DC agency lays out transportation plans for 2024-2025 school year; Some still skeptical

WASHINGTON ( DC News Now ) — An agency in D.C. laid out its transportation plans for the 2024-2025 school year in court on Tuesday after a group of parents sued the District for failing to provide safe, reliable transportation for students with disabilities.

“We’re hopeful OSSE will carry out the promises they put forward. They put a lot of new money and staffing into it,” said Kathy Zeisel, an attorney with the Children’s Law Center who is representing the families.

In court, attorneys for the Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE) shared an 11-page report detailing its process for the new school year.

OSSE, the District’s education agency, is responsible for busing students with disabilities to and from school daily.

According to the document, OSSE began preparing for the new school year in June by collecting initial transportation request forms from area schools. It also conducted an initial round of outreach to parents.

In July, the report states that OSSE began the “process of creating new school year bus routes in the routing system (via internal algorithm) using the most recent TRFs.” It also states the agency is currently assessing private route vendor availability and capacity.

Outreach to parents also continues this month.

In August, “bus drivers and attendants will conduct practice runs to confirm the feasibility of pick-up times listed on the trip ticket. OSSE-DOT will make further routing adjustments based on staff practice run feedback,” stated the document.

In addition to explaining its process for organizing transportation this year, the agency also stated that it’s making a bigger financial investment in the system.

Up to $17 million will be allocated to support private route expansion.

“This will significantly reduce the probability of a student being late for school as a result of a regularly assigned bus driver calling out the morning of a school day. A bench of private routes will allow terminal managers to substitute for the absent driver as soon as OSSE-DOT learns of the regular driver’s absence,” stated the report.

The agency’s 2025 budget also includes $1 million to support the parent stipend program, which gives money to parents who take their children to school on their own.

“There’s a lot of goals in that plan and we’re hopeful OSSE will continue to put more specifics and details into that plan,” said Zeisel. “I think our clients are hopeful we’ll see some changes. But I think everyone is feeling a little bit nervous of how that’ll be carried out.”

One of those clients is Elizabeth Daggett.

“My experience tells me it will not work the way it’s supposed to which is sad,” she said. “I don’t want to have to believe it’ll not be okay. But I need to see it happen for us.”

Daggett’s 13-year-old son relies on OSSE transportation to get to school. But, over the last two years, she said it’s been unreliable, with the bus showing up late, returning late or canceling altogether.

“He could miss medication. He could be on the bus for so long he [will have] peed his pants and he’s upset,” said Daggett, when explaining to DC News Now the need for filing the lawsuit in March. “I’ve heard of other people whose kids have been taken to a [wrong] location. There are just so many concerns and you don’t know what it could be.”

Months later, she said the service has not improved.

“The bus is still coming late, we aren’t getting notifications, if we are it’s not accurate,” she said.

Just a few weeks ago, she said she got misinformation from the agency.

“We were told a couple of weeks ago that his transportation in the fall was in danger because proper forms were not submitted by his school when they were. Then I got a text later saying, ‘Just kidding we already had it,’” Daggett said. “It makes it more frustrating for us and it continues to increase the anxiety that families have.”

She’ll wait and see what happens during the first week of the new school year, with little faith in the process.

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” she said.

In addition to laying out plans for this year, OSSE said there are future plans to make improvements, including the development of a GPS system that will allow parents to track their child’s bus before scheduled pick-up in the morning.

The agency estimates that system could go live in April of 2025.

OSSE is ordered to return to court following the first week of school.

At that point, that judge will determine how the lawsuit shall move forward based on OSSE’s performance.

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