IRVINE : UCI Parents Push for School Bus Service

Lauri McPhillin would never let her 10-year-old son cross Campus Drive to get to the supermarket. Traffic on the busy street is just too dangerous, she said.

That’s why she joined forces with other parents living on the UC Irvine campus after she learned that her son will have to cross the even busier Culver Drive to get to school next month.

The Irvine Unified School District Board of Education cut several bus routes this summer to help reduce a projected budget deficit. The cuts include bus stops at UCI serving 193 elementary- and middle-school students living with their parents in campus housing.

McPhillin, 34, and about 35 other parents living at UCI met recently to discuss the problem and plan to ask the school board on Tuesday to restore bus service to the campus.

Without a bus, young elementary school students will have to walk along Campus Drive--parts of which lack a sidewalk--cross Culver Drive, pass University High School and walk up Turtle Rock Drive, which is packed with commuters in the morning because it is one of only two streets leading out of the city’s Turtle Rock community.

Even if the city provides a crossing guard at Culver, McPhillin said, the two-mile walk is not safe for young children.

“I really believe that under any other conditions, if I allowed my child to walk out there, the state would consider it neglect,” she said. “I consider it that serious.”

Most parents will not allow their children to make the trip on foot or bicycle to Turtle Rock Elementary, said Craig Brians, 30, who lives with his wife and 7-year-old daughter in UCI’s Verano Place apartments. Without a bus, parents will have to scramble to find a way to get their children to school, he said.

“This is really going to be a huge, huge problem,” said Brians, a doctorate student in political science. “With all of us being students . . . we don’t often have the same resources that other people in Irvine have.”

The school board will listen to the UCI parents during its 7:30 p.m. meeting.

The board voted in June to cut the bus route from UCI to Rancho San Joaquin Middle School and the next month cut the routes serving Turtle Rock and Vista Verde elementary schools.

The cuts were part of overall budget reductions, including laying off 200 part-time employees, to reduce the district’s deficit while trying to avoid cutting classroom programs.