SIMMONS: The high cost of special-ed bus service

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

This morning, the D.C. Council opens wide the door to the spiraling costs of providing transportation for 3,500 special-education students, whose busing system currently costs taxpayers about $26,285 per student, per year.

Of course, the laws of humanity dictate that no expense be spared to educate children with special needs, though the money is not actually being spent on teaching and learning.

Meeting the moral obligation could be easier if city officials develop a narrow line of questioning.

Why doesn’t the city offer vouchers to parents with special-needs children? Would doing so drive the costs of special education up or down?

The D.C. school bus fleet, which transports only special-education students, has 840 buses that cover 645 routes at an annual cost of $92 million.

D.C. Public Schools operates 126 school buildings, yet there are five times as many routes. Why? School authorities truly need to explain this one to taxpayers, who suspect authorities are failing to design routes based on students’ common destinations, especially when many are taken to public and private schools in nearby jurisdictions.

A report in July uncovered “a startling number of safety concerns” regarding the buses themselves, which, of course, is unconscionable. For example, even basic safety checks — mirrors, motor oil and lights — were neglected in 91 percent of the 754 buses that were studied, according to the report. Moreover, 492 buses failed to undergo an annual comprehensive brake inspection.

Lawmakers must get to the bottom of such safety issues immediately.

As for the parents of special-needs youths, the plaintiffs in ornery lawsuits filed in connection with special-education issues and the judges overseeing the cases, all parties need to exhibit more flexibility.

Currently, the District remains under a heavy cloud of court-ordered mandates, ranging from whether the school system drags its feet on providing a child an individual evaluation to ensuring that the child gets to and from school in a timely manner. Mayor Vincent C. Gray deserves much credit for addressing most of the issues.

His administration recently opened another evaluation center for special-needs children, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit just last week handed the city a substantial victory in the 16-year-old class-action case. In short, the three-judge appeals panel ruled that future decisions on the longstanding suit give measurable weight to current circumstances.

That’s good to know as lawmakers and school officials begin divulging the dollars and sense of every aspect of special-education transportation.

Here again, the focus is not whether the city is providing transportation services, which was the chief issue when the initial Petties v. the District of Columbia lawsuit was filed in 1995. The question is that now that those school-bus responsibilities are back in the hands of the District, how can they be provided more efficiently.

Vouchers — even if not for all 3,500 youths in special-education programs — should be part of any education discussion.

The annual per-student rate of $26,285 for transporting special-needs children should raise eyebrows, to be sure — especially when you consider that those expenditures could prove more beneficial on teaching and learning.

Thanking Ofield Dukes

In the late 1960s and early ’70s, as mainstream media begin casting its eyes upon black journalists, a man named Ofield Dukes, as fate would have it, rounded us up in Washington and told us to pay attention to this and watch out for that — blazing a trail for professionals, professionalism and coverage of events that might otherwise go ignored.

Ofield, a public relations pioneer who died Wednesday in Detroit from a rare form of bone cancer at 79, was a mentor who shared the mystiques of the two Washingtons — the city and its denizens and the inside-the-Beltway powerbrokers who work and live here — and how to cover both.

His legion of students, as well as the events and individual people to whom he brought honor, owe him much.

As one of his students since I was a teenager, I pay homage.

• Deborah Simmons can be reached at dsimmons@washingtontimes.com.