a committed principal and staff.
CAM 19 is popular with parents, most of whom are middle class with more mobility
than the often poverty-stricken residents of rural areas. Most of the more than one
hundred students at CAM 19 attend school regularly.1

1. The current access issues facing CAM 19
While in many ways an exemplary school, CAM 19 is faced with an all-too-typicalrange of accessibility issues, including an inaccessible building, lack of dedicatedschool bus service, and inaccessible pedestrian infrastructure.
1) PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION:
The public transportation to CAM 19 lacks
accessibility features and requires many parents to make one or even two transfers to
get to the transit stops nearest the school. Despite this, 40% of students arrive via
public transit at stops near CAM 19 while 52% arrive via private car.
The map on the following page depicts the approximate location of most of CAM 19's
students, along with the major bus
line and feeder routes.
Some
students live beyond the area
covered by the map.
Student
privacy is protected by the scale ofthe map which covers an area of
45 square kilometers (17 square
miles). There are private operatorsthat run vans, locally known as'combis' or 'colectivos' (photo atleft). The major transport routes in
Pachuca
are
run
by
the
government Tuzobús.
Tuzobús
provides a bus rapid transit line and feeder service with vans. Routes 17 and 19 arehighly used by CAM 19 students to provide feeder service to and from the trunk line.
Once caretakers and children arrive at the closest public transportation stops near
CAM 19, they are faced with walking or rolling several blocks in order to reach theschool.
1This case study is a cooperative project between Janett Jiménez Santos in Mexico City, Tom Rickert of AEI, and State of Hidalgo representatives
María Santa Perez Herrera (SEP), Sofía Alquicirez Tellez (DIF), Manuel Hernández Sánchez (the principal of CAM 19), Oscar Granados Ordaz(INEGI), María Mejía Ortiz (INEGI), and Alberto Ramírez Bracho (Secretaría de Movilidad y Transporte) including two interviews between Tom
Rickert and Manuel Hernández Sánchez in September 2021. This team presented a case study on CAM 19 and other matters at a Congress of State
Academics in Hidalgo held via Zoom on September 27, 2021. Follow up meetings have discussed various projects resulting from this collaboration.

49

The map, prepared by INEGI, shows that over 90% of CAM 19's students do not live withinwalking distance of the school, the moreso given the inability of caregivers to walk with orcarry students with different disabilities over distances that would be walkable by students
without disabilities. Much the same situation faces parents and caretakers of students withspecial needs who attend integrated (USAER) schools. This is true around the world: Without
vehicular transportation, most students with disabilities are unable to get to school.

2) PEDESTRIAN PATHS:
Parents andchildren must alight at stops depicted on the
map at left. This map depicts the streets in theimmediate vicinity of CAM 19 and the location of
the two most-used van stops serving CAM 19.
The map also depicts the location of streets
without sidewalks (red) and sidewalks with curb
ramps (blue). The existing curb ramps do notprovide an accessible travel chain to CAM 19.
Using Google photos, barriers along the existingpedestrian path were identified. Photos areprovided on the next page illustrating barriers
along this pathway. (INEGI map modified by Daniela
Briseño Arriaga)

50

Pedestrian access from transit stops to CAM 19 is depicted on the map below.
Even those sidewalks which have adequate width for a wheelchair are interrupted byutility poles, signs, driveways, and other barriers. (INEGI map modified by Daniela Briseño)

Currently, the pedestrian path from the Tuzobús van stop (bottom right) to CAM 19
includes barriers for caretakers and children with disabilities as they navigate their way
to the school. For some, it is easier to walk in the street (center left).

513) THE SCHOOL BUILDING ITSELF: This is a threestory building which would require an expensive
elevator to provide access for those students withdisabilities who find it difficult or impossible to climb
stairs. In the absence of an elevator, CAM 19 mustarrange classes on the ground floor for students
using wheelchairs, in spite of issues of classroom
size and equipment that change for wheelchairusers and other students over the years. As aresult, CAM 19 has enrolled only three wheelchairusers in their current 2021-22 school year class,which is a lower rate than for many other CAMs in our surveys.

2. A way forward for CAM 19
CAM 19 is seeking both short-term and longer-term solutions to the problems ofaccessible transportation and pedestrian paths as well as accessibility to the schoolbuilding itself. Elements of such a plan include:
Seek bus service directly to the school. Some alternatives include
1) The ideal solution is to establish dedicated school bus service in Pachuca,
prioritized for students with disabilities at CAM schools and for "USAER" schools
which integrate students with disabilities into their program.
2) Establish van routes that take into consideration the longer-term needs of CAM
students. This could be another long-term though not ideal solution. One solution
would prioritize the use of vans with a floor height similar to the height of the vanstops, combined with a short ramp operated by the driver along with other needed
access features.
3) Another solution would be to provide a part-time vehicle link between the vanstops and the CAM during the key periods when students arrive or depart fromschool. CAM 19 had some success with this approach in the past, using volunteer
drivers or others in a position to learn safe driving skills to operate a vehicle to
make the short round trips from the transit stops to the school for the hour before
and the hour following regular school hours. However, this turned out to be only ashort-term solution when funding ceased for even a part-time driver and thevehicle was no longer available.
4) If needed, relocate CAM 19 to a better site served by immediately adjacent transit
stops, as well as an adequate off-street location for parents or caregivers to safely
park adjacent to or on school property. This touches on the basic issue that the
government agencies in charge of procuring property and buildings for special
education schools may be different from the department which operates such
schools. It is all too easy to end up denying parents their ability to send their52

children with special needs to school, due to the time and money needed toprovide transportation to poorly located schools without access features.
In addition, transport subsidies could be considered for lower-income parents,
providing print (script) or electronic fares to enable the government to directly pay thetransport provider. With any of the above solutions, the use of aides on board thevehicle should be considered when appropriate.
Prioritize access features along the sidewalks connecting transit stops with theschool, including1) Sidewalk availability: Adding sidewalks where needed
2) Sidewalk width: Increasing width in cases where sidewalks are not usable by awheelchair user
3) Sidewalk obstacles: Route sidewalks around utility poles and signs which block pedestrians and establish policies to eliminate such obstacles when new construction occurs
4) Sidewalk surface: Repair damaged sidewalks and create a continuous surface notblocked by driveways and at a safe angle for persons using wheelchairs
5) Pedestrian crossings: Most pedestrian crossings lack curb ramps or pedestrianlevel crosswalks and they are needed along the entire travel path to the school6) Safety at intersections: Add crosswalks plus signage and traffic control devices atintersections where indicated7) Local transit stops: Identify the transit lines with route numbers or other designations
8) Local transit stops: Depending on level of usage, provide shelters against the weather,along with seating or supports for use when waiting for a van or combi stop
These measures could then become pilot projects and encourage inclusion of thesefeatures in other areas. Keep in mind that it is far less expensive to build inaccessibility at the beginning of a project, compared to making it accessible once
already built.
Integrate transportation and pedestrian accessibility into school building accessibility
A school doesn't mean much to children and youth with disabilities who cannot reachthat school. The entire travel chain by vehicle should be accessible: home to transit
stop to vehicle to transit stop, then into the school building and within the schoolbuilding. And it should also be accessible by walking or rolling in a wheelchair:pedestrian path to school, then into and within the school building. Upon reflection,
we all know this is true. It is part of the larger story of mobility for all people
everywhere. And that is part of the larger story of empathizing with others. This story
is ongoing. It crosses every border. It only deepens as time goes by.
53

Part 4: Appendices.

54

Appendix 1: Sample Driver Training Curriculum
Covid-related training• Preparing and cleaning the vehicle• Guidelines for students riding to school• Special driver requirements

Student-related content• Specific service requirements of the student(s) being transported• Specific emergency medical procedures (may including CPR, seizure response, andother procedures required by the student’s needs and appropriate laws)• Specific student emergency evacuation plans
Driving skills• Safe operation of the vehicle for the traffic setting and conditions• Safe pickup and delivery practices (including proper passing of custody at stops andschool sites)• Map and route document reading• Proper use of vehicle controls (brakes, lights, steering, etc)
• Vehicle-related emergencies
•
•
•
•
•

Vehicle/Equipment-related content
Daily pre-trip inspection
Maintenance requirements
Vehicle status and requirements for reporting problems
Correct use of accessibility features (including any lifts, ramps, car seats, or tie-downs)
Safe storage of equipment and belongings during transport

•
•
•
•
•
•

Disability-related content
Types of disabilities and their characteristics
General disability awareness and sensitivity
Student behavior management
Safety rules including noise limits, food restrictions, and proper seating
Dealing with blood-borne pathogens and other bodily fluids
General first aid procedures

•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Policy/Law compliance content
Reporting evidence of child abuse
Reporting an incident on the vehicle
Child-care and custody requirements
Attendance, time-keeping, and other related procedures
Communications procedures (with parents, school staff, and transportation office staff)
Testing for drugs and alcohol use
Self-reporting of health condition impacting safe driving
Distracted and inattentive driving
Customer service
Traffic laws
Equipment-related laws, for example about seatbelts and other child safety restraints
Driver and vehicle licensing requirements

55

Appendix 2: Student information for drivers and schools___ School _____________________________________ New Student___ Discontinue Transportation___ Update Information

This information on each student with a disability can be modified according to the situation__ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __TRANSPORTATION REQUEST
Updated ___________
Name: First ________________ Last ________________ Nickname _________ Grade ______
Student ID # _____ Parent/Guardian Name_____________________ Phone # ____________
Addresses or vehicle stop locations
Pick-up address _______________________________ Phone # _________________
Drop-off address _______________________________ Phone # _________________PLEASE MARK APPROPRIATE BOXES AND PROVIDE ADDITIONAL DETAIL IN THE NOTES SECTION

Special Equipment__ Wheelchair__ Walker / cane__ Car seat__ Safety vest__ Oxygen transported

Medical Factors__ Hearing impaired__ Monitor airway__ Visually impaired__ Insulin dependent__ Tracheotomy__ Severe allergies (describe)__ Medical assistant required__ Suctioning required__ Seizures (type/frequency/duration) _____________

Safety Factors__ Walks to bus unassisted__ Walks to bus but needs assistance__ Preferential seating (describe)__ Requires assistance walking__ Aggressive or dangerous behavior__ May run away__ Must be secured in vehicle__ Unable to communicate__ Difficulty following directions__ Medication to be transported__ Must be met by ___________________

Notes and other descriptions–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Information on this form supersedes all prior forms.
Authorized by _______________________________________________
Date _________________________

56

Appendix 3: Travel Training
Training is necessary for all aspects of life. This is especially the case for children with special
needs. Training for transportation-related activities can roughly be grouped into four
categories: • How to wait for the bus,
• How to board the bus,
• How to ride the bus, and• How to exit the bus.
Although there is a great deal of overlap between skill areas, there is also overlap with skills
learned in school. These areas of overlap can be leveraged to ease the learning process. For
example, presenting the bus pass is an essential skill for riding the bus. It overlaps withpresenting the bus pass on public transit. However, it also overlaps with presenting the librarycard to the librarian when checking out a book. So, in teaching the skill, the teacher would
start with the area the student should know, like the library card. Then the teacher would
teach about the connection to the bus pass, and finally how public transit is like riding theschool bus.
Transportation training teaches many transportation-related life skills which are intended to be
used for the remainder of the individual’s life. Therefore, it is important to teach them properly
and to refresh the training periodically. The skills taught can improve the safety of students
immediately, but also on an ongoing basis. They train the students to behave properly in andaround buses and other types of public transportation. Beyond that, they build self-esteem
and help the student’s value in the eyes of others. In the process of reinforcing learned
behaviors and skills they build the ability of the student to be a more productive citizen.
Students need to acquire many skills while waiting safely at a transit stop. Chief amongst
them is waiting out of the danger zone. However, saying goodbye to parents, standing in line
properly, and recognizing the bus and driver are also very important. Many of these skills also
benefit life inside and out of school. For example, a life skill that carries over in many aspectsof life is waiting in line. If students can master this skill, it will provide lifetime benefits.
There is much to be learned about entering the bus. Children with disabilities tend to not wait
for the bus to stop, so it is important for them to wait for the door to open before nearing thebus. Then the student must learn to hold the handrail, show the bus pass, and secure theseat-belt. These skills are essential for safe riding on both the school bus and public transit.
There are several skills involved in riding the bus properly. If students are to be allowed toeventually ride a public bus they must learn to stay seated, use a quiet voice, and listen to thedriver’s instructions. Learning to ask for help when needed is important. Students withspecial needs need to learn how and when to seek help from the driver and other riders.
Knowing what to do to get off the bus properly is also very important. Therefore, learning tolisten to the driver’s instructions, gather belongings, and locate a person meeting them is vital.
Also it is important to know how to disembark by descending any steps properly and holding
on to the handrail. Finally, it is important to say goodbye to the driver.
57

Appendix 4:
Seeking transportation for your child with special needs
Frequently, parents of children with special needs do not receive assistance intransporting their child to school. This lack of help may result in the child missing out on
education altogether. This unfortunate situation might be overcome with the help ofvarious public agencies, charities, religious organizations and private donors. Oftentimes,
opportunities are missed because parents are not familiar with how to share theirneeds/concerns. The following pointers explains the various parts of a communication
with an agency or a potential supporter regardless of the mode of communication (viaphone call, letter, or email).
Suggestion
ExampleIntroduce yourself politely
1. Dear Minister Garces
2. Dear Principal Gloria
1. I am a single parent of a seven-year-old who cannot get to school because hiswheelchair is broken.
2. My child has trouble walking. During the rainy season the walking path becomesso slippery and full of puddles that she cannot safely get to school.
3. The school bus at ________ School is no longer operational. We need areplacement vehicle so that my child can get to school.
Explain why you contacted this person
1. Since you are in charge of the department of public roads, I am hoping you canhelp me.
2. Since you are known to provide wheelchairs for low-income parents whosechildren require them, I am hoping you can help me.
Be very specific about what you are asking for
1. My child needs a larger car seat. He is 122 cm. (4 feet) tall and weighs 35 kg. (77 lbs.)
2. My child needs a safety belt to keep him from falling out of the moto-taxi.
Discuss future communications
1. How may I contact you next week by telephone?
2. You may contact me any day after 3 p.m. My cell phone # is ______.
Ask for a referral
If you are not able to solve this problem, could you please refer me to someone who. might help me?

58

Appendix 5: Encouraging parent initiatives:
Car pools, cooperatives, and mobility management
Especially in countries where school bus services are lacking, parents can sometimes
take the initiative to pool their resources or organize a car pool to carry each other'schildren to school. Parents could organize themselves and publicize efforts to form car
pools on a web site, in a local newspaper, or through posters at the local city hall ormarketplace. School districts could refer other parents interested in forming their own car
pools to such an organization. This could make it easier for school districts to cooperate
without taking on the risk of being legally responsible for the safe operation of the carpool or having to involve themselves in the details of carpool arrangements. Or agovernment agency could promote car pools of various kinds, including car pools to assist
with transportation to school.
Even in some areas where poverty issues rule out car
pools, government agencies in Mexico could consider
assisting parents with some or all of the funds to purchaseor rent a used or new vehicle and thus encourage parent
cooperatives to operate their own school transportation
when the government fails to do so. The poster at left isavailable at AEI's website at www.globalride-sf.org. Car
pools or parent cooperatives require good leadership whenit comes to making sure parents are responsible and haveno criminal record. Only parents who drive safely and arereliable should participate.
Parents could also work together to create an agreementwith a commercial taxi or other transportation service to
get their children to school in a reliable way. It might bepossible to get a lower-cost agreement by making sure the transportation to school is notduring the peak hour when there is a lot of competing demand for transportation.
Schools should keep this in mind when they plan their school hours.
When multiple parents in a neighborhood must use public transportation to get theirchildren to school, they might consider an agreement for parents from different families todivide up the work of accompanying their children to and from school when this isrequired. Or perhaps a cooperating school could provide transportation only to theschool for some students, and just the ride back home for others, thus reducing costs ofboth parents and the school while making it possible for parents to divide up theremaining work.
Sometimes local NGOs or communities of faith may be able to assist, perhaps when theirown vehicles, if any, are not in use for other purposes.
Readers are referred to our guide, Bridging the Gap, for a longer discussion of resource
sharing and mobility management which includes the approaches discussed on this page.

59

Appendix 6: More information on school transportationfrom Access Exchange International
Go to our website at www.globalride-sf.org for the following publications,videos, posters, & flyers. All are available in both English and Spanish
versions.
• Bridging the Gap: Your role in transporting children with disabilities toschool in developing countries. Also available in Hindi, Japanese, andboth traditional and simplified Chinese versions. (Approx. 150 pages)• A toolkit titled, Let's get children with disabilities toschool: Education and transportation officials need towork together (11 pages)• A toolkit promoting good practices in assisting children to walk or rollto school (10 pages)• Paratransit for mobility-impaired persons in developing
countries: Starting up and scaling up (88 pages). The focus
is on smaller vehicles.

• Transit Access Training Toolkit (prepared by AEI staff for the World
Bank, 31 pages). The focus is on public transportation.

• Three bilingual videos, filmed in the Mexican state of Hidalgo and in Mexico City, titled"A Missing Link: Transporting children with disabilities to school," "Promoting
volunteerism around the world," and "Bus rapid transit helps children get to school."• A series of posters and flyers promoting good practices to assist
children with disabilities to ride, walk or roll to school.

60Appendix 7: Sources for further information
Go to a search engine such as Google if a website does not open.

Title or subject

Location

American School Bus Council

http://www.americanschoolbuscouncil.org/

Atención de los Alumnos con Discapacidad . .

https://subeducacionbasica.edomex.gob.mx

Building and Maintaining a Partnership with
Special Educators (Special Needs
Transportation, School Bus Fleet)

http://www.schoolbusfleet.com/10047395/buildi
ng-and-maintaining-a-partnership-with-specialeducators

California's Special Education Transportation
Guidelines

https://www.cde.ca.gov/sp/se/lr/trnsprtgdlns.asp

Entornos Escolares Seguros en Escuelas deEducación Básica

https://www.educacionbc.edu.mx/departamentos/partsocial/archivos2020/convivencia%20escol
ar/Entornos_Escolares_Seguros_vf.pdf

Guidelines for Safe Transportation of Preschool Age Children in Buses

https://one.nhtsa.gov/people/injury/buses/Guide
1999/prekfinal.htm

Manual de operadores de transporte (Unidad
No. 4: Atención a la or el pasajero)

http://icathi.hidalgo.gob.mx

Normas Específicas de Control Escolar
Relativas a la Inscripción, Reinscripción,
Acreditación, Promoción, Regularización yCertificación en la Educación Básica, 2019https://www.planyprogramasdestudio.sep.gob.
mx/descargables/doctos/dof/NORMASCONTROL-ESCOLAR-BASICA.pdf

Pautas sobre el Diseño Universal para el
Aprendizaje (DUA) Texto Completo (Versión 2.0)

https://educadua.es/doc/dua/dua_pautas_2_0.pdf

Protecting Undocumented and Vulnerable
Students, Stanford Law School, 2017https://law.stanford.edu/wpcontent/uploads/2017/06/CCSA-YELP-SLSPolicy-Lab-Protecting-UndocumentedStudents.pdf

Safe Routes to School

http://www.transportation.gov/mission/health/Sa
fe-Routes-to-School-Programs

Understanding, Managing Difficult Special
Needs Student Behavior

http://www.schoolbusfleet.com/10009723/understanding-managing-difficult-special-needsstudent-behavior

Van Provider Safety Tips

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&
srcid=dW1pY2guZWR1fHdjLXRyYW5zcG9ydGF
0aW9uLXNhZmV0eXxneDo0YmY3YjhmNmFmZ
DBkNWVi61