District fears price of improving bus service

Erin Neff

Wednesday, Feb. 14, 2001 | 11:25 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- A bill to increase bus service to elementary school students could drain another $14 million from the Clark County School District budget.

The district is already processing $18 million of cuts from its $1.1 billion budget to pay increased utility costs and court-ordered salary increases for teachers.

Assemblyman Mark Manendo, D-Las Vegas, introduced legislation Tuesday to reduce the distance elementary school students must walk to class. Currently students must live at least 2 miles away to be bused to school.

Manendo's proposal would reduce the distance to 1.5 miles for elementary school students only.

"Obviously it's going to cost money to reduce it from 2 miles to 1 1/2," said Manendo, the assistant majority whip in the Assembly. "But it's a safety issue. Parents are really upset.

"It's not so much that it's 2 miles to walk, it's that there's traffic and vacant lots and all kinds of problems along the way," Manendo said.

Manendo said he did not know what type of fiscal impact his proposal would have on the state's two largest school districts, Clark and Washoe. But he requested the bill be sent to both the Education and Ways and Means committees in hopes that some state money might be used to offset the effect.

Richard Ennes, acting business manager for the Clark County School District, estimates an additional 9,500 students would be eligible for busing if Manendo's bill passes.

Additional buses would cost $12.3 million and another $1.7 million would be needed to cover the cost of the runs, Ennes said.

"People don't realize the magnitude of just how big our district is," Ennes said.

The school district cannot use bonds to buy new buses and would have to use budget money to generate the funds to pay for Manendo's bill.

Both Ennes and Ronald Despenza, the district's head of busing, said they agreed Manendo's bill has merits.

"It's a good idea," Ennes said. "We understand the frustration parents have with having their kids walk."

Despenza, who recently recommended reducing some bus services to help meet the extra utility and salary expenses, agreed the safety issue is important. "Two miles is a very long way for a small elementary school child to walk to school," Despenza said. "We just don't have the money for it."

Superintendent Carlos Garcia recently rejected Despenza's ideas to cut back on bus services to save money. Those included staggering school starting times to allow the district to stagger its buses and use fewer of them.

The proposal also included forcing students in Sandy Valley to attend the Keystone Academy Charter School in Sandy Valley rather than ride buses the 50 miles each way to Durango High School every day.

Despenza also had proposed discontinuing busing in secondary magnet and alternative schools for students who are credit deficient and eliminating late activity buses at other schools.

Although Despenza said he thought he could save more than $5 million by making those changes, the district did not want to reduce those services.

In 1999 the Legislature passed a law allowing school districts to sell advertising on the sides of school buses. Manendo wonders why districts have not taken advantage of the potential revenue from those ads.

Ennes said the district is looking at that possibility, but said some are hesitant to plaster buses with commercials.

"We throw ads in front of kids every day already," Ennes said.

Assembly Bill 124 has 20 co-sponsors, but Ennes said the district's lobbyists will heavily oppose the measure.