Driver’s Training on a Collision Course : Education: Private firms are threatening to sue public schools for charging students. Administrators say the programs may be dropped.

Citing a recent appeals court ruling, private driver’s training companies are threatening to sue Ventura County public schools if they continue charging students for driver training because it violates the free-education clause in the state constitution.

Responding to this pressure tactic, public school administrators say they will soon be forced to drop behind-the-wheel training for students or devise some other way to offer the driver’s education classes the state stopped subsidizing in 1990.

Simi Valley Unified School District officials will consider a staff recommendation to discontinue the program at their next meeting, later this month. The Conejo Valley Unified School District is also considering dropping driver’s education this fall.

School officials in Moorpark and Oxnard face the same dilemma, while the Ventura Unified School District abolished its program two years ago for lack of money.

“This is one program that almost every single student at the high school takes,” said Jim Lewis, supervisor of the traffic safety program at Simi Valley High School. “No other class fires up students like this one.”

Without state-certified driving instruction, teen-agers have to wait until they are 18 to take the exam for a driver’s license. Once students have taken driver’s ed with behind-the-wheel training, however, they can get a license at age 16.

The problem began when state funding for driver’s training disappeared three years ago and many school districts had to begin charging students to cover costs. The 1st District Court of Appeal ruled in December that fees for driver’s ed classes violated the state constitution.

In recent weeks, the association of private driving schools that won the state appellate court ruling sent letters threatening court action against those districts throughout the state that continue to charge students.

“If we find that after 30 days high school students are still being charged for driver training, we shall have no choice but to file a Petition for Writ of Mandate against your district for violating the State Constitution in this regard,” wrote attorney Gerald N. Hill, representing the Driving School Assn. of California.

The threat offers little room for schools to maneuver, said Susan Parks, Simi Valley school district assistant superintendent.

“The private driving schools have a lot to gain, and they know the school districts aren’t in a position to say, ‘OK, we have so much extra money floating around, let’s just fund this on our own,’ ” Parks said.

Oxnard officials plan to explore ways around the court ruling, perhaps by offering driver training off campus or at night to distance it from the high school, said Mike Hernandez, principal of the Oxnard district’s adult school.

But attorney Hill said such maneuvering will not avoid a clash with the state Constitution as long as the program’s target audience is ungraduated teen-age students.

“We are prepared to litigate,” Hill said.

Meanwhile, a group of public school driving safety instructors is pushing a bill in Sacramento that would require state officials to use a $1 fee added to traffic tickets to fund driver’s training programs, as intended when the fee was established in 1953.

“Driver training is the reason that money was collected,” said Ted Redenius, government affairs director of the California Assn. of Safety Educators.

Since 1990, the $40 million that accumulates each year in the traffic penalty assessment fund has been diverted to the state’s general fund to help balance the budget.

Without the $100 per student assistance from the state, most districts were forced to began charging about $120 for a driver training course. Others, such as Ventura, stopped offering driver training.

For private operators, the court ruling offers the possibility of millions of dollars in new business from young drivers now taught by public schools. In their view, Hill said, schools are competitors unfairly subsidized by the public.

Nancy Pratt, owner of Conejo Valley Driving School, said she had to drop her price from $210 to $179 per student to stay in business.

“I’m dying on the vine,” Pratt said.

But Michael Coleman, who owns Sure-Pass Driving School Inc. in Thousand Oaks, said his business from across Ventura County has picked up when area districts started charging fees.

At $149, his price is $1 lower than what’s charged at the high schools in Simi Valley, although students with good school attendance get a $30 discount. He expects even more business if school districts get out of his way.

“I would say between Conejo Valley and Simi Valley alone, we’re talking about 3,000 students (a year),” Coleman said.

Simi Valley school officials expressed fear that prices would rise in the private sector if the district wasn’t offering a low-cost alternative. But Coleman said the prices will stay low as companies compete for volume.

But some students won’t be able to afford driver training at any price, said Lewis, head of the program at Simi Valley High School. He fears that those teen-agers will drive without licenses.

“It’s only a matter of time before we’ll see the results of that,” Lewis said.