Photo by Emilie Eagan

Photo by Emilie Eagan

Gov. Jerry Brown's announcement of a $248 million cut in school transportation funds has triggered a fierce response from some of the state'due south largest urban schoolhouse districts as well as smaller rural ones. What is far less clear is how many districts will actually terminate bus routes this twelvemonth.

Schools are mandated by federal law to provide transportation for special pedagogy students if called for in their private education plans. And if students can't get to school, districts would lose state funds they would have received based on their "average daily attendance," which in turn would compound their losses.

On boilerplate, the state has traditionally paid about forty percentage of a district'due south transportation costs. The rest has had to come from the district itself.

The most vociferous protestation came swiftly from Los Angeles Unified, which filed a lawsuit confronting Gov. Chocolate-brown and other country officials in Los Angeles Superior Courtroom yesterday, less than a day after Chocolate-brown's annunciation.

Schools were spared some of the worst "trigger cuts" many had feared. But Los Angeles Unified stands to lose $38 million if the transportation cuts go into effect, far more than any other district. The bear upon of the loss of those funds, the lawsuit contends, would be "catastrophic."

"We stand up with our students to say enough is enough," Los Angeles Superintendent  of Schools John Deasy declared. "LAUSD cannot withstand further budget cuts without adversely impacting the educational benefits offered to its students."

Among other arguments, the lawsuit contends that unlike other districts LAUSD is "constitutionally mandated" every bit the outcome of a 1981 courtroom-ordered voluntary desegregation plan to provide transportation to 35,000 students attending district magnet schools. "For decades, the state has reimbursed LAUSD for its courtroom-ordered desegregation expenses," the lawsuit noted.

In addition, the commune is mandated by state and federal law to provide transportation to another 13,000 special education students. The district contends that:

Unless the State is enjoined from implementing the mid-year budget cuts, the District and its students will suffer irreparable harm in violation of the California Constitution.

In making the declaration of the cut, Gov. Brown urged districts to pay for transportation out of their reserves. It'due south probable that many districts will practise so, even though in many cases their reserves are leaner than they were before the state's fiscal implosion.

In a strongly worded Dec. 12 letter, for instance, an official from Tulare Joint Union High School District, with an enrollment more than 100 times smaller than LAUSD, wrote to Gov. Brown and Ana Matosantos, his finance director, explaining how the district has to send 900 out of its 5,600 students some ane,200 miles each day across 300 square miles in its vast Central Valley district.

The letter argued that cuts in transportation funding would "force small children to walk miles to schoolhouse in horrible weather," pb to some parents dropping off children at school early and leaving them unattended, or require mass layoffs of omnibus drivers, calculation to the area'due south already sky-high unemployment rate.

Still, just ii days after sending the letter of the alphabet, Tulare Joint Union Loftier'south Superintendent Sarah Koligian told EdSource that her district would avoid eliminating autobus routes by dipping into its reserves to cover the $300,000 it will lose from the state. Simply she pointed out that was an unsustainable strategy over the long term, peculiarly coming on top of several years of relentless budget cutting in her district.

Out of the district's total transportation costs of $1.4 million, it is already paying $800,000 out of its own funds, she said. As a result of the awaiting cut, it will have to cover $one.i one thousand thousand of the full costs this year, further "encroaching" on the district'southward full general fund, as she put information technology.

Stephen Rhoads, legislative advocate for the School Transportation Coalition, a coalition of several districts, said districts have already had to make cuts in their school route offerings as a result of several years of relentless upkeep cutting, and that it volition be hard for districts to make further reductions, particularly in the heart of the school year.

He said that the cuts would fall hardest on districts serving low-income students who are dependent on schoolhouse transportation, or in rural areas where students don't live anywhere most their schools. "You're taking money away from districts where parents don't have a Lexus to drive their kids to schoolhouse," he said. The disproportionate touch on the poor was "unfair," he added.

And fifty-fifty if schools were able to preserve their bus routes, the impact on districts would still exist significant. "Cuts volition have to be made someplace," he said. "Yous either have to cut transportation, accept it out of reserves or have it out of the classroom."

With its lawsuit filed, Los Angeles Unified officials yesterday declined to country whether the commune would dip into its reserve to recoup for the looming loss of transportation dollars, or observe some other ways to pay for them. But the implication was that information technology would. "The superintendent and lath are going to expect at all options to avoid the disruption of students during the middle of the school year," a spokesperson said.

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