Schools
LAUSD to Sue State Over Mid-Year Budget Cuts
The school district claims the cuts to bussing put it in a constitutional bind.
On Tuesday, Governor Jerry Brown announced mid-year cuts to social services including school bus transportation, childcare and higher education of roughly $1 billion. The long expected cuts were triggered when the revenue projections the state made last fall proved overly optimistic. The cuts will not target k-12 classrooms, already hard hit by successive rounds of budget slashing.
The Los Angeles Unified School District quickly responded with an announcement that it will file suit against the state today to stop the bus service cuts.
The district argues that it cannot simply stop transporting students mid-year and that it is obligated under the constitution and a 1981 court ruling to bus students to magnet schools as part of its efforts to desegregate the sprawling district.
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According to a district press release 35,000 students are bussed under the magnets and permits with transportation programs established by that court decision, Crawford v. Board of Education of the City of Los Angeles.
The district says it also provides 13,000 disabled students with transportation that it claims is also mandated by federal and State law.
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Mar Vista resident and public school advocate , whose daughter attends a magnet school by bus says, “I’m astounded that they would go after integration and special needs."
If her daughter’s bus service was cut, Anton would find a way to carpool to her school, but she says, “Bussing is the backbone of the magnet program. I don’t see how this is going to work.”
"When I think back to how this [the magnet program] came out of the civil rights movement and how there was so much racial tension in L.A," Anton says, "and now these kids are growing up with kids of all races so that it’s no big deal, that is such an important thing."
Anton states that with the district’s move to put the magnet application online this year, the district “has had record numbers of applicants.” For many parents, getting their children accepted to a magnet program without transportation will mean not being able to enroll them in those schools.
