MK Uri Maklev explains that a child with special needs is not a step child and it is high time to stop treating the special needs children as if they are. Maklev made his remarks during a special session of the Knesset Interior Committee chaired by MK David Amsellem. The session addressed the shortage of school transportation vehicles for the special education children.

The committee met to discuss the matter a number of times last year in an effort to monitor and study the situation during the school year. A number of new regulations were improved, compelling the Education Ministry and local government to become involved in assuring the safety of the special needs children. These regulations include certifying escorts to assist on the vehicle transporting the children, the addition of additional safety features on the vehicles and fewer children in each vehicle. However, with opening day of the new school year a few short weeks away, Maklev has learned the new regulations announced last year by the committee have yet to be implemented.

Maklev told his colleagues that conditions for these children as deplorable yet these children do not have a voice that is heard and their plight remains in the hands of lawmakers. He added that there is much talk about the alarming matter of forgetting a child in a vehicle but when it comes to transportation for the special education children, “the situation is no better”. Maklev explains how often, a child will travel on a van for over two hours each way to attend a special needs institution and not because the school is so far away, but because one vehicle will have to pick up and transport 14 children and it takes a significant amount of time to get each child in an out due to their limitations and often their inability to ambulate independently.

Regarding the escort on board a vehicle to assist, Maklev rejects a plan that the person is an employee of the bus company explaining “we don’t permit the cat to watch over the milk”. He is calling for independent people to take the course and become certified to be an escort on these school vans.

(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)