Antelope Valley Officials Look at School Bus Fees : Budgets: To help offset a shortfall, the financially troubled district is considering a $100-a-year charge for transporting students to campus.

Even after more than 100 jobs were eliminated, 7% across-the-board pay cuts were ordered and numerous programs were slashed, the worst may not be over for the financially troubled Antelope Valley Union High School District.

Encouraged by a recent state Supreme Court ruling, district officials are considering charging a $100-a-year fee for busing students between their residences and schools, beginning in September, even though the proposal was not part of a budget-recovery plan adopted by the deficit-ridden district last week.

That package of cutbacks is supposed to account for about $11 million of the projected $12-million budget deficit facing the 11,500-student district. But as district officials now turn to dealing with the remaining shortfall, the bus fee concept looms large among the options.

Although unprecedented in the Antelope Valley and still relatively uncommon elsewhere in Los Angeles County, the idea of charging parents for their children’s bus rides to public school has been getting increased scrutiny from educators around the state in recent months.

The Supreme Court paved the way in March, settling seven years of uncertainty by ruling that such fees are legal. And California’s own projected $11-billion budget deficit has districts nervously looking to trim costs, fearing cuts in state funding for the coming school year.

“In this kind of budget crisis environment, I would think districts would jump on it,” said Roger Wolfertz, assistant general counsel for the state Department of Education. State education officials said many districts have been inquiring about imposing bus fees since the court’s ruling.

State officials said they do not know how many of California’s more than 1,000 school districts charge such a fee. And local officials had no tally for Los Angeles County’s 82 districts. Although the number is believed to be small, county and state education officials said the percentage is growing.

The idea may come as a shock to parents who grew up with the tradition of free public school bus service in many areas. But, in fact, state law does not require districts to provide bus service, except to handicapped students. Also, another state law specifically authorizes bus fees.

Although some districts with existing fees charge less, the $100-a-year amount proposed in the Antelope Valley would hardly be the most costly among Southern California districts. Some are already charging $300 to $400 annually for the first student in a family, a Times survey shows. Some districts charge less for additional children from a family, but others do not.

There are only two exceptions in the state law, which dates from 1982: Districts cannot charge a fee to transport handicapped children, and they must exempt children whose families are indigent, although districts are free to define indigent as they wish.

As proposed in the Antelope Valley, the $100-a-year fee would affect about 1,100 of the 2,400 non-handicapped students who ride school buses each day. Among the rest, many would no longer be bused next year due to other changes in the busing policy. And the district figures that about 440 would be exempted as indigent.

In the Antelope Valley, all school busing is for transportation purposes, not for racial integration.

Although the fee plan was dropped from the school board’s budget-recovery plan last week, it was not because the idea had been abandoned, officials said. Instead, they wanted more time to research and refine the concept before presenting it to the school board.

“It may still come,” said Sue Rowe, a school finance consultant who is overseeing the district’s preparation of a new budget. She said the district needs time to advise parents that the fee is coming and to work out details, such as how to define indigent.

The fee would generate about $110,000 a year, assuming that about 1,100 students are charged, not a large amount in a planned $42-million budget. But it nonetheless would be a significant boost for a district considered to be in the worst financial shape of any in the county, leaving about $900,000 of the deficit to be addressed by methods that school officials are still trying to determine.

School transportation, however, is a sensitive issue in the vast Antelope Valley, where students’ residences can be 20 miles or more from their schools. Last year, some parents were angry when the district, also in a cost-cutting move, widened the areas surrounding campuses that would not be provided bus service.

Covering about 1,600 square miles, or about 40% of Los Angeles County in area, the Antelope Valley district geographically is the largest public school district in the county--larger than Rhode Island and only slightly smaller than Delaware, which has 1,932 square miles.

Thus, school board members very likely would face a political backlash were they to approve a bus fee, especially at a time when some parents and teachers are holding the school board and administrators responsible for the district’s financial woes and the ensuing cutbacks.

Under a formula spelled out by state law, the state Department of Education is responsible for setting a yearly maximum on permitted bus fee charges. No calculations have been made for about five years. The latest amount proposed is $3.80 per student per school day, which would translate into more than $680 a year, but state officials said it is very unlikely that any district would charge that much.

The Antelope Valley district expects to spend about $1.8 million this year on its busing program, including about $1.1 million for routine bus service and the rest for handicapped youngsters, Rowe said. She added that state funding does not nearly cover the district’s actual busing costs.

Schools have been in off-and-on financial trouble since tax-cutting Proposition 13 was passed in 1978, and some began charging bus fees in subsequent years. But the movement stalled after 1985 when a resident filed a lawsuit challenging the fees charged by the Fillmore School District in Ventura County.

The lawsuit by Francisco Salazar alleged that the district’s bus fees violated the state Constitution’s provisions requiring equal protection under the law and a free system of public schools. A state Court of Appeal agreed in 1988, and the state the same year warned districts against such charges.

But the state Supreme Court ordered that opinion not be published, meaning that it could not serve as a precedent and bind other districts. Thus the issue remained in dispute until 25 school districts brought another legal action, winning an appeals ruling last year and the high court ruling in March.

“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,” Justice Edward Panelli said in a 6-1 ruling rejecting Salazar’s claims.

That decision did not undo a 1984 state Supreme Court ruling in a Santa Barbara case, in which the court held that schools could not charge fees to participate in extracurricular activities. For lack of enforcement, however, some districts continue to charge such fees, attorneys for the state education department said.

And fees are not the only step districts are taking. In what Montebello Unified officials call a unique plan, that district, which typically buses about 4,500 students, will continue ferrying children to school in the fall but won’t provide rides home for fifth- through 12th-grade riders, hoping to save about $400,000.

Correspondent Blaine Halley contributed to this story.

Busing Fees

Transportation fees charged by various school districts include: School district: Annual cost per first child Antelope Valley Union: $100 (proposed) Arcadia: $360 Conejo Valley: $450 Las Virgenes: $440 Moorpark: under consideration Simi Valley: under consideration Walnut Valley: $150 William S. Hart: under consideration