State Enters Dispute Over Bus Shortage : Watchdog Agency Official Threatens to File Complaint

The ranking Orange County representative of a state watchdog agency for handicapped children said Friday she may file a federal civil rights complaint against the county Department of Education if a shortage of buses for handicapped students continues.

Rhys Burchill, executive director of Developmental Disabilities Area Board 11, also said she is asking state Supt. of Public Instruction Bill Honig to intervene.

Since Monday, the company that contracts with the county to bus handicapped students to and from school has been unable to provide enough vehicles because of a driver shortage. Burchill said the county Department of Education’s inability to solve the problem “is catastrophic to the families of the handicapped involved.”

Robert Peterson, county superintendent of schools, said Friday that he and his staff are continuing to seek ways to end the transportation problem. “If she can get a fire lighted under the contractor, more power to her,” Peterson said of Burchill. He said his department has done all it financially can to help the bus contractor.

About 800 handicapped students throughout the county are bused to 21 special education schools operated by the county Department of Education. Less than half the usual number of buses ran Monday, and there has been a shortage of about 20% of the buses the rest of the week.

Not Enough Drivers

Larry Durham of Durham Transportation, the contractor that provides the buses, has said he cannot find enough drivers willing to work for what he can afford to pay them under his contract with the county. Durham said the five-year contract his company signed in 1985 was negotiated before motor vehicle insurance tripled in cost and before the unemployment rate fell so low in Orange County, making it very difficult to hire low-wage drivers.

Durham said the contract with the county Department of Education must be changed to make it more profitable for him so he can hire more drivers.

Peterson said the county already has given Durham

a 4.34% cost-of-living adjustment this year that is not required in the contract. “We’ve done as much as we can,” said Peterson, noting that his department already has faced budget cuts, some layoffs and unpaid furloughs for its staff.

But Burchill said Friday that Peterson and the county education department have the legal responsibility to solve the transportation problem for the handicapped students.

Burchill’s agency is in charge of monitoring Orange County to make sure that federal and state laws for handicapped children are properly implemented. She said Friday that her agency believes handicapped children and their parents are being denied their legal rights by the bus shortage.

“I don’t know who’s at fault in this issue,” she said. “My concern is not who is at fault, but in getting the problem solved.”

Burchill said the county education department, which gets federal and state money to teach and transport about 800 handicapped children in Orange County, is legally accountable for how that money is spent.

Burchill said scores of handicapped schoolchildren have been stranded without bus transportation since Monday.

“We’re very concerned that children are not going to school,” she said. “That represents not only a denial of their rights, but it also interferes with the consistencies these children need on a daily basis. These children have much greater needs than the average child.

“This shortage of buses is also affecting the families. In many cases, the children are from single-parent homes, and the parent must work. The lack of bus transportation is interfering with the parents’ jobs.”

‘Violation of Rights’

Burchill said state and federal laws require that money used for education of the handicapped also must provide transportation for the students. “Their being denied transportation is a violation of their rights,” Burchill said.

She said that if the bus shortage continues, she will file a complaint on behalf of the children with the U.S. civil rights office in San Francisco. “I will be encouraging individual parents to do the same thing,” Burchill said.

Peterson said he hopes Burchill’s office will try to persuade Durham Transportation to solve the bus problem. But Burchill said she believes it is the responsibility of the county Department of Education and the individual school districts that send some of their handicapped students to county-run schools.

“Not many people realize it, but the local school districts still have the responsibility for these children who go to county schools,” Burchill said. “I think the school districts must take an active role in solving this problem.”

Orange County has about 40,000 handicapped students, and while a few are taught at home or in private schools, about 90% attend schools operated by individual school districts. Only about 800 of the 40,000 handicapped students in the county attend the special schools operated by the county education department.

Department Criticized

The department has been criticized by grand juries several times in recent years. One suggestion was that the $50-million-a-year agency be abolished.

In response to critics, Peterson and other defenders of the department say it fulfills important services, including providing schools for “a percentage of handicapped students whose problems are so severe that other school districts do not want to take them.”

Criticism of the department by the 1986 grand jury resulted in a referendum, ballot Measure A, that will be on the countywide ballot Nov. 8. The measure asks voters if the superintendent of schools should continue to be elected or should be appointed, after 1990, by the five-member county Board of Education.

Peterson’s current four-year term ends in 1990. He has been county superintendent of schools for 22 years.

Two county Board of Education trustees earlier this weeks criticized Peterson for not informing them sooner about the bus shortage. Trustee Sheila Meyers said that Peterson knew as long ago as December that the bus contract had become a problem but that she was not told of the bus shortage until Monday night. Trustee Elizabeth Parker had a similar criticism.