IU Changes Driver's Ed Policy, Will Pick Up Salisbury Students

Salisbury High School driver's education students will no longer have to travel up to a half-hour for lessons at Parkland High School or the Carbon Lehigh Intermediate Unit in Schnecksville.

The intermediate unit, which coordinates the Behind the Wheel driver's ed program for school districts, is adding four more pick-up and drop-off sites, including Salisbury, to meet student demand for the classes, said Jacqueline Sham, IU coordinator of curriculum and instruction/educational technologies.

Some parents had complained after the IU made changes this summer that no longer enabled students at Salisbury and other high schools to get picked up and dropped off at their home schools. Some instructors had also made informal arrangements to meet at the student’s home.

By Friday, Oct. 14, the IU plans to add Salisbury High School, William Allen and Dieruff high schools in Allentown, and the IU transportation center in Walnutport to the list of meeting sites for students and their instructors.

“We anticipate adding [even] more pick-up locations in the future as well,” Sham wrote in an e-mail to Patch. “These additional locations are being added to give more students access to the program.”

Around the time Parkland Area School District contracted with the IU this summer to provide behind-the-wheel training for its students, numerous pick-up and drop-off sites were consolidated to two: Parkland High School in South Whitehall and IU 21 in Schnecksville.

Some parents in Salisbury and other districts said it was difficult to drive their kids to South Whitehall or Schnecksville after school or on weekends.

Jennifer Brown of Salisbury Township said she is looking forward to having her son Derek, a Salisbury freshman, do his driver's training with the IU after the positive experience her older son, Tyler, had in the course.

If the IU had required her to drive Derek to Schnecksville or South Whitehall, she says she would have taught him herself. With her work schedule and Derek's intense summer schedule of football practice during the day and basketball league games at night, the additional driving time and schedule complications would not be worthwhile, she said.

"It was a very positive experience for us and the convenience was beautiful," Brown said. "It prepared me for Tyler being ready to drive. It's hard letting your child get behind the wheel but it's easier when you know they have a great instructor."

When scheduling behind-the-wheel lessons onwww.CLIU.org, students are directed to pick an available time slot and location. Sham said that with four new sites added, the system will give students even more options than they had before by allowing them to pick any available school site, not just their own school. Hours for appointment slots have also been extended based on instructor availability.

The Web-based scheduling system has improved communication between instructors (students can pick different instructors for their five hours of training) and between instructors and parents, so they can help their children with weaknesses, Sham said.

With more appointment slots and instructors, the new scheduling system is enabling the IU to meet increased demand for driver’s education training, she said.

The IU program served 189 students between July 2010 and July of this year. Since this July, 207 students have completed the class or in the process of taking it, and enrollment is expected to continue throughout the year, Sham said.

Sham said she suspects the increased interest is partly related to economic pressures: families receive a reduction in insurance rates when teens complete a full driver’s education program, which includes a classroom theory class.