School District Losing Money on Bus Passes : Conejo Valley: Parents are unwilling to pay the $450 annual fee. If the trend continues, the program will be $75,000 short.

The Conejo Valley Unified School District’s plan for self-supporting school buses is coming up thousands of dollars short because the parents of 554 students are refusing to buy the yearly $450 bus passes.

Strapped for cash, district officials began the bus fee in September in the hope of saving the $300,000 that would have been spent this year on school buses and using the money to prevent cutbacks in staff and educational programs.

School administrators anticipated that parents of about one-fourth of the 1,500 student riders would balk at the new bus fee. But an unexpected number of parents--responsible for another 200 student bus riders--refused to cough up $225 to buy the fall semester bus pass. If the trend continues, the bus fee program will fall $75,000 short of breaking even.

“We’re disappointed that ridership isn’t higher, so that it would be a break-even program,” said Sarah Hart, the district’s assistant superintendent for business services.

Long seen as a basic component of public schools, the school bus is now being considered a frill that, by law, can be cut for all but special-education students. A state Supreme Court ruling last March gave a constitutional blessing to the practice of charging a fee for the service.

Although other school officials are considering the program, Conejo Valley Unified is the only district in Ventura County now charging parents for busing their children to and from school.

Faced with tough budget decisions later this year, the Simi Valley Unified and Pleasant Valley school districts are weighing the bus fee as an option, depending on how much state money they get for the next school year.

Conejo Valley school board member Richard Newman said he is disappointed that bus pass sales fell well below expectations for the first semester. But he pointed out that the program is not a complete failure. Generating an extra $225,000 through bus fees this school year has helped cushion the district from budget shortfalls.

Last spring, the board approved cutting positions for 15 teachers and counselors. Over the past two years, the district has had to shave its budget by more than $3 million. If the busing fees had not been imposed, district officials would have had to make as much as $300,000 in extra cuts to staff and educational programs this school year.

Conejo Valley’s bus fee program was set up so that low-income families whose children qualify for free lunches are also eligible for free bus passes. And, as it turned out, administrators underestimated the number of families that would qualify for free passes or passes at a reduced cost, Hart said.

The district calculated that only 10% of its ridership would qualify for subsidized bus passes, when actually about 20% of those riding the bus this fall qualified, Hart said. The higher-than-expected number of subsidized riders cut into projected revenues.

She said district officials also figured that about 25% of students would find some other way to school, through car-pools, walking or riding bikes. Instead, about 37%--roughly 200 more students than expected--have found alternative transportation.

Though the district clearly did not expect such poor ridership, Hart said, other schools with bus fee programs also experienced lackluster results the first semester. She said she expected more parents to warm to the idea of paying for school bus rides during the second semester.

“Districts have found that when the fee is first implemented, parents form car-pools and other alternate transportation,” Hart said. “But when that becomes a burden, they come back to the yellow school bus.”

But Patti Fuess, a Thousand Oaks resident who last fall paid for a bus pass for her daughter, a freshman at Westlake High School, said she won’t be buying another one for the spring.

“My husband is an unemployed carpenter out looking for work and this fee is unaffordable for us,” Fuess said. “Why don’t they just lower the price so more people would ride it?”

In fact, Hart said, administrators plan to ask the Conejo Valley school board to consider lowering the bus fee to attract more parents.

But, she said, the board is just as likely to consider raising fees to make up the shortfall.

Though some parents are angry about having to dip into their bank accounts to pay for busing, many prefer to do that rather than see their children’s math or English classes cut back.

“I was not thrilled about the price of the pass, but I also realized this was a question of: Where else would the money come from?” said Linda Derahian, first vice president of the Conejo Council PTA.

“I think if parents asked to see the district’s budget, they would understand why we have this. Besides, I don’t see a lot of students walking to school. They must have found a way.”

District officials say they have received only a handful of complaints from parents so far, and only a few parents voiced concern over the busing fee issue when school board members were considering it last spring.