Pali High Approves Crucial Transportation Plan

By MATTHEW MEYER | Reporter

Palisades Charter High School has locked in a new busing plan that, as expected, significantly hikes costs and ends the school’s universal transportation subsidies, but will maintain partial and full-ride busing scholarships for low-income students.

Those scholarships are considered vital to serving the school’s economically and racially diverse student body, which draws from 100 different LA zip codes.

Pali High was left scrambling for a new plan last month after the private busing service Tumbleweed Transportation unexpectedly pulled the plug on their service to the school.

Now Pali’s Board of Trustees has approved a contract with Durham School Services, a national transportation company with school buses in more than 30 states.

Administrators indicated that Durham was the school’s only realistic option.

The new plan will cost families $185 per month over the 10-month school year—up from the roughly $140 per month cost of Tumbleweed.

The most any student paid for the old service was $125, thanks to the school’s universal $15 subsidy for all bus-riding students. That was a luxury the school’s tightly balanced budget could no longer afford at the new prices.

The Durham buses will run comparable routes to the old service and provide a similar number of vehicles, so “the geographical coverage will be roughly the same,” Operations Consultant Don Parcell ensured.

Parcell said that in addition to Durham’s service, Pali High would also emphasize public transportation alternatives that could save families money.

“You have an option that if you as a family, as a student, want to buy the ‘all you can eat’ plan associated with the train and the bus, it’s going to be around $50 a month,” he told the board.

At that rate, students with access to LA’s metro lines could ride to Santa Monica and use the Big Blue Bus service to travel the remaining distance to campus.

Parcell knew of at least a dozen students who already travel to school using this method—though he noted the feasibility will vary drastically depending on where a family lives.

He said the school will “put this train/bus option on equal footing in terms of its presentation on the registration site to families” so they have a “clear understanding” of their options.

And when registration ends in early August, Pali High will have a clearer understanding of how the price hikes affected ridership.

The school has had to share the cost of private busing services with families since 2010, when LAUSD cut off free service to the independent charter school amid budget cuts.