Infant Seats on School Buses Addressed (Day Care at High School)

MOUNDSVILLE - Six John Marshall High School students with infants are expected to participate in a day care program when it begins operation at the school in January. At issue is finding a way to transport both the students and their children to and from the school.

On the agenda for the Marshall County Board of Education's consideration this week was granting permission to purchase infant seats to be placed on school buses.

The administrator of the West Virginia Partnership to Assure Student Success, who was responsible for requesting the item, was not present at the regular meeting Tuesday to make a formal presentation to the board, so the matter was tabled.

Schools Transportation Director Bruce Mosa - who announced Tuesday that he is retiring on June 30 - did speak to the issue, however, and made it obvious that he did not feel placing infants on high school buses was a good plan of action.

"We need to look at some alternative," Mosa said. "I don't think it's a proper atmosphere for infants."

Some of the negative aspects Mosa outlined Tuesday were matters of federal law and the weak immune systems of infant children riding on a bus surrounded by coughing and sneezing high school students.

Mosa said that federal law requires that the school bus seat behind the one where a mother and child are sitting must be left vacant. Mosa said that as the winter wears on and road conditions have the potential to be hazardous, the population of students riding buses to high school increases and as many seats as possible are necessary to accommodate them.

Also at issue were some of the lengths of the bus routes in the county. Schools Interim Superintendent Fred Renzella said Wednesday that one bus route is around 53 miles round trip. Should an infant have an accident during such a long bus ride, there would be the matter of the comfort of the students on the bus.

Alternatives that are available to the board are reimbursements to the student mothers or their parents for transporting infants to the day care room at John Marshall, Renzella said. Another alternative would be to contract with a local service that provides such transportation.

Renzella said the WVPASS grant has been used to fund the latter mode of transportation for the past two years for other purposes.

Currently, the county is not responsible for transporting infant children of students to a day care facility. Teen mothers are transported, however, to a facility in Glen Dale. When the day care room opens up at John Marshall sometime next month, the infants will be transferred there. Crittenton Services Inc. will staff the day care.

The board of education tabled the matter until members could receive more information on the bus routes, the number of children riding the buses and the costs of infant seats for the buses.

Board member David Hall said that "we have to be able to get the child and mother" to and from the school to give the teen mother a greater opportunity to graduate - one of the primary functions of the WVPASS programs.

UPDATE!!!

While the Marshall County Board of Education this week urged administrators to find other means for transporting student mothers to John Marshall High School rather than placing infant seats on school buses, officials within Ohio County Schools said the district's bus service for student mothers and infants is a positive program.

Marshall County Schools Interim Superintendent Fred Renzella said Thursday that a day care center at the high school should be operational in two weeks. So far, four student mothers have signed up to participate in the day care program. The school district expects two or three more to sign up in the future. The idea of placing infant seats on school buses met with some disapproval from schools Transportation Director Bruce Mosa during a board meeting last month.

"We need to look at some alternative," Mosa told the board during the meeting. "I don't think (a school bus is) a proper atmosphere for infants."

Renzella said Thursday that Ohio County Schools currently buses student mothers and their infants. He noted that two other counties in the state also bus student mothers and infants.

"It's contingent on the number of kids on the bus," Renzella said. "When you do this, you have to remove the seat behind, so you're going to lose two seats. That could conceivably result in huge cost in terms of adding a bus and driver. That's why other counties do it on a case-by-case basis."

Ohio County Schools Assistant Superintendent George Krelis, however, said the district has been busing student mothers and their infants for more than a decade.

"The transportation department was instrumental in implementing the program," he noted. "We think it's a very positive program for the students who need that service."

Currently, six students from Wheeling Park High School use the service, which has been offered for 15 years or more, according to Transportation Director James Freeland.

"Our practice is that if we have space available on the bus, we'll be more than happy to accommodate student mothers and their infants," he explained. "The car seats have to be federally approved with a sticker on it from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration."

Meanwhile, Renzella added that liability insurance necessary to transport infants on school buses also is at issue. And although the day care program is to be up and running in two weeks, Renzella said the school bus option would take "every bit of two months" to make the necessary accommodations.

"Alternate transportation would probably be more accommodating," Renzella said.

"But that does not mean the board has closed the door on (the school bus option). They want us to exhaust all options for alternate transportation and report back. If there's a child that can't get to school, we'll go back to the drawing board."

Renzella said administrators this week have looked into a couple options for alternative transportation. "There's one thing we can do," Renzella said. "We can reimburse the girls at the federal mileage rate. That would cover the cost of taking the child to and from school."

This option would mean student mothers would use personal transportation.

Another alternative is to utilize taxi cabs to get the student mothers to school, Renzella said. Ohio County Schools for years had transported hearing impaired children via taxi to Center McMechen Elementary School for the hearing impaired program there. The district stopped transporting the students to the Marshall County school after Ohio County Schools developed its own hearing impaired program.

Renzella said Marshall County Schools has used alternate transportation for handicapped students in the past.

In addition, Freeland said the seats on the Ohio County buses are "seat belt ready," which means a child restraint seat is able to be installed. No harness is involved, he added, so it is not necessary to remove the seat behind the child.

"I know that in the last seven years, we have installed seat belt ready seats so we can install those (child restraint) seats," Freeland continued. "New buses are ordered with these features just in case we need them."

Both Krelis and Freeland added that the service of busing student mothers and their infants helps those young mothers who use the day care facility, which is operated by Crittenton Services Inc. at Wheeling Park High School. That child care program has been in existence since 1976, Freeland said. link

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