From the Detroit Free Press, Detroit News:

The Detroit school district has announced a plan to lay off 75 percent of the approximately 210 school bus attendants who assist kids with disabilities to and from school, arousing the ire of parents, advocates and labor unions.

The cuts, which were part of a budget cutting effort that is closing 29 schools, will save the district an estimated $5.8 million.

“I’m outraged,” said one mother. “We need them on the buses, for the safety of the bus drivers, for the safety of the kids. These services cannot be discarded.”

From the [Minneapolis-St. Paul] Star Tribune:

Eleven Minneapolis-area counties are scrambling to prop up a regional transportation system for people with disabilities after legislators eliminated its roughly $2.5 million funding. The surprise budget cut takes effect July 1.

The program had arranged for some 220,000 people to go on an estimated million trips to doctors’ appointments and other activities last year.

An investigation by Los Angeles television station KABC finds widespread evidence that bus drivers are putting the safety of wheelchair riders at risk and violating federal civil rights laws.

• Part 1: Wheelchairs on buses not always secured (with video)
• Part 2: Caught on tape: Wheelchair woes on MTA (with video)
• Part 3: MTA begins using tether straps on buses (with video)

In a two-month investigation, hidden cameras showed bus drivers were not properly securing wheelchairs and passengers. Undercover video showed broken equipment and drivers who said they were not trained, or too busy to help wheelchair riders secure their chairs as required by federal law. KABC found 957 accessibility complaints submitted to the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) over the past 27 months.

In Part 2, a bus driver was not able to secure a passenger’s wheelchair and told her she would have to “hold on to the chair.” When she replied that she was not able to do so, the driver responded, “Yes, you can.”

“Every single day, they’re supposed to be checking their buses to see that they have that equipment,” said disability rights attorney David Geffen. “Somebody’s not doing their job at the MTA.”

From the Boston Globe, Galveston County [TX] Daily News:

Charles Sabatier, who became a nationally known advocate for disability rights after being wounded in Vietnam, has died of cancer. He was 63.

“My goal is equal citizenship,” he told the Globe in 1988 as he prepared to step down as executive director of Boston’s Commission for Persons with Disabilities. “Nothing less is acceptable. We’re looking for equitable treatment, although not necessarily identical. A disabled person should have the same options as everybody else. I came within an inch of giving my life for this country. The idea of being denied equal opportunity because it might not be cost-effective is utterly reprehensible to me.”

As head of Boston’s disability commission, Sabatier improved access around the city and helped get an elevator installed in Faneuil Hall. A lawyer, Sabatier also challenged degrading treatment on airlines and served as senior policy adviser in the federal Department of Labor’s Office of Disability Employment Policy.

From the Washington Post:

The growing population of elderly and disabled people in the Washington area is threatening to overwhelm the door-to-door regional paratransit service that Metro operates for those who are unable to ride the subway or bus, officials said.

Washington’s paratransit system has experienced double-digit growth in the past three years, and officials believe it will continue to increase significantly — perhaps as much as 50 percent — over the next five years. The regional Metro system is considering cost-cutting measures, including raising fares and limiting service.

The Washington region’s problems with rising paratransit costs are considered more extreme than most, as the area’s expansive opportunities make it a “mecca” for people with disabilities, one official said.

Young teen stole dad’s car, then caught flights from Florida to California by himself; How’d he get through security with no ID?

From the San Jose Mercury News, MSNBC, ABC-News, Palm Beach Post:

Thirteen-year-old Kenton Weaver, who has Asperger’s, managed to get from his home in Boca Raton, Florida, all the way to San Jose, California, this week by himself before being discovered.

Kenton stole his dad’s Ford Explorer and drove himself 30 miles to the Fort Lauderdale airport. He then boarded a Southwest Airlines flight to Chicago with a ticket he apparently bought with his dad’s credit card, using his report card for identification. When he got to Chicago, he switched to a connecting flight.

He was found by a security officer at a ticket counter at the San Jose airport. The boy’s mother lives nearby.

The youngster has always been a bit of wanderer, his mother said as she headed north to meet with her son.

“Even at four- or five years old we’ve have problems with this” with him leaving home, that is, she said. “He’s very bright, but at the same time has very little common sense and few inhibitions.”

See also: Six tips for traveling with an autistic child — Time magazine

(Photo from Palm Beach Post)

From the New York Daily News:

A 4-year-old boy with a disability was left unattended on a school bus parked outside the home of his bus driver after the driver and matron failed to drop him off at his preschool in Brooklyn.

The boy, Kamaal Richards, was spotted by an observer who called for help and turned the child over to police.  “It could have been an honest mistake,” she said, “but how does anyone miss a child on a bus?”

The driver and matron were suspended by their company and face a misdemeanor charge of endangering the welfare of a child, according to police sources. The incident comes less than a month after a 22-year-old man with cerebral palsy was left strapped into a New York school bus overnight in freezing temperatures.

Earlier posts here, here, and here.