Saved From a Long Trek to School : Topanga: Parents have persuaded the school board not to eliminate bus service for their teen-agers.

Teen-agers in Topanga Canyon were saved from hiking down their long, winding road to school next year when a proposed cut of their bus service was vetoed by the Los Angeles Unified School District Board this week.

The threatened action created a panic among canyon-dwellers, who are dependent on the buses to get their 179 junior and senior high school students to distant schools in Pacific Palisades, Brentwood and the San Fernando Valley.

There are no secondary schools and no public transportation in the remote, rustic canyon between the ocean and the valley. Only one serpentine road, Topanga Canyon Boulevard, also known as California 27, leads in and out of its mountainous terrain.

Joining a throng of speakers protesting budget cuts at Monday’s marathon board session, Susan Petrulas Nissman pleaded with the board to reject the proposed cut as a severe hazard and hardship.

“Boulevard is a misnomer,” Nissman said. “It is not wide, nor is it inviting. It is a little, narrow two-lane highway with no shoulders, no sidewalks, no stop signs, no street lights, few turnouts, winding curves . . . and no crossing guards. . . . The security of our children is an issue we cannot ignore.”

Working parents, including single mothers, would be unable to leave work at 3 p.m. to retrieve their offspring at the close of school, Nissman said. Instead, the teen-agers would be stranded and left to their own devices, which could include hitchhiking, bicycle riding on treacherous roads and hanging out at the beach, the closest they could get to home on public transportation.

Their victory at the board meeting, which lasted 11 hours, saved the parents from what they said would have been their next step: a protest march. As the mothers envisioned the march, teen-agers with parent chaperones would have set out to walk to school. Parents figured it would have taken two days, broken by an overnight camp-out at the beach.

The Topanga teen-agers are among a small number--3,700--of Los Angeles Unified School District students whose bus ride to school is not connected to integration or overcrowding. Along with 25,000 others, they lost bus service in 1980 as a cost-cutting measure, but service was restored in Topanga in 1983 after parents persuaded the board of their unusual geographic isolation.

They argued then and on Monday that a one-way trip to Grant High School in the valley, the nearest school for Topanga Canyon students, is nearly 20 miles. Most junior high students attend Parkman Junior High, also in the valley. Some of the students from the canyon attend Paul Revere Junior High in Brentwood, then go to Palisades High School, also a lengthy drive from home.

Younger children attend Topanga Canyon Elementary School, which also serves about 15 students bused from an overcrowded valley school.

The older Topanga students are part of what is left of the Home-to-School Transportation program, a $1.27-million item in the district’s nearly $4-billion budget. To qualify, the students must face some danger, often a geographical hazard, on the walk to school. In Topanga Canyon’s case, walking is impossible because of road conditions and the distances involved.

Others in the program include children who otherwise would have to step over Skid Row dwellers lying in the street to get to class, and five students whose parents live and work at Terminal Island and would thus have to walk to school across the Vincent Thomas Bridge.

To alleviate overcrowding and to integrate the schools, the district operates 2,900 buses that crisscross the city, traveling 41 million miles a year, according to Bud Dunevant, district transportation director.

Dunevant said the tiny home-to-school portion of the program is a frequent target for cuts because it is paid for out of the general fund. Most of the transportation budget comes from integration funds, which cannot be trimmed.

The proposal to cut bus service for the Topanga students is “a stupid idea,” said Westside board member Mark Slavkin outside the board room before Monday’s vote. “Topanga Canyon is Topanga Canyon. It’s way up there at the top of a mountain. You can’t walk from the top of the canyon to (school),” he said.

After learning of the threat to their bus service last Friday from Slavkin’s office, a group of mothers said they phoned as many families as they could reach, asking people to write letters of protest and attend the meeting. A handful waited out the long meeting for a turn to speak.

“Why should (school Supt. Leonard Britton) have a personal driver when our kids can’t get a bus to school?” asked Connie Whalley, as she waited in the hall outside the board room.

Whalley said she did not understand why the district didn’t make the cuts in administration, rather than in programs affecting children: “A cut from the top is what is needed in this district.”

That philosophy was repeated by many of the speakers at the public hearing Monday night, some of whom said they were begging the board not to gut their programs.

Armando Argandona, an employee of the district child abuse office, pleaded with the board, “Please help us to continue to alleviate the pain.”

Budget cuts in the child abuse program cuts were vetoed by the board, as was a proposal to cut 131 security aides at the schools and to limit inter-district mail delivery to every other day.

The board did, however, vote to save $981,318 by denying a raise to 111 top district administrators, who earn $75,000 or more. The district had recommended a 4.76% raise, rather than last year’s 8%, for a savings of $397,500. On Slavkin’s motion, the board narrowly voted to award the administrators no raise at all.

The dwindling crowd in the audience burst into applause.

By the meeting’s close Monday night, well past 11 p.m., the board had trimmed $163 of the $221 million it needs to cut, district spokesman Pat Spencer said. About 17% or 18% of the cuts will come from the central administrative offices, long viewed as a top-heavy bureaucracy by school district critics. On Thursday, the board meets again to continue cutting expenses to meet the expected revenue for the next fiscal year.