The Washington Post: For disabled D.C. students, an uncertain wait on school buses remains
Theresa Vargas of the Washington Post reports on continued transportation issues for students with disabilities in DC.
Elizabeth Daggett felt so skeptical that her son’s bus would show up on time for the first day of school that she took the morning off from work.
By 6:40 a.m., just in case she was wrong, she made sure her 12-year-old son, Henry, who attends a school for children and young adults with intellectual disabilities, was dressed and ready.
By 6:52, a.m., to her surprise, she watched a bus pull in front of the family’s D.C. home. In that moment, it seemed, her worry had been unwarranted.
By 7 a.m., the brief hope she held for an easy morning was gone. She watched that bus drive away, without her son on it.
As Daggett tells it, when she went outside to talk with the driver, she was told the bus didn’t have the hardware that connects to a harness her son needs to wear while riding the bus because he experiences seizures. She was told another bus would come later that morning.
The District is Failing to Provide Transportation for Students with Disabilities
Parents and guardians of children with disabilities living in the District of Columbia, along with The Arc of the United States, filed a class action lawsuit on March 7, 2024 against DC’s Office of the State Superintendent for Education for failing to provide safe, reliable and effective transportation to and from schools for children with disabilities, thereby denying students equal access to their education and unnecessarily segregating them from their peers.