State Justices Accept Case on School Bus Fees

The state Supreme Court on Thursday agreed to decide whether California’s hard-pressed local school districts may impose fees for student bus service.

The justices, responding to pleas from a group of parents and state education officials, said they will review an April ruling by a state Court of Appeal upholding the constitutionality of a state law permitting such charges except for indigent or disabled students.

The high court’s eventual ruling in the case will resolve a six-year dispute over the validity of the law and determine whether school districts may tap a new source of revenue to help ease widespread budget problems.

The vast majority of the state’s 1,021 districts provide at least some transportation for students, with only an estimated 5% or fewer imposing fees. But officials say this may change if the court upholds the law allowing charges.

“With economic times as they are, more and more schools are contemplating charging,” said Joanne Lowe, deputy general counsel of the state Department of Education. “Hard times make for hard decisions and some districts would rather charge for bus transportation than cut other programs.”

The Saddleback Valley Unified School District in Mission Viejo will begin charging parents to bus their children when school reopens in September. Parents will pay $150 a year each for two children to ride the bus and $75 for a third child. Additional children will ride free, as will children from low-income families and special education students. The district buses about 4,500 students daily.

“We don’t think this (the court review) is necessarily bad news,” said Robert Cornelius, the district’s assistant superintendent for business. “I expect that our decision will be to continue to charging the fee during the year that the court is deciding this, but we will run it by the (Board of Trustees) next week just to be sure.”

The dispute arose in 1985, when attorneys for farm worker Francisco Salazar and other parents in Ventura sued state School Supt. Bill Honig and other officials, saying that the law was unconstitutional. The parents contended that although indigent families did not have to pay the daily fee of 25 cents per student, others with relatively low incomes still faced economic hardship.

A state Court of Appeal ruled that the statute violated the state constitutional rights to a free public school education and to equal protection under the law. In 1988, the state high court left the appeal court ruling intact--but ordered that it not be used as a binding, statewide precedent.

The state Department of Education issued a legal opinion, advising local districts not to impose fees. The department said districts that charged fees should be prepared to refund the money if the law were eventually struck down.

The Saddleback Valley district, which is facing a budget deficit of about $2 million, is hoping the fees will raise $600,000. The district has agreed to place the money in an escrow account so that it can refund the fees if the court rules them unconstitutional.

In a move to resolve the issue, a group of 18 districts that have continued to charge for transportation went back to court in Sacramento County seeking a ruling on the law’s validity.

A Superior Court judge held that the statute was invalid, but a state appellate court in Sacramento reversed that decision in April, saying that fees were permissible under the Constitution.

Attorneys for Salazar and the other parents, joined by lawyers for the state education department, asked the high court to overturn the appellate court decision. They contended that although districts are not required to provide transportation, once they do, it must be free. Allowing some districts to charge while others do not creates a disparity among pupils that violates the Constitution, the attorneys said.

In other action Thursday, the high court:

Rejected the latest in a series of renewed challenges to Proposition 13, the 1978 property tax reform initiative. The court refused to hear an appeal from Northwest Financial, a Nevada-based company that bought property in San Diego. The firm said the constitutional right to travel was violated by requiring new purchasers to pay far higher taxes than the previous owner was paying. The justices earlier this year refused to hear two other challenges to Proposition 13, one of which is pending before the U.S. Supreme Court.

- Upheld the death sentence of Anthony John Sully, 47, a former Millbrae police officer convicted of murdering five women and one man in a series of prostitution and drug-related incidents in 1983. Authorities charged that the victims were brutally killed in a Burlingame warehouse that Sully owned. Three of the bodies were found stuffed in barrels in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park.

Times correspondent Terry Spencer contributed to this report.