School District Cuts Bus Fees in Effort to Promote Ridership : Thousand Oaks: The round-trip cost is lowered from $450 to $360. If the move cannot attract more riders, the board may discontinue the service.

Faced with the need to attract paying riders back to school buses, Thousand Oaks school officials have begun pitching their new lower cost service to parents who balked at paying last year’s price of $450 per year for round-trip transportation.

After slashing the annual round-trip price to $360, the Conejo Valley Unified School District this year needs to almost double the number of riders that signed up last year for the bus service to meet the school board’s mandate to become self-sufficient.

“We’re hoping the 20% (price) reduction will be a much more attractive package,” said Anita Peterson, the district’s transportation specialist.

Meanwhile, the school board has requested monthly updates on whether former bus riders are returning in enough numbers to stop the familiar yellow school buses from draining dollars from the classroom.

Board member Bill Henry said he hopes the new pricing scheme works at boosting ridership and erasing red ink. But if not, the board will have to reconsider whether to provide the service at all, he said.

Board President Mildred Lynch also has said that she probably would not support school busing if it continues to draw on the general fund.

“I can’t see letting educational money go into school bus tanks,” Henry said.

For the fourth straight year, the board had to make budget reductions. For this fiscal year, the board cut $2.1 million from the district’s $75-million operating budget to compensate for state funding shortfalls.

The district has begun processing applications for bus riders, but it wasn’t clear how many students have signed up so far, Peterson said. At the end of last school year, flyers were sent out alerting parents to the new prices, she said.

In addition to explaining the price cut, the flyer wooed parents with a safety message that buses are less dangerous than other modes of transportation, including the family vehicle, Peterson said.

“That’s a fact,” Peterson said, adding that the flyer was “meant as advertising.”

Last fall, the 17,700-student district became the only one in Ventura County to charge parents for taking students to and from school, a move that cut the annual transportation budget from about $600,000 to $140,000, officials said.

The change also reduced the number of bus riders from about 2,000 to 774 by the second semester, officials said. Last year, the district needed 1,100 riders to break even.

With this year’s reduced price, it would take about 1,300 paying customers to cover the program’s costs, officials said.

The school board could opt to discontinue the service for all but special-education students. The state Supreme Court ruled last year that public schools are only legally obligated to bus special-education students.

But there also are costs to eliminating busing, officials said. Without a fleet of buses, the district would pay an additional $30,000 per year to contract buses for student field trips unless those excursions were limited, officials said.

In addition, the average price for chartering buses for athletic teams traveling to out-of-town games would rise 68%, a cost that would be borne by the parents of student athletes and booster clubs, officials said.

Linda Derahian, the new president of the Conejo Valley chapter of the Parent Teacher Assn., said she is confident that more parents will be able to afford the new prices. Like many, Derahian had to drive her ninth-grade daughter six miles to school last year to save money, she said.

“Now that it’s more affordable, I’m definitely thinking about paying for it,” Derahian said. “I’m hopeful that if the message gets out about the new prices, more parents would too.”