Bus Service Cuts Anger Magnet School Parents

In a cost-cutting move, the Los Angeles city school district has stopped providing bus service for thousands of students who live two miles or less from their magnet school campus--angering parents who only learned of the change when fall classes started.

Los Angeles Unified School District board members and officials have received a flood of protest letters and telephone calls in the past three weeks. The cost savings is being used to help pay for expansion of the highly touted magnet school program.

Board of Education President Mark Slavkin said the seven-member school board had to choose between paring down the program’s costly transportation service and opening two dozen magnet schools.

“There were trade-offs that needed to be made,” Slavkin said. “Do we squeeze money out of transportation or do we add 24 magnets?”

But parents who relied on the bus service say they should have been notified earlier and now face enormous inconvenience. Most of the 42,595 students enrolled in the district’s magnet program are elementary school students.

San Fernando Valley parent Bob Brostoff said his 8-year-old daughter must either walk to the Welby Way Magnet School, which takes an hour, or walk to the nearest school bus stop 35 minutes away.

“We never knew this was going to happen and when it did, it put us in a very tricky situation,” Brostoff said. “They said they were going out on a limb just getting her on a bus 35 minutes away. How can a child walk that far?”

Other parents are relying on carpools or friends and relatives to drive their children to school.

One particularly vocal group of parents from the Plasencia math and science magnet near Downtown was successful--at least temporarily--in persuading district officials to reinstate bus service. They met recently with Assistant Supt. Ted Alexander, who oversees the integration program, and demanded that their children continue to be bused.

“It will be changed next year but we did this temporarily,” Alexander said. “We’re trying to be fair and even, but we have limited dollars.”

Parents from other parts of the district are still complaining. In the past two weeks, Alexander says he has received 60 letters on the subject from families citywide.

Alexander said the schools were notified in June about the busing cutbacks but some parents complain they didn’t know until school began this fall.

One school official reported that children were left waiting on a street corner for a bus that had been canceled.

Besides convenience, safety issues are at stake as well, parents say.

“In these inner-city programs, how can they possibly eliminate busing?” asked Tammy Maimon, whose third-grade son attends Plasencia and lives in Silver Lake. “I wouldn’t feel comfortable letting my son walk alone near the school. It’s too unsafe. Have they taken that into consideration?”

District officials respond that it is the parents’ responsibility to get their children to school.

Alexander said he is not worried that the changes will discourage students from the magnet program. “I don’t see anyone dropping out of magnets,” said Alexander, the assistant superintendent. “We have 26,000 [students] on the waiting list.”

The magnet program was created in 1977 as part of the district’s desegregation program. The schools offer specialized and enriched academic courses and attract students from throughout the district, who are admitted in accordance with court-mandated ethnic balance guidelines.

Magnet schools and centers exist on 132 of the district’s 650 campuses, but as the program has expanded, so have expenses. Busing costs the district $1,700 per student each year.

Opening the new magnet schools has cost about $9 million, Alexander said. He did not know how much money is being saved by reducing bus service.

“The magnet program is not a transportation program for the district,” he said. “It’s an integration program and an education program.”

The district’s transportation department is reviewing complaints and has made some exceptions for students, said Rick Boull’t, deputy director.

Slavkin agreed that the district should have made a better effort to notify parents and explain why the changes were needed. “I don’t think there was enough details given so that people really understood the decision,” Slavkin said.

Meanwhile, Brostoff now relies on a carpool to take his child to school.

“If I had known,” he said, “I would have probably applied to a different magnet school--farther from my home.”