“Special-Needs Transportation Best Practice” is designed to educate the transportation professional, but the underlying message that permeates its 794 pages is the need for transportation professionals to educate others as well — the non-disabled children who might be quick to stigmatize children with disabilities (CWD) or the school building personnel who don’t understand safety before schedule. The text includes best practice for the IEP committee that doesn’t understand the impact of distance on program success or the simple logic that least restrictive environment applies to the bus as well as the classroom.
This manual is an encyclopedia of Dr. Ray Turner’s experience as a special educator that started 40 years ago and has included professional roles of special-education teacher, administrator, professor and transportation administrator.
Decades of knowledge on display
Building on “Transporting Handicapped Students: A Reference Manual” in 1980, “Special-Needs Transportation Handbook” in 1998 and “Transporting Medically Fragile or Technology-Assisted Students” in 2000, this reference work incorporates Dr. Turner’s writing and experience of the past four decades in special education: Where else can you find 19 strategies for transporting children with autism or consider 27 types of school bus accidents that should be considered for crutch users?
Turner’s text starts with a Special-Needs Transportation Student’s Bill of Rights that makes explicit that transportation as a related service must be provided professionally, sensitively, expeditiously, reliably and appropriately.
The manual has the feel of WebMD, only without the handy search features. [Editor’s note: A searchable CD version of the text is now available for purchase (without shipping or handling charges) at www.whitebuffalopress.com.]
Ted Finlayson-Schueler is the president of Safety Rules! — a nonprofit organization dedicated to the safe travel of students to and from school. For more information, visit www.safetyrules.net.
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