BUSING MONEY VETOED; MOORPARK OFFICIALS SAY KIDS WILL GET RIDES TO NEW SCHOOL.

Byline: Sylvia L. Oliande Daily News Staff Writer

Moorpark Unified School District officials this week said they were disappointed but not surprised that Gov. Pete Wilson vetoed a budget request for $740,000 to fund a voluntary desegregation program.

The money would have paid for school buses for students from all over the district to ride to the new Walnut Canyon Elementary School, scheduled to open in January next to the predominantly Latino downtown area.

``The governor was apparently in a blue-pencil mode and decided to go through it with his blue pencil,'' Tom Duffy, school district superintendent, said Tuesday. ``I knew it had been done before and knew that there was probably limited opportunity. But my job is to create funding opportunities for the district. I have to be entrepreneurial.''

Duffy said the Moorpark district will reapply for the money next year and meanwhile get by.

``This is going to put a crimp in other plans we had as far as bringing some new equipment on,'' said Larry Brown, assistant superintendent of business services. ``Hopefully, it will only delay it. But it's not going to change our ability to transport the kids this year.

``Making sure that program works well is our first priority,'' he said.

If the new school served students only from its immediate neighborhood, without any voluntary busing, it likely would have a minority enrollment of 60 percent to 80 percent, officials said.

``That's an imbalance we don't believe is appropriate,'' Duffy said.

With an incentive program and no attendance boundary, the new school has attracted potential enrollment ethnically similar to that in other district schools: 70 percent Anglo and 27 percent Latino.

Before the district began planning for Walnut Canyon, it dealt with size and racial issues in school organization by nontraditional grouping of grades. None of the schools serves students in kindergarten through fifth grade. Instead, some schools provide kindergarten through second grade or kindergarten through third grade, and other schools provide third or fourth grade through fifth grade.

Parents complained last year when the district suggested redrawing its attendance boundaries to achieve desired size and ethnic balance at the new school. District officials then came up with the plan for kindergarten through fifth grade at Walnut Canyon School - with extras to attract voluntary enrollment from throughout the district. The attractions will include programs before and after school, recreation and performing-arts classes and daylong kindergarten classes.