Testimony Before the Council of the District of Columbia Committee of the Whole on The Office of the State Superintendent of Education’s Division of Student Transportation

By Nicole Travers

Good morning, Chairman Mendelson and members of the Committee. My name is Nicole Travers, and I am the Senior Director of Strategic Partnerships at the DC Charter School Alliance, the local non-profit that advocates on behalf of public charter schools to ensure that every student can choose high-quality public schools that prepare them for lifelong success.

Thank you for inviting us here today to discuss OSSE’s Division of Student Transportation (OSSE-DOT), which is responsible for providing safe, reliable, and efficient transportation services for nearly 4,000 eligible District students with disabilities. In recent months, OSSE has made notable strides in implementing new tools to streamline the transportation system for student pick up and drop-off, enabling stronger communication with caregivers and generally expanding resources for parents and guardians to get their children to school. 

I would first like to recognize and uplift members of the OSSE team who have been especially helpful and responsive to the most urgent needs of families across the District. I want to begin by thanking Dr. Antoinette Mitchell for her leadership in guiding critical improvements in the OSSE- DOT program, as well as her team for their consistent presence and engagement in the Transportation Working Group. We are grateful for the collaboration and partnership from additional members of the working group, including advocates from Children’s Law Center, Advocates for Justice in Education, the Special Education Cooperative, and the DC Special Education Hub. The OSSE-DOT team has been very receptive to feedback on ways to further support students with transportation needs and has been helpful in sharing important data trends and highlights to better inform decision-making. 

Benefits of the OSSE Parent Portal  

In the lead-up to this school year, OSSE developed the new OSSE Parent Portal to manage student transportation requests more effectively and to allow parents to enter updated pick-up and drop-off information directly. We understand that this was a lift and improvements are underway. We are pleased to report that the system has increased accountability and efficiency for families and schools, improving communication between OSSE and parents in need of transportation support. School leaders have also noted that the agency has been more responsive to Transportation Request Forms (TRFs), correcting and adding missing information for households and students. These changes and improvements are especially welcome for students with disabilities who have a chronic absenteeism rate nearly nine percentage points higher than their general education peers. And while we applaud and appreciate these significant improvements, we also want to ensure that the system works well for all families, because a well-functioning school transportation system is critical to ensuring equity and dignity for all students.

Opportunities for Enhancing User Experience  

This OSSE Parent Portal is a step in the right direction, and we want to express our gratitude and appreciation for the department’s attention and commitment to enhancing the experiences of families, parents, and caregivers. We hope to continue working with OSSE and LEAs to build on this positive momentum with additional system refinements. 

While there have been notable improvements, there are still late and missed transportation pickups, along with frequent bus route changes that have created inconsistencies, significantly impacting some students and families. We hope that making some adjustments to fix the issues noted below will improve both data and communication to reduce the number of late or missed pick-ups: 

• LEAs have reported challenges in using portal data, including ineffective data sharing between OSSE and LEA data systems. For example, there were issues at the start of the year with syncing data, which resulted in LEAs losing access to some of their students. 

• The system does not update the school when the family makes an update, which is vital for clear lines of communication with the LEA, as it can increase administrative burdens on school personnel who must track address changes and compare them across systems. 

We must get the address data accurate and allow updates to be made easily, as it impacts our city’s most vulnerable students – those who are transient or unhoused. At Kingsman Academy, an alternative public charter school serving over 300 students in grades 6-12, shared the challenges they’ve faced with the new OSSE DOT portal. More than 80% of their students are overage and undercredited, about 95% are designated at-risk, and over one-third are homeless. Nearly 40% receive special education services, more than twice the city average. Many of the students eligible for OSSE DOT face housing insecurity, which means their addresses often change. However, the OSSE-DOT system requires a fixed address for pickup and drop-off, and address changes take time to process, leaving gaps in transportation services for these students. While OSSE-DOT has made some changes, this remains a challenge for Kingsman and other schools that serve transient populations.  

Recommendations 

Overall, we commend OSSE for launching the portal and for working in close partnership with schools and parents to ensure its successful implementation. We are encouraged by the improvements we’ve already seen and would like to make a few recommendations to increase its utility and effectiveness.

First, we recommend updating the portal system to automatically alert designated LEA staff whenever parents, guardians, and caregivers make changes, such as address updates or changes to contact information. This simple enhancement could mitigate parent confusion and save school leaders valuable administrative time, allowing them to focus more directly on supporting students. 

Second, we advocate implementing a real-time transportation tracking and communication system that notifies schools and families immediately of route changes, delays, or missed pickups. This would improve coordination, reduce confusion, and build greater trust between transportation providers, schools, and families.

And third, we encourage OSSE to engage with the DC Alliance, the Deputy Mayor for Education, and our schools as we explore improving transportation access to and from school for all students. OSSE’s insights and lessons learned from operating OSSE DOT bus routes would be invaluable. The need for reliable transportation for the students not eligible for OSSE DOT is growing, especially in light of the recent actions federal law enforcement has taken in the District. As the DC Alliance previously advocated, the city would greatly benefit from an expansion of transportation resources beyond DC School Connect that would allow schools to provide transit options to non-OSSE-DOT eligible students. As we look ahead, we hope to work with the city to create a more flexible, collaborative transportation system that is more inclusive of all public school models and student needs. 

Moving Forward 

First, there is a need for adequate staffing of nurses and mental health clinicians in schools. Undertreated mental health issues such as anxiety rank high among the reasons why students are absent from school. LEA leaders have shared with us that shifts in the School Based Mental Health Program this year have further reduced the number of schools receiving support from a 

SBMH program clinician at the very time when students’ mental health needs are increasing. Students' main focus should be on learning and gaining the skills they need to grow and develop. Mental health clinicians and nurses/health technicians play a crucial role in mitigating crises and using appropriate interventions to create a safe school environment for all students. As of this year, there are 43 charter campuses without a mental health clinician or supervisor and 17 charter campuses who now have less than full-time, in-person coverage from a nurse/health technician. It’s important that students can easily access professional support when they need it the most. 

As noted above, emerging concerns about attendance challenges are families’ unease about heightened federal presence as students come to school. Despite the end of the emergency order, many still have concerns about interactions with law enforcement including ongoing ICE activity. Under these conditions, many students and their families do not feel safe in their communities traveling to and from school. We urge the Mayor and Council to work together with schools and parents to develop a structured and coordinated response between city leadership and agencies. 

We also want to share our appreciation to OSSE for taking our recommendations on the release of attendance data into consideration and increasing the frequency of data related to chronic absenteeism. However, there are still challenges with the timing of when the data is released, namely that schools are not able to benefit from it before the new school year begins. For example, attendance data for the 2024-2025 school year won’t be available until November. The release of data should be timed to equip school leaders and staff to identify the students most at-risk for chronic absenteeism based on their attendance patterns in the prior year, rather than three months into the next school year. 

Lastly, we want to reiterate and encourage city leaders, elected officials, business leaders, and the faith community to work with school leaders and advocates to align on a joint public campaign on attendance. Families are looking for support but due to the current fiscal environment, many familiar programs and agencies have had their funding cut or reduced. The charter community welcomes the opportunity to design a strategy in partnership with agencies like the Department of Behavioral Health (DBH), Departments of Parks and Recreation (DPR), Department of Human Service (DHS), and Child and Family Services Agency (CFSA) to use levers that resonate with students and families. These tactics include but are not limited to PSAs on the radio, advertising at bus stops, guidance from medical professionals, and incentives from businesses that help make meaningful behavior shifts. A public campaign in conjunction with the advertisement of community resources to support the barriers that impact families and students can make the difference. 

Moving Forward 

In closing, addressing chronic absenteeism and truancy is a critical investment in our students' futures. Every day a student misses school is a missed opportunity for learning, growth, and connection. The long-term impact of absenteeism is clear: lower academic achievement, higher dropout rates, and diminished life outcomes. The good news is that we are seeing progress. But we must sustain and scale these efforts if we’re serious about equity and excellence in education. The DC Alliance looks forward to continuing our partnership with the Council, the Administration and our partners to ensure students are safe and in classrooms. 

Thank you for your time and attention, and I welcome your questions. 

Appendix 

2025 DC Charter School Alliance Attendance Summit 

During the Summit, attendees heard from Director Ewing-Boyd’s session on how they could implement EveryDay Labs, an evidence-based attendance analytics tool designed to strengthen communication and intervention with chronically absent students. Claudia Price and Jessica Duncan in the Health and Wellness Division at the Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE) shared resources that attendees found very useful including: 

● Too Good for Violence Kits, which helps students build social-emotional skills towards creating positive relationships; 

● Our Minds Matter, a student mentorship program that fosters better school culture and belonging, and; 

● ARROW grant working group, which advances innovative approaches to expand the school mental health practitioner pipeline. 

We also hosted a data and strategy informed panel of LEA leaders from AppleTree Institute for Education Innovation, Mary McLeod Bethune, Ingenuity Prep and Washington Leadership Academy that touched on key elements of enhancing attendance such as relationship-based strategies, tracking and encouraging Pre-K attendance and utilizing community support. 

The summit was made possible by our community partners, some of whom led breakout sessions (full partner list included below). Some standouts from the agenda included: 

● Attendance Interventions: Planning Ahead for Impact with Mikia Manley from EveryDay Labs; 

● Strategies for Engagement Through Community Building and Restorative Practices with Lisa Shaw from SchoolTalk DC and; 

● Supporting School Attendance for Students with Asthma hosted by Amari McDuffie of the Children’s National Hospital. 

2025 Charter Attendance Summit Partner List: 

● OSSE 

● OSSE Health & Wellness 

● DC Public Charter School Board: 

● Our Minds Matter: 

● DC Policy Center: 

● EdStart Ops: 

● Sped Co-Op: 

● School Talk DC 

● DC Collaboratives