When Denise Massey鈥檚 daughter was 6 years old, she put the girl, who has Down syndrome, on a van every morning for speech therapy in El Centro: 100 miles round trip, sometimes braving 120-degree heat, monsoons and severe dust storms known in the desert as haboobs.

Thirteen years later she鈥檚 still making that daily trek, because her Imperial County school district is so small it can鈥檛 offer a full gamut of special education services, and so remote that there鈥檚 nothing closer.