LAUSD Wants Bus Service Cuts

Los Angeles (myFOXla.com) - Los Angeles Unified School District Transportation Branch officials announced proposed $17 million in budget cuts that will affect all students who ride school buses for the 2009-2010 school year.

The proposed cuts would affect more than 5,000 students, forcing many to walk farther to their middle and high schools and endure longer bus rides, according to Lourdes Vitor of the LAUSD.

A proposed service reduction to the Permits with Transportation Program, which serves students attending magnet schools or are allowed to transfer from their home schools, would require students living within three miles of their school to find their own transportation, Vitor students.

About 2,100 students would be impacted by this service cut.

Students now living with two miles of their school must find their own transportation.

The proposed cuts would also extend the maximum one-way riding time from 75 minutes to 90 minutes, Vitor said.

"Magnet students who are riding from the inner city to the San Fernando Valley could potentially ride up to 90 minutes," LAUSD Transportation Director Enrique Boull't said.

The recommended cuts will also eliminate the Other Transported Students Program, which provides transportation for about 3,000 students who take a school bus to and from their neighborhood school because of distance or hazardous conditions, such as having to walk on a freeway on-ramp or across railroad tracks to get to their campuses, Vitor said. While the proposed reductions bring the total Transportation Branch budget reductions to $28 million for the 2009-2010 school year, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wants $62 million in public school transportation cuts, Vitor said.

"If the governor's transportation cuts take place, we will have to make serious policy and service reductions that are unavoidable. Half of what we do would be eliminated," Superintendent Ramon C. Cortines said.

"These reductions would be devastating, affecting all traveling students, whether they are being bused away from an overcrowded neighborhood school or to a magnet school."

Vito said that if $62 million in transportation cuts are required, "tens of thousands of students would lose their ride to school."

The proposed recommendations would result in the elimination of more than 100 contracted school bus routes and the elimination of or reduction in work hours for more than 100 transportation branch employees, including bus drivers.

"No drivers are losing their jobs, and only a small percent would be reduced from full-time, eight-hour assignments to part-time status," Boull't said. "Routes being eliminated would come from our contracted bus fleet."

The district Transportation Branch provides home-to-school transportation for special district programs, including student integration and special education.

The Transportation Branch also processes requests, schedules buses and tracks expenditures for 97,000 auxiliary bus trips in addition to operating five major garage facilities required to service about 3,400 district-owned buses, trucks, cars and vans.