Los Alamitos Schools Plan Lottery for Buses

The Los Alamitos Unified School District, which was forced to scale back bus service because of a new state directive and budget deficits, will hold a lottery to fill 70 remaining seats on the revamped service.

The budget problems arose when the state ruled that school districts could no longer charge parents for bus service, forcing the Los Alamitos district to cut back service to high school and middle schools. About 150 children lost their bus service when the “minimum walking distances” to some schools were changed, but seats have been found for roughly half of them on the new routes.

To determine which students get the 70 available seats, district officials said a lottery would be held.

The plan has drawn fire from many parents, who worry about the safety of the students who will have to walk to school. Several of the parents whose children attend McAuliffe Middle School, the district’s only junior high, have met with district officials and offered to pay more to continue bus service.

“When it’s an issue of safety, we’re more than willing to pay,” said Chris Forehan, one of the parents.

But Assistant Supt. Ron Murrey said money is not the problem. The problem, he said, is whose money can pay for the service.

In December, an appellate court ruled that the practice of charging fees for bus service was unconstitutional and the state later instructed school districts to end the practice. The Los Alamitos district had provided service to 1,200 of its 5,800 students last year, but it was charging parents as much as $125 per child each year.

This year, faced with a potential $300,000 deficit in transportation costs, the Board of Trustees decided to change the district’s “minimum walking distance” for junior high and high school.

The walking distance was not changed for grades K-5. But for sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders at McAuliffe, the old limit of 2 miles was changed to 2 3/4 miles. For grades nine through 12 at Los Alamitos High School, the district’s only high school, the old limit of 3 miles was changed to 4 3/4 miles.

This week, however, the district sent letters to parents saying there may be 70 extra spaces left on buses carrying students to the schools. To fill those buses, the district asked interested parents to fill out an application with the names of eligible students to be chosen in a lottery. Students whose names are picked will have to make their way to any established bus stop to get a free ride to school, Murrey said.

“It’s not fun doing it,” Murrey said. “We’re trying to do this the fairest way possible. Of course, there were a number of parents who felt a lottery was not the way to do it, but there is no perfect way on this.”

The changes will affect mostly students who live in the College Park East area in the southern section of the district, and the Rossmoor area on the western edge of the district.

But students from College Park East, Murrey said, will be able to use Orange County Transit District buses to get to school. Parents, however, will have to pay their fares.

Full Service Too Costly

Murrey said the district would like to continue providing bus service for every student who wants to ride to school, but the new state directive makes that impossible.

In April, the Saddleback Valley Unified School District, which had also been charging parents for bus service, changed its minimum walking distance because of the expense. That move also met with complaints from parents.

Murrey said that about 15 school districts, including Los Alamitos, Orange Unified and Irvine Unified in Orange County, are challenging the state decision.

Officials in those districts said the state rule conflicts with a Supreme Court decision in June, 1988, that said districts could charge for bus service.

“For this school year, we were hopeful that our litigation would have been settled,” he said. “However, it doesn’t appear that it will be settled until sometime after school starts. And we don’t want to end up with a deficit if it is not settled in our favor, so we had to reduce our expenditure by cutting back on bus service.”