National Superintendent of the Year
explained. “I sit in a very unique seat as far as under- standing the needs of certain students with special needs and their parents.” She explained that Canton City also has many narrow
roads and alleys, where many school buses don’t fit. By integrating vans, Vasquez said the district is able to pick up students in hard-to-get places, removing the require- ment students walk to the nearest corner. Regardless of the type of vehicle used, Vasquez said
all drivers on trainined on child safety restraint systems, via a combination of hybrid and hands-on instruction. “For example, my daughter is in a wheelchair, I have her come in and we train loading/unloading and securement hands on,” she said, adding that they also have volunteers to put on the safety vests so staff can practice using them, following a class instruction on verbage and laws. Canton City operates all its own McKinney-Vento
Read more about Bentonville Public Schools and the three other superintendent finalist districts at stnonline. com/tag/superintendent. Plus, stay tuned for upcoming episodes of the School Transportation Nation podcast to hear from district representatives.
Canton City is an inner-city urban school district
with a poverty rate of 31 percent, whereas Ohio’s overall poverty rate is 13 percent. Vasquez said the more eco- nomically disadvantaged families who often don’t have personal vehicles lean on busing as a necessity. “There’s no other choice,” Vasquez said. “If we don’t get them, they don’t go to school.” She noted the district is seeing an increase of stu-
dents each year, especially those with special needs. The districts SPED population is about 18 percent of the overall student population, with an increase of over 500 students this school year. Already, the district operates a three-tiered bell system, transporting a total of 8,800 students to over 35 school locations despite only one transportation center. “Accommodations are rising (safety vests, car seats,
non verbal communication),” she explained, adding they have seen a rise in students that are on the spectrum for Autism.
Amid that task, Vasquez said the district contracts trans-
portation of students who are emotionally and behaviorally challenged, and that attend specialized programming classes. It also contracts service for students who attend the district’s trauma program. That contractor, Templeton Transportation, runs a total of 10 vans for the district. Vasquez added she’s also working on growing the
internal van fleet and is in the process of making the special needs fleet a hybrid between vans and buses. “I have a child that was born with spina bifida (which
results when the spine and spinal cord don’t form properly during pregnancy) that’s in a wheelchair,” she
46 School Transportation News • MARCH 2025
Homeless Assistance Act transportation. “We are doing a really good job of absorbing and just being creative,” Vasquez said. “[Staff members] understand that we’re all in this together. There’s no way we would be able to do what we do if it wasn’t for our people and the willingness and their drive to just help get the kids to school.” She noted that many of her school bus drivers are
from Canton City and once attended schools in the district. “It’s awesome to have the staff that we have, and that’s how we do a lot of what we do,” she explained. The district is also responsible for driving not just the
Canton City School District students, but the students who live within the City of Canton. “That means if they decide they want to go to a private or parochial school, we either a have to take them and create routes for them, or we pay [parents] in lieu of transportation, if we deem them that it’s not practical,” explained Vasquez The students are not offered transportation to a partic-
ular school if there’s not enough students to transport, or if the location is more than half an hour away from the student’s home school. “That becomes a very interesting dynamic of our tier system,” she said, adding that there’s a big difference between transporting students who attend a school district and school transportation. Ohio law requires that districts are also responsible for transporting all eligible students (K-8 who live more than two miles for their school) to community or charter nonpublic schools. Vasquez said she’s not afraid to call schools and ask them to change their bell times to better accommodate transportation. “We’re blessed to have a superintendent that truly gives value to transportation, and that is a game changer,” Vasquez said. “We would not be as good as we are and as efficient as we are without their support.” Don Hoover, the executive director of student services
for Bentonville Public Schools in Arkansas, agreed. From July 2022 to July 2023, the city of Centerton serviced by Bentonville was rated as the nation’s sixth fastest growing
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