Part 1: Changing Face

The changing face of California schools
Part 1: The big yellow school bus eliminated by budget cuts

Everyday, 940,000 of California’s public school students hop on the big yellow bus that delivers them to their educational sanctuary.

Although the common belief is that school districts are required to provide transportation to students, John Green, supervisor of the California Department of Education’s school transportation office, said districts aren’t required to provide home-to-school transportation.

“There’s nothing that mandates home-to-school transportation except for a very narrow segment of special needs students,” Green said.

Still, a majority of school districts have historically chosen to provide this service for the benefit of their students. The advantages of busing students to school and back are immeasurable. First, it guarantees that students will have a way to get to school. After all, if students aren’t in school, they can’t learn.

Environmental factors and the reduction of traffic congestion are other reasons why school buses are critical.

“It’s environmentally friendly—when you have 66 parents or 66 siblings taking 66 students to school instead of one school bus, emissions certainly suffer,” Green said.

Safety is the top concern
Most people would agree that safety is a top reason why school buses are indispensable.

“The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has said in its reports that a school bus is eight times safer than any other vehicle,” Green said. “School buses are even safer than riding with mom and dad to school.”

Last year, Green said that the Department of Education estimated that school buses drove students a total of 330 million miles, yet there were zero fatalities.

“In fact, we haven’t had any fatalities in years,” Green said.

Part of the reason school buses are so safe is because they are chock-full of safety features, thoroughly inspected daily, and they are maintained in prime mechanical condition. School buses—which are some of the largest and most well-recognized vehicles on the road—are also navigated by the best-trained drivers.

“Bus drivers don’t get much recognition,” Green said. “They go through very extensive training behind the wheel and in a classroom, they are drug tested, go through a background check and a comprehensive physical.”

There are also less obvious benefits. Gabe Ramirez, member of Los Alamitos Chapter 324, said as a bus driver, he’s the first person to greet students, the first one to notice if they don’t show up to school and the first to notice if there’s anything wrong with them.

“Because I’ve had this route for a long time, I know their normal behavior and can help in prevention because I know the kids,” Ramirez said, recalling one incident when he reported an absence, thus preventing a middle schooler from becoming a runaway.

Districts are eliminating school transportation
Despite the positive aspects of school buses, some districts are reducing school transportation or eliminating the service altogether.

Ramirez said that because of fewer dollars in the general fund and because of the high cost of fuel, the Los Alamitos School District had to raise prices for school bus passes resulting in decreased ridership.

Green said that school transportation has been in a decline in California since the early 1980s when Proposition 13 was approved by voters. The reduction or elimination of school buses has been very prevalent during the last year because of the state’s budget cuts.

Like many other school districts in the state, the Arvin Union School District was looking at eliminating some school bus routes to save money on salaries and fuel.

“They said that since the cost of diesel is so high, that if they could cut some of the routes they could cut costs,” said Toni Pichardo, president of Arvin Chapter 164.

Understanding the importance of having school transportation available to their children, Arvin parents quickly reacted and protested the elimination of bus routes at a board meeting.

“Parents said that it’s not safe for the kids to walk to school that far. They told the board that the kids’ safety was their concern, Pichardo said, adding that parents felt that school transportation was something that they could not afford to lose. Green said the state only gives districts about 45 percent of what it costs to provide transportation. The rest comes out of school districts’ general funds.

“Districts have a finite amount of money and they have all of these demands that they have to meet,” he said. “If we could reimburse at 100 percent instead of 45 percent, it would take a load off the school districts. If we could get more federal dollars—or even some, because we get hardly any to begin with, it would help.”