State restores funds for school busing

School districts around Yuba-Sutter busing students to far-flung locales got a flash of hope Thursday when the Legislature passed a bill to restore funding for rural routes set to disappear at the end of the school year.

Instead, the bill calls for a bit of a cut for the money appropriated to more urban districts for their busing, but not to the degree districts with rural routes had faced.

"We don't know for sure what that means until it's been approved," said Mark Allgire, Marysville Joint Unified School District's assistant superintendent for business affairs, of Senate Bill 81. "It'll still be a cut."

In the Marysville district, 40 percent of students take the bus over an area stretching from the Plumas Lake Country Club to Challenge, he said.

Under trigger cuts enacted by the state last year when revenues fell short of budget projections, money for rural routes was set to be cut in half during the current school year and entirely for 2012-13.

However, in practical terms the cuts would've been felt more broadly.

Craig Guensler, superintendent for the Wheatland School District, said it wouldn't be feasible for districts like his, which buses students as far away as Beale Air Force Base and Smartsville, to drop their rural routes.

As well, by law, school districts must also provide door-to-door transportation for special education students regardless of distance.

"The reality is the general fund will be cut," Guensler said, referring to the district's flexible account. More money out of the general fund would mean less money for other school functions such as books and technology.

For Wheatland, the cuts would've amounted to about $156 less per student, though the amount varied by district enrollment and how many rural routes it has, Guensler said.

Under S.B. 81, rural districts receive a reappropriated $285 million for rural routes lost in trigger cuts, with the money coming out of the state's overall apportionment for school transportation.

"It all boils down to this: Children cannot learn if they cannot get to school," said Assembly Budget Committee Chairman Bob Blumenfield, D-Sherman Oaks, who carried the bill.

The fix for this budget year "is a Band-Aid on the problem," Blumenfield said.

Assemblyman Jim Nielsen, R-Gerber, said cutting rural school transportation was a wedge some governors have used to get votes for budget plans unpopular with representatives from rural areas, often Republicans.

"Now, finally, the issue won't be a continuing hostage to budget negotiations," Nielsen said. Gov. Jerry Brown has signaled he will sign the bill when it reaches his desk.

While he acknowledged the reappropriation means some urban school districts will get less transportation funding, the cuts for those districts are smaller than what the rural districts faced, Nielsen said.

And overall, only public safety should rival school transportation for the state's highest spending priorities, he said.

"You've got to get kids to school," Nielsen said.