Parents to Protest Elimination of School Bus Aide Program

In the dizzying 7 a.m. shuffle outside Cahuenga Elementary School west of Downtown, it’s easy to see how children might become a bit confused about where to go and how to get there. Nearly 1,400 of them, toting “Lion King” backpacks or Power Ranger sweat shirts, flood the sidewalks around the overcrowded building as they wait to board 40 buses bound for less populous schools.

Adult supervisors stationed outside guide the children to the correct buses, which take them to 31 campuses across the Los Angeles Unified School District as part of the district’s integration program.

That assistance, also given at day’s end, is about to stop. Last week, the financially beleaguered Board of Education eliminated the $2.4-million bus supervision program to finance other integration initiatives.

Parents and Cahuenga’s nine bus aides, expressing concern about schoolyard security in a low-income neighborhood of cheap apartments and convenience stores, are vowing not to give up the program without a fight. They are scrambling to organize a grass-roots campaign aimed at changing the board’s mind.

In the past year, aides say, they staved off kidnapings, drug sales and street violence outside the school. Aside from bolstering security, parents say, the supervisors provide a little direction in what can be a labyrinthine system for the children. Although older students pick up the routine quickly, aides say they frequently need to remind kindergartners and first-graders which bus to take, even though the youngsters learn to recognize their bus drivers.

Parents plan to stage a protest outside the school Monday morning and testify before the board with parents from a number of other so-called feeder schools later in the day. They acknowledge that the chances of reversing a board decision appear slim, but say they cannot imagine leaving the children to fend for themselves en route to and from school.

“We’re support,” said bus aide Ron Stone, who has watched over children for 14 years. “We say, ‘Hi.’ We say, ‘Good morning.’ These kids grow up with us. If something happens, we’re the first ones they go to.”

Less than two blocks from Cahuenga, a student faced danger last week. A tall man wearing a shirt and tie tried to force the 12-year-old girl into his car. She managed to escape his grasp and ran to the schoolyard, where she grabbed Linda Marquez, a bus aide at the campus for nine years. Marquez said she dialed 911 and dispatched another bus aide to chase the man, who sped away in his car.

“What these people do is a matter of life and death,” said George Richter, a resident who oversees the area’s Neighborhood Watch program.

When the cut was first discussed, Theodore Alexander, the district’s assistant superintendent for student integration, defended it by saying that the number of children requiring bus transportation had fallen in the last several years, and that “after the first week, kids know what buses they’re getting on anyway.”

School police, not bus aides, should handle security problems, he said. However, he acknowledged that greater parent volunteer help would be needed without the aides.

The board trimmed the aides--at $7.25 an hour, among the lowest-paid district employees--because of increased costs in integration programs. The biggest example: An increase in the number of teachers who receive higher pay for teaching bilingual students will cost the district $5 million more in the coming school year.

Times education writer Amy Pyle contributed to this story.