High Court Upholds Right to Charge School Bus Fees : Education: State justices’ ruling is expected to lead more strapped districts to charge for transportation.

The California Supreme Court on Monday cleared the way for financially pressed public school districts to charge parents for busing their children to school, rejecting claims that such fees are unconstitutional.

The high court, ending a seven-year legal battle, voted 6 to 1 to uphold a state law allowing transportation fees except for indigent or disabled students.

While not required do so so, the vast majority of the state’s 1,021 school districts provide bus transportation--with about 5% currently imposing fees that range from 50 cents to $1 per day. Attorneys expect more and more districts--particularly those under budgetary stress--to turn to busing fees now that they have been held legal.

Monday’s decision came as a victory for a group of 25 school districts, including Irvine’s, which brought suit asking that the high court overturn a 1988 state appeal court ruling striking down the bus fee law.

And Orange County school officials--some of whom averted program cuts by imposing fees for the first time last fall--said they were pleased and relieved.

“We felt real comfortable and real strongly that this was a legitimate fee. It was a service provided--and not one mandated by an education code,” said Ken Horner, director of business services for the Irvine Unified School District, which last September began requiring fees of up to $150 per year per child.

Added Ron Murrey, business manager for the Los Alamitos Unified School District: “If the parents didn’t pay (for busing), then money would come directly from the classroom.” With fees of up to $120 per student--but free transportation for poor students--the district expects to earn $170,000 this year busing 1,800 students.

And in the sprawling Saddleback Valley, the court’s decision lets the school district keep $500,000 of new revenue from busing 4,300 children.

“It would be hard to project that kind of consequence, if we were not able to charge for busing,” said Tom Tullar, associate director of business services for the Saddleback Valley Unified District. “We’d have to find a half million some place else to continue programs.”

The high court, in a majority opinion by Justice Edward A. Panelli, rejected contentions by state officials and a group of parents that busing charges violate the state constitutional right to free schools and to equal protection of the law.

Unlike educational courses or extracurricular activities, busing to and from school is a supplemental service that is not covered by the free-school clause of the Constitution, the court said. “Transportation is simply not an educational activity,” Panelli wrote.

“Without doubt, school-provided transportation may enhance or be useful to school activity, but it is not a necessary element which each student must utilize or be denied the opportunity to receive an education,” the justice said.

In dissent, Justice Stanley Mosk said the court was unwisely shifting course from a 1984 precedent in which it had prohibited districts from charging fees for sports, music, drama and other extracurricular activities that the court said then contributed to the educational process. Now, by permitting bus fees, Mosk said, the court “threatens to abort the educational opportunity itself.”

Mosk said further that the ruling could force parents to choose between “bus fare or grocery money.” Saving public money by charging fees that hurt low-income children “is not only shortsighted, it is violative of the democratic principles that give our political system its legitimacy,” he said.

An attorney for the districts in the case, Priscilla Brown of San Francisco, said some other districts had not imposed fees but now might do so in light of Monday’s ruling.

“Given the tight-money situation many school districts find themselves in these days, it’s extremely important that all sources of revenue be reinforced,” Brown said. Lawyers for parents challenging the imposition of fees were not immediately available.

In the Los Angeles Unified School District, about 80,000 students are now bused under various programs without charge, according to briefs filed in the case. However, attorneys for low-income and minority groups warned the court that a ruling upholding fees could lead to charges and urged the justices to bar fees as unconstitutional.

The case began in 1985 when a group of parents in Ventura brought suit contending that the law authorizing fees was unconstitutional. A state Court of Appeal agreed that the law was invalid. In 1988, the state high court let stand that decision but ordered that it not be used as a binding statewide precedent.

In an effort to resolve the confused legal situation, a group of 25 districts that wanted to charge fees brought suit in Sacramento. Last year, the high court accepted that case for review, issuing its ruling Monday.

Times staff writer Lanie Jones contributed to this story.