ACCESS / THE DAILY TRIP
A farther school can stretch a family’s budget.
Estimated annual school-run fuel per vehicle, traveling from Santa Ana Boulevard & Ventura Avenue, Oak View. Comparison campuses, not confirmed school assignments.
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≈ $1,887estimated fuel / school year
20–35 minone way · 7:30 a.m. scenario
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≈ $2,027estimated fuel / school year
25–35 minone way · 7:30 a.m. scenario
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≈ $2,423estimated fuel / school year
25–45 minone way · 7:30 a.m. scenario
Total modeled fuel, not the additional cost versus Sunset.
$5.50/gallon · 17 mpg · two round trips daily · 180 school days. Buses, carpooling and combined work trips can change household costs.
Drive times are illustrative heavy-traffic estimates for 7:30 a.m., not measured forecasts. School drop-off lines add time.
Family commute assumptions and sources
Distance: the annual calculations use 8.1 miles to E.P. Foster, 8.7 to Sheridan Way and 10.4 to Lincoln, each one way from this intersection. OpenStreetMap / OSRM driving routes were checked November 7, 2026 (Pacific) and rounded to the nearest tenth of a mile. Select a campus name to see its mapped route. These are different from the earlier district’s Sunset-to-campus distances in the other infographic.
Travel time: one-way miles ÷ an assumed average speed of 15–25 mph × 60, with each end rounded up to five minutes. The speed assumption includes traffic and signals. These are planning estimates, not observed weekday averages or bus travel times. Check a traffic-aware map for your departure.
Fuel: one-way miles × 4 daily legs ÷ 17 mpg × $5.50 × 180 school days, rounded to the nearest dollar. This assumes a separate morning drop-off round trip and afternoon pickup round trip. One round trip daily halves the fuel estimate. The drive from home to the intersection, maintenance, vehicle wear and time away from work are excluded. Buses, carpooling and trips combined with work can change household costs.
Destinations: E.P. Foster, 20 Pleasant Place; Sheridan Way, 573 Sheridan Way; Lincoln, 1107 East Santa Clara Street, Ventura. Grade-level placement and transportation arrangements still require a district plan.
DISTRICT TRANSPORTATION / TWO-BUS SCENARIO
What would two diesel buses cost?
≈ $62,800Fuel + driver base pay only
Per school year for two buses · four-hour driver-day illustration
- Diesel fuel
- $15,584
- Two drivers’ base pay
- $47,196
Each bus: 37 miles/day · 7 mpg · $8.19/gallon · 180 school days.
Each driver: about $23,598/year at $30.41/hour, assuming four paid hours/day over 180 school days plus 14 paid holidays.
Other operating costs come on top: benefits, employer payroll and retirement costs, maintenance, insurance and bus purchase or lease costs. This is a four-hour driver-day illustration, not an all-in quote or a confirmed added district expense.
Bus calculations and driver-pay source
Diesel: 2 buses × 37 miles × 180 days ÷ 7 mpg × $8.19 = $15,584.40 per school year. That is 74 combined miles and $86.58 in diesel per school day. The organizer’s 37-mile daily estimate is treated as each bus’s total daily travel; depot trips or other mileage beyond that would add cost.
Driver pay: 2 drivers × 4 paid hours × $30.41 × (180 school days + 14 paid holidays) = $47,196.32, or $23,598.16 per driver. The model uses VUSD salary range 220, Step 3, not a measured average employee salary. Four paid hours is the minimum daily assignment in the district’s October 26, 2026 recruitment; opportunities extend to eight hours. Paid time must cover duties such as inspections and loading, not just driving.
Subtotal: $15,584.40 fuel + $47,196.32 base pay = $62,780.72, shown as approximately $62,800. At eight paid hours per driver per day, the same fuel-and-pay subtotal would be about $110,000. Vacation, overtime, substitutes, dispatch and other operating costs are also excluded. Actual contracts, routes, driver assignments and use of existing staff or vehicles determine the budget impact. Family driving and bus service are different transportation scenarios; their costs should not simply be added together.
VUSD driver recruitment: pay, hours and holidays ›
District salary schedule: range 220, Step 3 ›
More school trips could worsen Ojai Valley traffic.
If students move to Ventura campuses and more caregivers drive, closure would add school journeys to the SR-33 / Ventura Avenue commute. Caltrans documented peak-hour turning queues exceeding lane storage at Santa Ana Boulevard, even though through traffic generally met its operating standards. More trips could add pressure to those bottlenecks; the effect depends on receiving schools, bus service and carpooling.
Caltrans final SR-33 review, pages 32–38 ›
Families with tight budgets would feel it.
More fuel, missed paid work and harder pickup arrangements can strain families already balancing rent, groceries and childcare. Keeping school local matters especially for families without a reliable car or room in the budget.
LOCAL CONNECTION
A local school holds the day together.
Children, caregivers and after-school programs are connected here. Keeping Sunset open helps preserve a school day that works within Oak View.
NEIGHBORHOOD ATTENDANCE
Sunset’s neighborhood stays with Sunset.
87%of VUSD students living in Sunset’s attendance area attend Sunset208 of 239 students. Highest among the 16 residence areas in the 2025–26 matrix.
Sunset87.0%
Pierpont86.3%
E.P. Foster51.8%
Sheridan Way50.7%
Lincoln42.7%
Shown: Sunset, the next-highest area, and the three nearby comparison campuses. Full comparison below.
This is an established neighborhood connection. Of the Sunset-area students counted in the matrix, nearly seven in eight attend their neighborhood campus.
Compare all 16 areas and understand the percentage
Each percentage is the number of students living in a school’s residence area who attend that school, divided by all students from that area represented in VUSD’s matrix. It excludes children enrolled outside VUSD. It is not the percentage of a school’s entire enrollment who live nearby, a walking rate, or a waiting-list measure. Sunset’s 208 local-area students are a different share of its 352 total enrolled students.
2025–26 attendance matrix: attending the neighborhood school / represented area students
| Residence area | Students | Share |
|---|
| Sunset | 208 / 239 | 87.0% |
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| Pierpont | 164 / 190 | 86.3% |
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| Loma Vista | 203 / 288 | 70.5% |
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| Junipero Serra | 278 / 399 | 69.7% |
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| Citrus Glen | 315 / 463 | 68.0% |
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| Juanamaria | 227 / 371 | 61.2% |
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| Portola | 213 / 354 | 60.2% |
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| Poinsettia | 194 / 326 | 59.5% |
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| Montalvo | 210 / 381 | 55.1% |
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| Lemon Grove | 107 / 200 | 53.5% |
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| E.P. Foster | 176 / 340 | 51.8% |
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| Sheridan Way | 190 / 375 | 50.7% |
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| ATLAS | 273 / 584 | 46.7% |
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| Elmhurst | 281 / 654 | 43.0% |
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| Lincoln | 100 / 234 | 42.7% |
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| Will Rogers | 105 / 280 | 37.5% |
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The November 6 board workbook reproduces this matrix in Criterion 4a; Sunset’s counts are Q20 and T20. The same matrix appears in the district’s March 2026 demographic report. Mound has no residence-area row and is excluded. Percentages are calculated consistently from the attendance counts and row totals.
Sunset’s grades 6–8 have no middle-school attendance boundary and use choice or transfer enrollment. A transfer label alone does not establish that a child lives outside Oak View. District enrollment rules ›
District attendance matrix, PDF page 80 / printed page 75 ›
COMMUNITY AND DISTANCE
A compact community. A much longer school journey.
14.2 miaverage listed distance from Sunset to 16 other campusesCampus-to-campus distances from the district’s comparison table.
The three nearest listed campuses
Keep a local school in the community it serves. Moving school beyond Oak View could turn a local routine into a daily commute.
Comparison campuses, not confirmed placements. Distances start at Sunset, unlike the family fuel estimates, which start at Santa Ana Boulevard & Ventura Avenue.
Geography, distance calculation and source dates
Oak View: Census QuickFacts reports 3.41 square miles of land for the 2020 census-designated place (CDP). The often-cited 1.96 square miles refers to 2010 geography. These boundaries differ from school attendance areas; no student-per-square-mile calculation is implied.
Average distance: the district’s Sunset row totals 226.6 miles to 16 other elementary/TK–8 campuses. 226.6 ÷ 16 = 14.1625, rounded to 14.2 miles. The published 13.3-mile average includes Sunset’s zero-mile distance to itself. The November 6 workbook’s Criterion 6, row 20 contains the same distances.
These are district campus-to-campus distances, not trips from a family’s home or the Santa Ana Boulevard intersection, bus routes, or evidence that all listed schools have available seats.
Census QuickFacts: Oak View geography ›
District campus distances, page 6 ›
THE WHOLE FAMILY’S DAY
If school moves, family needs stay local.
≈ 66%qualified for free or reduced-price meals232 of 352 Sunset students in the workbook’s 2025–26 meal-eligibility table. For families with tight budgets, added fuel, childcare coordination or missed work can be difficult to absorb.
Count the connections beyond dismissal.
Oak View Park and Resource Center lists Sunset’s after-school program among its tenants. Sunset also identifies Oak View Library as a place its students go after school for homework help.
If children attend school in Ventura but continue using Oak View programs, the school day still needs a return journey to Oak View. A receiving-school plan must account for that connection.
A day connected within Oak View
- Home in Oak View
- Sunset school
- After-school program in Oak View
- Home in Oak View
School and an existing local care option remain in the community.
If school moves to Ventura
- Home in Oak View
- Receiving campus in Ventura
- Return to an Oak View after-school program
- Home in Oak View
The school leg goes out of the community and back; local care and the final trip home still matter.
Illustrative journeys, not confirmed routes or counts of additional trips. Actual travel depends on school placement, program enrollment, transportation and caregiver schedules.
98reported general-education bus riders
Sunset · 2026–27 presentation
Some students who currently walk, bike or receive local drop-offs could need longer car journeys or bus service after a move. How many, and at what added cost, is still unmeasured. The available enrollment and rider figures cover different years.
A closure plan needs a whole-day transportation plan: school arrival, dismissal, after-school care and the trip home. Publish the expected added car travel, bus capacity, family costs and district costs before deciding.
Meal eligibility, bus counts and what the data cannot tell us
Meal eligibility: the November 6 board workbook’s FRPM sheet, B19:D19, reports 352 students and 232 eligible for free or reduced-price meals: 232 ÷ 352 = 65.9%. Its source note specifies CDE DataQuest, 2025–26. This is a student eligibility measure, not a count of households experiencing financial hardship.
Bus riders: the November 6 presentation, pages 14–15, reports 98 general-education riders for 2026–27. Its 78 “unduplicated” students are an eligibility category within that total, not a deduplicated count of all riders. Do not subtract 78 from enrollment to estimate walkers, cyclists or caregiver drop-offs.
The workbook labels 352 enrollment as 2025–26, so subtracting the 2026–27 bus count would also mix years. It does not provide current active enrollment, a complete unique-student count across general and special-education transportation, AM/PM overlaps, travel modes or after-school rider overlaps. Those matched data are needed to estimate new car journeys and bus demand.
Additional bus demand could require more capacity, route mileage or paid driver time. The two-bus illustration above shows fuel and base-pay assumptions; it is not a forecast of required buses or incremental district expense.
Meal eligibility: view the dated workbook extract and calculation ›
November transportation table summarized in the parent briefing, page 7 ›
OVPARC: local after-school program and services ›
Sunset: Oak View Library and after-school homework help ›
