School bus drivers, aides and other transportation staff will gain practical American Sign Language (ASL) training to develop skills and emergency-planning strategies during a returning general session at the Transporting Students with Disabilities & Special Needs (TSD) Conference this November.
“American Sign Language for Student Transporters” is scheduled for Sunday, Nov. 8, from 9:15 to 11:15 a.m. at the Embassy Suites Dallas-Frisco in Frisco, Texas. The session will be led by specialists Rachella Moore and Ursa Rewolinski with the Texas School for the Deaf in Austin.
The ASL training builds on a takeaway general session Moore and Rewolinski presented at the 2025 TSD Conference. It introduced attendees to common misconceptions about the deaf and hard-of-hearing (d/hh) community, transportation accessibility challenges, collaboration with special education departments, and routine ASL phrases that can help build relationships with students.
This year, Moore and Rewolinski will place additional emphasis on emergency preparedness and practical communication. Moore noted that transportation staff cannot assume deaf students will receive the same auditory warnings as other riders during an emergency.
“When there’s no hearing, there’s no warning sound, no siren, no shouted instruction,” she wrote in an email to School Transportation News. “Deaf students need visual signals.”
Attendees will use the ASL training to discuss evacuation planning, assigned seating, visual signals for commands such as danger and stop, and the importance of regularly practicing those procedures. Moore and Rewolinski will also address the need for transportation personnel to communicate with special education staff, parents and interpreters so they understand an individual student’s communication method, calming strategies and emergency plan.
The session will also be hands-on. Participants will pair up to practice ASL and receive feedback while learning signs they can immediately use with students, including “bus,” “stop,” “sit” and “thank you.”
Moore is an outreach specialist with the Texas School for the Deaf Statewide Outreach Center and holds a master’s degree in deaf education. She has served as a deaf mentor and brings both professional and personal experience to her work, having grown up in a deaf family and raising two deaf children.
Rewolinski is a sign language specialist with the Texas School for the Deaf Outreach Center and earned a master’s degree in sign language teaching and education from Gallaudet University. She has taught ASL in secondary and higher-education settings.
The 2026 TSD Conference runs Nov. 4-10 in Frisco. Main conference registration is currently available for $499 with the Early Bird discount through Oct. 2, a savings of $100 off the standard rate. The agenda includes general and keynote sessions, educational workshops, networking events, the Ride & Drive + Technology Demonstration, and the trade show and reception. Visit the TSD Conference website and click Register Now to reserve a seat.
