Simi Valley School Board Will Reconsider Fee for Bus Passes : Education: Only 300 of the $300-a-year passes had been purchased by Tuesday. Board debates whether to lower the charge.

Two days before the start of school, the Simi Valley school board decided Tuesday to reconsider its decision to charge families up to $300 a student for busing.

Responding to an outcry by angry parents, many of whom had decided not to buy the yearly student bus passes, the board of the Simi Valley Unified School District brought back the issue for further discussion.

“I think this board acted prematurely by instating the fees,” said board member Debbie Sandland, to loud applause from an audience of nearly 100 parents.

In June, Sandland cast the lone opposing vote in the board’s 4-1 decision to charge parents for bus transportation. The move was an effort to save the district about $190,000 this school year.

Board members were debating late Tuesday whether to lower the fees or pursue other alternatives to charging parents.

Diane Collins recommended reducing the charges for one semester to give the board time to study other options. “I have wrestled with this for the last few days--my heart really goes out to the parents,” she said.

District officials have projected that ridership would decline 60% this school year, compared to last year. The district had hoped about 925 students would ride the bus this year, but only about 300 passes had been purchased by Tuesday afternoon, district officials said.

“That is lower than anticipated,” Supt. Mary Beth Wolford said. “I felt that there would be considerable falloff at the beginning of the year. . . . However, I don’t expect we will reach the anticipated figure by the first day of school.”

Board members Diane Collins and Sandland urged the board to overturn its June decision, saying the financial burden was too much for parents.

“I for one would like to rescind that action,” Sandland said Tuesday before the meeting. “I say we have discussed it--what is left to be discussed?”

But in a letter to Wolford sent Tuesday, Simi Valley resident Don Otto alleged that Sandland’s push to rescind the transportation fee represents a conflict of interest. Sandland, the only school board member with a child attending school in the district, would benefit if officials decide not to charge the fee, Otto’s letter charged.

Sandland called the allegation “absurd and asinine. . . . That is not the reason I am against home-to-school bus fees.”

In opposing the fees, Sandland has argued that it is unfair to ask parents to pay for school busing during hard economic times, particularly in the wake of the Northridge earthquake.

Many parents agree.

“Simi Valley parents cannot afford to pay that kind of money, so that puts our children on the street,” grandparent Pat Joyner told the board Tuesday. “We have our dollars stretched as far as they will go.”

Placing his 4-year-old son, Joey, on the speaker’s podium, Benjamin Sikkens said he worried about Joey walking across busy Simi Valley streets when he starts kindergarten next year.

“My concern sits right here,” Sikkens said. “He deserves free busing.”

At the district’s transportation office Tuesday afternoon, parent Martha Ponticelli filled out forms for low-income residents seeking exemptions from the bus fees.

“I am divorced, I have two children, I don’t have work right now,” she said. “It is too much.”

The fee structure changes for families with more than one child. Parents would be charged $500 a year for two children, $600 for three and then $50 for each additional child.

Parent Pamela Knight is also seeking assistance to help pay the $500 fee for her two children, who will be bused to Valley View Junior High this year.

“I know economically it is kind of rough,” Knight said of the district’s financial woes. “But to charge that kind of money. . . . That is ridiculous.”

Some school board members said they had no choice but to impose the fees, given the district’s $2.5-million deficit last year.

“We have a community where the traditional yellow school bus is something they have come to expect at no cost,” board member Doug Crosse said. “(But) we are almost to the bare-bones operational mode. Anything we do now is going to have a greater and greater impact on the classroom.”