Handicapped Students Left Stranded as Bus Firm Comes Up Short of Drivers

Hundreds of handicapped students were left stranded this week when the bus company hired to transport them told Orange County Board of Education officials that the firm could not find enough drivers.

Robert D. Peterson, the superintendent for county schools, which have 800 special-needs students, said the problem started Monday and continued Tuesday, with parents providing some emergency transit. He said no solution was in sight.

The matter drew immediate criticism from two county board members who blamed Peterson for not warning them of the problem and not dealing with the shortage earlier.

Peterson said Durham Transportation Inc. of Rosemead dispatched just 50 of 85 buses Monday, stranding about 400 students. It was not known how many buses were operating Tuesday.

The company, which is under a five-year contract with the county that started in 1985, is to receive about $2.5 million this year to transport the 800 students to 21 special education sites.

Larry Durham, owner of Durham, said the company is looking for more drivers but has been unable to find them.

“There’s a severe shortage of part-time, service-oriented employees in Orange County,” he said.

Durham also said his company’s contract with the county education department does not provide enough money for him to attract and hire drivers. He said motor vehicle insurance costs to him have tripled since 1985, making it necessary to modify the contract so he can have more money to pay drivers.

“We need to resolve the contract because it’s not (financially) competitive,” he said.

Durham also provides school buses to the Santa Ana Unified School District. School officials there said the number of drivers has been adequate.

Peterson said Tuesday he has no immediate plan to seek a court order to enforce the contract, but he said the department could declare that the contract with the bus company was not being fulfilled and sue to invoke a $450,000 penalty.

“But we’re not considering that at all right now; it would be a major trauma,” he said. “What we are doing now is doing our best, working with the parents, to make the sure the children get to school until such time that the contractor can rectify the situation and provide the buses.”

Worried About Buses

Lillian Biesiadecki--a Newport Beach mother of mentally retarded, twin, 21-year-old women--said Tuesday she is worried and anxious about the busing situation.

“I always worry about the safety of my children, and this makes it worse,” she said. “It’s absolutely unreal. I’ve had to cancel appointments I had in Los Angeles because I’m not sure when a bus will come by. Today it was about two hours late, and it was not a regular bus but a very dirty one that they had put into service only the night before to help out.”

Biesiadecki said her children, who are confined to wheelchairs, go to the county Department of Education’s Huntington Beach Center.

She criticized the department for not solving the busing problem and also for not telling parents of handicapped children about the shortage of buses.

“We’ve heard from the school, but we haven’t heard anything from the district (Department of Education),” she said.

Two of the five elected county Board of Education trustees--Elizabeth Parker and Sheila Meyers--accused Peterson and the Department of Education on Tuesday of not telling board members about the shortage.

Peterson, in a separate interview, said he did not know about the bus shortage until Monday--when the 400 children became stranded.

Parker and Meyers are on the county Board of Education’s subcommittee on school contracts. Meyers accused county Department of Education officials of having known since December that Durham faced problems in meeting terms of the contract.

“And yet it was 9 o’clock on Monday night before I was told by anyone in the department that we had children stranded, waiting for buses, that morning,” she said. “If the superintendent were appointed, he would have informed his board members within five minutes.”

The job Peterson holds, and has held for 22 years, is filled by direct election of the countywide voters every four years. The county superintendent of schools has control of the 800-employee county Department of Education, including its contracts, without prior approval of the five-member elected Board of Education. The board’s sole power over the county superintendent is through approval or rejection of annual budgets.

Measure A on the countywide ballot Nov. 8 is a referendum on whether the position of county superintendent should become appointive, rather than elective, after Peterson’s current term expires in 1990.

Parker also criticized Peterson and other county Department of Education officials for not telling the board about the bus problem.

Surprised by Shortage

“I am livid,” she said. “I was not privy to any information about this bus crisis, and I think the board could have been of assistance in trying to resolve it. . . . At board meetings, we’ve asked how the bus contract situation was, and we were always told that everything was hunky-dory.”

Peterson said his first hint that there might be a shortage came when one of his subordinates, Arnita Moon, learned that day that Durham might be short.

“Arnita asked if the county department could be of help, and she was told that everything was being taken care of,” Peterson said. “And so on Monday, I was surprised when there was the shortage of buses.”