Bus Cuts Hit Home on 1st Day : Simi Valley: Students and parents complain about long walks and bicycle rides as school begins in hot weather.

As Valley View Junior High School students finished their first day of classes in Simi Valley on Wednesday, some gathered under a sycamore tree, dismayed at the thought of making the long trek home.

Fewer buses were running in the district after the Simi Valley school board decided to save $100,000 by eliminating buses to high schools and restricting the service for junior high students.

School officials said they need to cut transportation costs to preserve academic programs.

Too young to drive and too old to be going to the elementary schools that still offer busing to everyone, some Simi Valley students such as Collin Hicks, 13, are using their feet and bicycle wheels for school transportation for the first time in their lives.

Collin, an eighth-grader, rode a bus home last year. This year, he’ll have to ride his bicycle three miles home up steep inclines in the Indian Hills estates.

“If I could get a bus ride, I’d do it,” Collin said. “It gets hot and you’re sweaty. I’ve thrown up in the heat.”

Last year students who lived more than 2.5 miles from school could hop on a bus that would take them to junior high. But more restrictive policies this year exclude junior high students who live less than three miles away.

Toting a hot pink and black book bag, Jami Ruecker, 13, said she would have to carry more than 10 pounds of textbooks three miles back and forth to school.

“I wouldn’t want to walk home,” Jami said. “I wouldn’t be able to find my way home. It’s too hot and when it’s too cold, it’s too cold.”

Jami was lucky enough to catch a ride from the mother of her best friend, Tiffany Jordan, 12. Although Tiffany is eligible to ride, her mother objects to having her walk to a nearby bus stop.

The seventh-graders live less than a quarter of a mile from each other, but Jami was excluded from the bus that Tiffany could ride to school.

Tiffany’s mother, Penny Jordan, 42, said the girls are too young to walk.

“Simi Valley is a relatively safe place to live, but I don’t want her waiting on the corner for a bus,” Jordan said. “They’re not allowed to go further than the Vons store.”

To walk home, the two girls would have to cross Los Angeles Avenue, one of the busiest thoroughfares in the city, she said.

Throughout the district, parents angry about the cuts are organizing car pools, said Fran Cohn, whose seventh-grade son attends Valley View Junior High School but cannot ride the bus. She has collected more than 100 signatures on petitions that were submitted to the school board Tuesday night.

“It was 100 degrees today,” Cohn said. “A three-mile walk is what you do when you want to exercise, not to start out school.”

Cohn said parents are clogging the streets and school parking lots and polluting the air with their cars to deliver their children to school.

“There were more cars at Valley View today than there were at any carnival event, or any Simi event. The place was a zoo,” Cohn said. “It’s worse than a traffic jam in New York.”

Valley View Principal Don Gaudioso said the first day of school usually draws many parents who come to pick up their children. Ironically, many of the children are involved in after-school athletics.

“They’re really good kids,” he said. “But for some, the mentality is: To walk anywhere, it’s alien to them.”

Some parents of the 1,013 students who attend the school in the easternmost portion of the city work in the San Fernando Valley and cannot pick up their children, Gaudioso said.

Nearly 30 minutes after school ended, one student still waited in the afternoon heat for a ride home.

Seventh-grader Shirelle Jackson, 12, had worn a pair of dressy shoes and a pink miniskirt for the first day of class. She said she dreaded the 2.5-mile walk home and had exhausted her last quarter calling her mother.

“I don’t want to walk . . . . Unless it’s cold or I’m wearing a dress, I guess I’m going to have to ride my bike,” Shirelle said, clutching a notebook.

“I called my mom, and she said she was going to pick me up. But I don’t know when she’s coming.”