Ensures that special education children are provided with transportation to preschool by their parents if such parents have the means and ability to provide such transportation

BILL NUMBER:S5173 REVISED 08/22/11

Title of bill

An act to amend the education law, in relation to ensuring that special education children are provided with transportation to preschool by their parents if the parents have the means and ability to provide such transportation

Purpose

To encourage parents of children receiving preschool special education services to independently provide transportation to and from services.

Summary of provisions

Section 1. Requires parents to certify whether they can independently transport their children to preschool special education services. Provides that per diem reimbursement to the parents shall be paid within 30 days of a claim being submitted.

Section 2. This act shall take effect immediately.

Existing law

Some localities choose to inquire whether parents can provide independent transportation to their children for preschool special education services.

Justification

Counties are currently required to provide transportation services for children ages 3 - 5 receiving preschool special education services. Most of the time, this involves soliciting bids from transportation companies, and entering into expensive contracts whose cost is shared between the county and New York State.

Such transportation contracts are expensive in terms of both staff time and cost per student. A bid proposal takes a great deal of expertise to design, and evaluating bidders is a lengthy and complicated process. In addition, the special education services that each child receives are often very different, necessitating different routes and visits to different locations, not to mention picking up and dropping off children at each of their homes.

This legislation would provide that counties solicit at the start of a child's preschool special education services curriculum whether the child's parent has the ability to independently provide transportation to and from these services. Simply put, parents could do it for significantly cheaper, and many would often choose overseeing their child's transportation personally rather than leaving it to a transportation company whose employees, practices and safety history they may not be familiar with.

This legislation would also provide any parent electing to transport their own child with the standard federal per diem reimbursement for their time and expenses. This reimbursement would not qualify as miscellaneous income for tax purposes and remain tax-free.

A per diem reimbursement would provide savings to both county and state taxpayers. Given the high marginal cost of special education transportation, (owing to the unique curriculum designed for each child's need), any parents that elect to independently transport their child would be saving the public money. Given the unique circumstances surrounding this transportation, no economies of scale savings are possible. That is, each additional child that needs to be transported increases, not decreases, the average cost of transporting a child.

This change in law provides flexibility for both the Counties and the parents, and is expected to produce much-needed savings on the local level statewide.

Legislative history

New bill.

Fiscal implications

Savings to the state.

Local fiscal implications

Savings to localities.

Effective date

This act shall take effect immediately.