Fountain Valley School Board May Renew Busing Fee : Education: Trustees may reinstate charge now that courts have upheld the practice. In Placentia-Yorba Linda district, service is resumed after protests.

The Fountain Valley School District Board of Trustees will review a proposal tonight to reinstate bus fees that were halted in 1988 when a challenge was lodged in the courts.

In Placentia, meanwhile, the Board of Trustees of the Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District voted Tuesday to reinstate transportation for junior and senior high school students after eliminating the service in April to save money. The district may consider bus fees later, officials said.

With a recent state Supreme Court decision allowing the fees, the Fountain Valley district hopes to be able to raise some money that way. State law, however, does not require schools to provide bus service, except to handicapped students.

The $180-per-year fees, with reductions for low-income families and families with more than one student, brought in $16,000 during the 1987-88 school year, said Bob Sampica, assistant superintendent for administration.

The fees amount to about $1 a day round-trip for each student, he said.

That amount does not nearly cover the district’s annual cost of $52,738 for transportation, Sampica said. However, because the district receives a grant to cover transportation costs, the amount raised from the fees could be transferred to educational areas in the district.

“I think people understood when we had it in place a couple of years ago that it was to save money,” he said.

Out of the district’s 11 schools, only about half have bus service, Sampica said. The school district has instituted “safety zones” that require bus service only when students have to cross a major street to get to their school.

“It’s not a big moneymaker, but it would help us,” Sampica said. “We don’t have a major busing program.”

If approved, the program will start in the fall.

In Placentia, school district administrators decided on what they called a temporary reprieve for bus transportation of junior and senior high school students after parents protested.

In April, the board voted to eliminate secondary transportation as part of $3.5 million in budget cuts. The move was expected to save the district $200,000 a year, said Kim Stallings, assistant superintendent for administrative services in the Placentia-Yorba Linda district.

But parents protested the board’s decision, saying it would prevent some students from getting to school. Some students would have to walk through unsafe neighborhoods and travel on busy streets, they said.

Stallings said the district would find other ways to trim the transportation budget without eliminating secondary transportation.

“We may come up with boundary changes that would reduce transportation costs,” by having students attend schools closer to their home, Stallings said.

The district also proposed eliminating 15 bus stops in Placentia and Yorba Linda because the areas the stops serve are no longer unsafe for students to walk, Stallings said.

But Stallings warned the board that these moves represent a onetime savings.

“I expect this is going to be an area we will have to look at again,” Stallings said.

Stallings also said the reprieve will give the district time to consider a transportation fee.