IRVINE : Trustees Refuse to Restore Bus Service

UC Irvine students, faculty and staff living on campus will have to fend for themselves this year in getting their children to school, the Irvine school board told them Tuesday night.

About 100 students, teachers and campus workers failed to persuade the Irvine Unified School District to restore bus service for their children that the board eliminated earlier this summer because of money woes.

The parents told school board members during a 90-minute presentation that the lack of school buses will create safety and fatigue problems for their children, who will have to walk two to three miles to three area schools.

Horace Mitchell, UCI’s vice chancellor of student affairs, also asked the board to restore bus service.

“This decision particularly puts our students as well as other members of the university community in a difficult position,” Mitchell said. Students have changing schedules each academic quarter and will have severe problems trying to get their children to and from school each day, he said.

“We stand ready to work with you in any way that would be helpful in the resolution of this situation,” Mitchell said.

Board members, though, said the school district no longer has money to provide discretionary busing for children and would not reconsider their earlier votes.

“I am genuinely sorry,” board member Michael B. Regele said. “But that’s what I have to do.”

The board did vote, though, to form a committee with parents and university officials to look for other ways to transport children from UCI to area schools.

A possible solution, board member Margie Wakeham suggested, is to get the Orange County Transportation Authority to set up a public bus route that will pass the university and travel close to the schools.