Buses to Dry Up Rainy Day Absences

Rain raked the streets for the third day in a row Friday, driving down attendance at Arminta Street Elementary School as the downpour transformed the surrounding roads into a virtual moat.

Mothers here could be seen lifting their children, backpacks and all, over the flooded gutters along Lankershim Boulevard as they hustled toward the school.

Every winter, rainy days like these quadruple school absences as parents, many of them without cars, keep their children home rather than send them to ford the streams rushing past the curbs.

The seasonal swamping--the result of an inadequate storm drainage system--has been going on so long that some children who once sloshed through the knee-deep water to get to class are now parents here, ferrying their children past the same flooded intersections.

But starting later this month, a small fleet of school buses will roll onto this soggy scene, carrying up to 1,400 students to Arminta and two nearby schools.

“I’m just so delighted that someone is finally doing something,” said Arminta Principal Marcia Cholodenko. “When you have torrential rains, the kids literally can’t get to school. I mean, we’re talking a river. . . . We really hope that [busing] is going to improve the attendance rate.”

On Friday, cars plowed through the half-submerged intersection at Tujunga Avenue and Strathern Street, sending up a 6-foot spray of water. On the sidewalk, muddy water churned inside an open manhole, a menacing pit that could swallow up an inattentive child--or anyone else, for that matter.

“It’s pretty bad,” David Johe said, as he dropped off his 5-year-old son at Arminta. “And it’s been like this ever since I was little.”

Fifth-grader Keziah Gutierrez said her older sister used to carry her over rushing currents on Tujunga Avenue during heavy rains, back when her family had only one umbrella and no car. “I was scared that she might drop me and I would drown,” she said.

The school’s attendance book reflects the rainy day toll: 75 students were absent and 25 straggled in late, after the rain let up. The day before, a particularly stormy Thursday, 110 children missed school. Ordinarily, the school has an average of 20 absences each day, out of 750 students.

The absences cost the Los Angeles Unified School District money, because some state funding is based on average daily attendance. David Tokofsky, the school board member who represents the area, said he studied attendance rates at Arminta and nearby schools also affected by flooding and found that the district was losing about $140,000 a year because of rainy day absences.

“I figured [district officials] were going to say that we don’t have the money for busing,” Tokofsky said. “But we showed them that they were actually losing money.”

Hence, the busing plan, a $60,000 pilot program that will run until mid-April. Starting Jan. 22, students who live in certain areas and attend Arminta, Roscoe and Camellia Avenue elementary schools can ride buses, rain or shine. The district decided it would be too complicated to dispatch the buses only on rainy days.

Sun Valley Middle School, which also has chronic flooding, will not be in the busing program. But it recently received a new driveway, courtesy of Vulcan Materials, a Sun Valley-based sand and gravel company. The driveway was built to guide cars past draining water onto dry land so that students can be dropped off without getting soaked.

Solving the larger flooding problem in Sun Valley, however, has proved much more difficult. Los Angeles City Councilman Alex Padilla, who represents part of the area, has pushed the city to step up its flood control efforts. But he learned that the neighborhood has no traditional storm drain system that would channel rainwater to the sea, he said.

Los Angeles County estimated it would cost $42 million to build such a drain in Sun Valley, part of a larger watershed that drains into the Los Angeles River. The stalled plan has since been replaced by a package of other eco-friendly initiatives.

County engineers are now collaborating with TreePeople, a local environmental group, to create a system that will capture and reuse storm water. The plan involves planting trees, building cisterns to store water and replacing pavement with earth to soak up rain so it seeps back into the water table, said TreePeople President Andy Lipkis.

Meanwhile, the city of Los Angeles is designing a smaller storm drain project that may help funnel some water away from the immediate area around Arminta. The city has earmarked $700,000 for the drain, to be built under Beck Avenue and Strathern Street, said Tom Kilmer, a civil engineer with the Department of Public Works.

But the new drain is only a partial solution, because it will link into another pipe that is too small to handle all the water from Sun Valley. That means Tujunga Avenue will remain a watery mess during storms, Kilmer said.

Civil engineering dilemmas aside, parents, principals and politicians alike seem happy with the quick fix of a temporary busing program that will, at least, deliver children to their teachers.

“Kids will no longer have to show up at school with wet feet,” Padilla said. “That’s going to translate into a wonderful educational advantage.”