School BUSRide spoke with Michael LaRocco, current chair of the the National Congress on School Transportation (NCST). The NCST was formed in 1939. All Congresses have been comprised of official representatives of state departments of education, public safety, motor vehicles, and police or other state agencies having state-wide responsibilities for the administration of student transportation. Each Congress has resulted in one or more publications containing the specifications and procedures recommendations for school buses and their operations of that particular Congress.
The 2025 NCST will be held May 3-7, 2025, at the Des Moines Holiday Inn Airport in Des Moines, Iowa.
Please tell us about your background in pupil transportation and how you became involved with the NCST.
My career dates to November 1, 1993, when I was hired to be an assistant director in a school district. I had just come out of the army, and they were looking for someone that had computer experience, and they were going through the early stages of electronic routing. About six months later, the current director left, and I became the director, and then was a director in two districts and a head start before coming to the Department of Education in 2009. I was working with motorcycle rider education and driver’s education, despite having no experience in either.
In July of 2010, I became the state director in Indiana and have served in that role since then. I started working with the National Association of State Directors of Pupil Transportation Services (NASDPTS). I became involved with the association’s leadership and assumed the position of treasurer. Ultimately, I moved into being the president-elect, president, and then past president.
In 2015, the last time we had a National Congress on School Transportation, I was the delegation chair for Indiana. Once that Congress was over, there were conversations about whether I would be willing to step in as a steering committee member. I was happy to do it, because I work with specs and operational guidance as part of my day job.
Recently, the chair position became available due to an unfortunate resignation. I like to tell people that I was the last warm body that had experience. That’s not exactly true, but I was willing to take on those responsibilities and make sure that we provide the best guidance we can to the industry.
What are your roles and responsibilities as chair?
My primary role is to ensure that our coordinators come up with the National School Transportation Specifications of Procedures (NSTSP) document which is, for lack of a better word, the best practices manual for the country’s school transportation industry. To get that done, it is broken up into various pieces that are done by committee chairs. These committees include special needs, preschool, alternative transportation, and more. But those committee chairs then get with other interested stakeholders, and they make recommendations for changes to the previous NSTSP.
Our primary mission is to make sure that the process is going forward, and recommendations are being proposed and formatted in such a way that when the Congress meets in May, they’ll have a finished professional set of recommendations to make to the NSTSP.
And then I have just the nuts and bolts. What dates are we meeting? What time for the meetings? What’s the format? How are we going to vote on various resolutions or recommendations? How are we going to incorporate this change or that change? Getting the right pieces in place, the parliamentarian, the on-site chair, the actual acting Congress chair, and more.
That’s the primary process: making sure that when the delegations show up, they’re ready to roll and put things in place that will help school transportation across the country. What can we do better for the safety of our kids?
What is the mission of the NCST, and why is this year important in fulfilling that mission?
As you all know, when the pandemic came into play, when we were sitting as a steering committee meeting about this, everybody was thinking, “Oh, this is three or four-month issue. We can go ahead and still hold our conference in 2020. If it gets really bad, maybe we go to 2021.” Well, we saw how that all went. It went way beyond what everybody expected. So that’s why we delayed to 2025. The issue is, along with that, we’ve had some significant changes in the school transportation industry. The two biggest changes are alternative transportation options, and then electric vehicles.
And so those things would’ve been more recently or timely addressed back in 2020. So we’re trying to address something that’s really already in place and rolling. And so we’re a little bit late for that, but there’s not much you can do about it. We are trying to address those situations.
As for the significance of the Congress, I can give you the best example: the color of a school bus did not come about because of federal regulation, it came about from the start of the National Congress process back in 1939 with Frank Cyr. They came up with a specification color that would be easily recognizable. Today, it is one of the most recognizable symbols of the country. That is a perfect example of an industry standard that everybody agrees to. It is a situation where the school transportation industry does a good job of self-regulation.
The goal of the Congress is to come up with the document that districts can use to help find the best practices, not just in their locales, not just in their state, but everywhere across the country.
Here is another example: there are some states, Kansas being one of them, that adopt the specifications from the National Congress as their state specification. So, the Congress is setting the specifications for some of our states that they will use in their operation.
And I will tell you that I use this document routinely. When I’m looking at specification changes, it is often the first place I look. What kind of language can I put in place to address this? And that Congress, that document is critical to make sure that gets done as effectively as possible.
It also provides standard labels across the country as to how people operate. School transportation does pretty much the same thing across the entire country. There are some local changes that are a little different, but it’s still all about picking kids up on a big yellow school bus and taking them to school safely.
So that document is a critical beginning piece to all school transportation within the country.
Which agenda items do you consider most important this year?
The two biggest ones will be alternative transportation and electric vehicles. Just because we were just beginning those processes right about the time that the National Congress was supposed to meet in 2020. And because of the pandemic, and now our national driver shortage, that alternative transportation issue is accelerating. So we’re a little bit behind as far as keeping up with a more current trend.
School transportation in general doesn’t move overly fast, and it shouldn’t. We’re talking about the safety of our kids. But this is an issue we really need to address because, I will tell you, there probably isn’t a week that doesn’t go by as a state director that I don’t have someone asking me questions related in some way to alternative transportation.
I don’t get a lot of questions about electric vehicles, because it depends on where funding is at. When those processes for DERA grants and Clean School Bus Act are in place, that becomes a little bit more current in everybody’s thinking.
What can the members of NAPT do to support the Congress and its mission?
The biggest thing they could do is make sure they reach out to their state delegation. Say to your delegation, “Hey, we would like to make sure that this is addressed.” Look at issues without being too controversial. For example, “We want you to really look at the idea of some more definitive language about left shoulder belts,” or “We want to see more regulations or guidance on alternative transportation, both vehicles and drivers.” Make sure the Congress is looking at issues where you think the industry is missing the boat.
Do they want to have a voice? That’s the whole point of this Congress. It’s why we have all 50 states and the District of Columbia invited to this, that they have a voice in setting those parameters. These guidelines form a best practices document for the entire country because we’re getting voices from the entire country.
Unfortunately, it’s limited (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it). It’s limited to small delegations of seven per state. That is where the membership at NAPT can really help: to go to their state delegations and say, “Look, we need to address this.” That’s where the membership at NAPT, or any stakeholder, would have influence in the process.
I would say the two easiest places to get that done now would be to either reach out to your state director or the president of your state transportation association.
Get the NSTSP and read it. It’s a long document. It’s not the most exciting reading on the planet but familiarize yourself with the document so you can have an informed view of what’s involved, what the Congress is trying to get to as the final product, and say, “Look, we think these things definitively need to be addressed.” And those are certainly things that can be addressed by the various writing committees on there.