ORLANDO, Fla. — The 21st National Conference on Transporting Students with Disabilities and Preschoolers is around the corner, and it promises to be filled with useful information.

The event will be held in Orlando March 9-14. Program highlights include three separate-registration workshops (lesson plans for changing times, preschool and Head Start transportation, and safety restraint training) and conference sessions on vital interest areas, including compliance versus excellence, medications on the school bus, transporters and the IEP, determining mobility system integrity, dealing with difficult people, wheelchair standards and leadership in special-needs transportation.

The opening general session will look ahead at what recent regulatory changes and initiatives in special education could mean for transportation — changes related to infants and toddlers with disabilities, maintenance of effort, and seclusion and restraint, among other things.

Moreover, registrants will have the opportunity to complete the core curriculum for the National Association for Pupil Transportation's Special Needs Transportation endorsement.

"Come 'ready to learn' — and enthusiastically participate in classroom, hands-on and networking activities from Friday through Wednesday," Edupro Group President Roseann Schwaderer said. "We'll send you home with a busload of smart ideas."

The 15th National Special Needs Team Safety Roadeo will be held March 9-11. It includes a number of free conference sessions for team contestants.

More details on the conference, workshops and roadeo are at www.eduprogroup.com.