DRIVING THE INDUSTRY SINCE 1991
In Neptune Township School District, Denise Casper is both the coordinator of transportation and the district homelessl liaison. Her district, which contracts for buses, served 38 displaced students, six of which came from other districts. Tey had “lost everything,” and their parents wanted to change schools to attend in Nep- tune. Casper said the district tried to keep most children “status quo” in terms of school of origin. She credits Neptune’s ability to “quickly get kids in school and get them fed” to the close rela- tionship the district and Superintendent David A. Mooij have with the Office of Emergency Management and the local police department. Across the country, Diedra Tomas-Murray
is transition coordinator and foster-care liaison for St. Louis Public Schools (SLPS). She’s had plenty of experience — some of it personal — arranging services for displaced children in St. Louis and New Orleans. Tomas-Murray and her five children fled their home when Hurricane Katrina hit in the summer of 2005; they fully expected to return. Instead, they relocated to Missouri where, in 2006, she was hired by SLPS. She knows full well how important it is to keep children on school buses. She said the first
thing she did after joining St. Louis was to “try to get all children on school buses and not in taxi cabs” (although she doesn’t claim a 100-per- cent success rate, and many parents prefer cabs). During Katrina she found that “cabs don’t always show up.” And, she added, it can be more difficult to handle behavior issues in cabs. “Tese are children who have experienced
traumatic events,” she said. “Some of them don’t want to be touched, even bumped. In a bus, you can move children around, and the driver can see and be more sensitive to a child’s issues. In a cab it can be more stressful to a child.” St. Louis Public Schools has seen the number of students in transition double to 4,000 over the past three to five school years. Tomas-Mur- ray puts the statewide figure at 24,000. “Home- lessness has no respect for a person,” she said. Fortunately, transportation professionals
and transition coordinators across the country recognize the humanity and value of “getting the kids back to school.” —
Schwaderer is president of Edupro Group and Espar_Act_half_Dec12_Layout 1 12/18/12 1:33 PM Page 1
publisher of Legal Routes. She also chairs STN's Transporting Students with Disabilities and Preschoolers National Conference.
The Homeless Education Advocacy Manual
The "Disaster Edition," like other reports from NLCHP, provides a clear guide to the McKinney-Vento Act. It offers advocates ways to educate parents on school of origin provisions, trans- portation cost concerns, and working with districts and parents on prompt provision of services. The report is available from the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty at
www.hlchp.org.
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