Antelope Valley High Schools to Reduce Free Busing Service

An estimated 700 students who live two to three miles from school will be dropped from the Antelope Valley Union High School District’s free bus program when classes resume in September under a new cost-cutting plan.

The district’s Board of Trustees voted 5 to 0 Wednesday night to approve cutbacks and changes that are expected to achieve a 23% reduction in the 3,000 students who received free bus transportation last year.

The district has six schools and about 10,000 students.

Last year, the district provided bus service to students who lived two miles or more from their local school.

But under the most significant of a series of changes, busing will only be offered this year to students who live three miles or more from their school.

No parents testified on the changes at Wednesday’s school board meeting, but the district had only recently announced the proposals.

School officials hope to save $300,000 through the changes and $500,000 from other changes in a school bus program that costs more than $3 million.

Darlene Hinkel, the district’s assistant superintendent for business services, said the changes were made necessary by cutbacks in state funding and by the requirement to pay salary raises guaranteed in the contracts of district employees.

Under the plan approved by the trustees, parents whose children are being eliminated from the bus program will not be permitted to pay the district to have them reinstated. Also, district officials plan to place a mark on students’ identification cards to designate those eligible to ride the bus.

Because of a budget shortfall heading into the upcoming school year, district officials had been considering charging parents a bus fee, potentially $100 per semester. But district officials put that proposal aside after deciding on the cuts.

Other changes include the busing of continuation and magnet school students to neighborhood schools first before shuttling them to their own special schools, and buying 10 16-passenger vans for $350,000 to replace larger, more expensive buses.