On Thursday, September 17, 2026, the District of Columbia State Advisory Panel on Special Education (SAPSE) will be hosting it’s quarterly meeting. SAPSE advises the Office of the State Superintendent (OSSE) on unmet needs of students with disabilities, including the development of evaluations, reports, and corrective action plans in response to federal monitoring, and implementing policies and procedures to coordinate services for students with disabilities.

The central topic of discussion of tonight’s SAPSE meeting is on Student Specialized Transportation and AJE Parent Ambassadors have endorsed an approved joint public statement on their collective experiences with their children and youth that receive transportation accommodations via OSSE’s Divison of Transportation (OSSE DOT). Dr. Antoinette Mitchell, State Superintendent of Education, is expected to be in attendance.

This meeting is open to the public and we encourage DC parents and caregivers to attend and participate in this important opportunity to have dialogue with the SAPSE about student and family experiences with OSSE DOT by completing the required registration form and join using the unique participation link emailed after registering.

Please see below the joint statement of AJE Parent Ambassadors submitted to the SAPSE:

AJE Parent Ambassadors Joint Statement on
Reliable, Safe, and Accountable Transportation Accommodations for
DC Students with Disabilities and Special Health Care Needs

Approved on
September 15, 2026

We, the Parent Ambassadors of Advocates for Justice and Education (AJE), are parents, grandparents, caregivers, and community leaders raising and supporting children and youth with disabilities throughout the District of Columbia. Many of us are adults also navigating the DC disability systems of care as self-advocates, and some of us are alumnae of DC special education services and have long memories of the many years of dysfunctions specific to transportation accommodations. Based on our collective experiences navigating special education, we are calling for immediate and sustained improvements to the Office of the State Superintendent of Education Division of Student Transportation (OSSE-DOT).

For students whose Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) make them eligible for transportation, transportation is not an optional convenience. It is a related service in the IEP and is part of the infrastructure that allows students with disabilities to access school and the services required to support their education. On OSSE’s website, it describes the student transportation system as committed to “safety, efficiency, reliability, and customer focus.” Yet, the lived experiences shared by AJE families show a troubling gap between these commitments and our daily reality.

At a recent Parent Ambassador meeting, transportation emerged as the most common and urgent concern during our group dialogue. Family leaders shared concerns about the persistent and incorrigible patterns of: (1) chronic school late bus arrivals, (2) unpredictable pick-up and drop-off times, (3) missed buses without proper notification, (4) excessively long rides and late drop-offs, (5) inadequate communication, (6) safety concerns and documented incidents, (7) children being transported to incorrect locations, and (8) difficulty obtaining timely assistance from OSSE-DOT to address or resolve any of these issues.

These are not simply minor inconveniences; they are adverse childhood experiences, generational traumas, and expensive failures that often result in avoidable health issues, police involvement, and other under-documented consequences. And these consequences extend beyond transportation. When buses arrive late, students lose instructional time. Families lose work hours. Children may miss therapies, meals, routines, or other supports. Inconsistencies and bus safety issues lead to meltdowns of emotionally fragile children and youth, with incidents often involving the police. The whole family unit accumulates undue and avoidable traumas, shaping a young person’s childhood experiences and memories. Oftentimes, the ripple effect of inefficient student transportation services exposes parents to the deeply concerning punitive attendance or truancy consequences when tardiness results from transportation failures outside their control.

One caregiver described moving her child to a school only seven minutes from home because transportation to the previous school routinely made him late. Even after the move, she reported: “They’re still late.” The same family described their child being taken to the wrong school and returning home after such an extended ride that he had been sitting in soiled clothing.

Another caregiver described receiving calls at approximately 5:00 am or 5:30 am informing the family that the bus would arrive “anywhere from 40 to 60 minutes early.” Such unpredictability places an unreasonable burden on families who are simultaneously preparing children with disabilities for school, managing medications and personal care, getting other children ready, and preparing for work.

Parents also questioned why families still lack meaningful real-time transportation information. As one caregiver asked, “With all this technology, GPS… why not just send me a notice… with real-time updates?” Another caregiver reported that after a bus departed following only a three-minute warning, she transported her child herself, and then remained on hold with OSSE for 52 minutes before giving up.

Most seriously, family leaders reported incidents implicating student safety and dignity. These included a child being transported to the wrong school, a seven-year-old being permitted to leave the bus without an adult escort, a bus attendant physically restraining a child during a meltdown, a child returning home after an excessively long ride in urine and feces, a non-speaking autistic student reportedly being dropped at the wrong location, and a school bus involved in an accident. Caregivers have even resorted to placing personal tracking devices in children’s belongings because they could not otherwise reliably determine where their children were.

AJE Parent Ambassadors understand that shifting the burden of the self-transport option is not a sustainable solution. We understand that cutting the OSSE DOT budget year after year is an expressed moral statement of the lack of political will to fix a fixable problem. We observe the complex rules and regulations that OSSE DOT hides behind to shield dysfunctional practices. We are infuriated at the fact that most parents cannot afford the legal services needed to equitably activate due process protections against these systemic abuses of OSSE DOT. With all this in mind, we call upon OSSE, our District leaders, LEAs, and others with the ability to address these issues to:

Guarantee safe, timely, and reliable transportation consistent with students’ IEPs and disability-related needs, with measurable standards for pickup, ride duration, arrival, and drop-off.

Implement real-time GPS tracking and family notifications providing accurate vehicle location, estimated arrival times, delays, route changes, and emergency information.

Strengthen safety and accountability requirements for drivers, attendants, contractors, and subcontractors, including disability-responsive, linguistically and culturally competent, and trauma-informed training and clear protocols for behavioral or medical emergencies.

Establish rapid family-response and escalation procedures so parents do not spend excessive periods on hold while trying to locate a child or resolve an urgent transportation problem, or obtain expensive legal services.

Consistently and accurately track and publicly report performance and safety data, including late routes, missed pickups, ride times, complaints, accidents, incorrect drop-offs, and resolution timelines.
Protect families from punishment for agency failures, including ensuring that transportation-caused tardiness or absence is accurately documented and does not contribute to inappropriate truancy or attendance enforcement.

Include parents and students with disabilities in transportation reform, not merely be engaged as recipients of information but as decision-makers in designing, monitoring, and evaluating the system, such as having some input over the selection of vendors and contractors.

OSSE’s website states that reliable transportation should support students’ opportunities to learn. As Parent Ambassadors, we agree. Because of this, we cannot accept a system in which parents must repeatedly call, track, document, intervene, miss work, transport children themselves, or fear for their children’s safety simply to obtain a service already identified as necessary for access to education.

Our children deserve transportation that is safe, dignified, predictable, accessible, and accountable. DC families should be able to place their children in the trust of OSSE-DOT services with confidence that they will be cared for, prioritized, invested in, and respected. We call on District leaders to treat these expectations not as an aspiration, but as a basic standard of educational access to a free and appropriately ambitious public education.

For any questions about any part of this collective statement, please contact advocacy@aje-dc.org. We welcome partnership and are ready to collaborate on building a dignified school transportation system.