Budget Cuts Erase Intersession Busing Funds : Prep basketball: City coaches will be left to their own devices to get inner-city players to practice, games.

City Section basketball programs suffered a setback when funding for eight days of intersession busing for winter-sport athletes was pared as part of budget reductions within the Los Angeles Unified School District.

In 1991-92, the first school year in which the district moved to a year-round academic schedule, athletes who lived in the Los Angeles Basin but attended school in the Valley were bused to games and practices for most of the eight-week intersession break.

But the funding for that program was eliminated by the Los Angeles Board of Education for the period between Jan. 7-15, 1993, as part of district-wide budget reductions, according to Reseda High Coach Jeff Halpern, a member of the City Section’s Interscholastic Athletics Committee.

After basketball tournament play concludes in December, coaches will be allowed to resume practice on Jan. 7. But teams with players from the inner city will have to provide transportation for those players. District-sponsored busing will resume after Jan. 15.

Last season during the intersession, players spent several hours commuting to games and practices by bus.

“Last year we complained about it, and this year it’ll be even tougher,” said Halpern, who has several players on his junior varsity and varsity squads who are bused to the campus from the inner city. “Last year they bused them, and this year it’s become, ‘OK, get out here on your own.’ ”

The cuts also will affect bused athletes in wrestling and girls’ basketball. Soccer, formerly played during the winter, has been moved back to the fall and is scheduled to complete its regular season in December.

City Section Commissioner Hal Harkness was out of town and unavailable for comment.