Next Stop: Prom : Hart High School Students Need Not Ask for the Car Keys for This Year’s Gala Event

It’s prom time. Time to rent that tux, select a gown, pick out flowers and . . . take a bus?

Yes, but it’s a luxury bus. So say administrators from William S. Hart High School in Newhall.

Saturday marks the first time that Hart High School students will be required to take a chartered coach to and from the prom--or else they cannot attend.

“If students don’t arrive on the bus, they won’t be admitted to the prom,” Hart Principal Laurence Strauss said.

Designed to cut down on prom-night revelry, the policy was welcomed by Carolee Newman, spokeswoman for Mothers Against Drunk Driving in Los Angeles County. “I’ve heard of busing for grad night, but I’ve never heard of busing to the prom,” she said.

This year, 500 Hart students signed up to attend the gala event at the Sheraton Universal Hotel in North Hollywood. Last year, when riding the bus was optional, only 20 of 600 students took advantage of free transportation to a boat cruise in Long Beach. The year before, prom attendance reached an all-time high, when 700 students attended.

Reaction from students is mixed.

Erin Feiles, a 16-year-old junior, said she was not going to the prom because having to take the bus meant staying at the prom the entire time.

“I want to be with my friends for a while and then go out,” she said.

Senior Jennifer Grigoriou said staying at the prom the whole night was no different from last year, when the event was held on a boat.

“At first, I was kind of upset about the buses,” Grigoriou said. “I thought it would ruin the atmosphere. But now it’s not that big of a deal. It’s only a half-hour there and a half-hour back, and at least you’re with your friends.”

Administrators made bus transportation mandatory this year in part to relieve the high cost of proms for students. Tickets alone cost $110 per couple, including bus fare.

“We were concerned about the pressure to rent limousines and get a hotel room afterward,” Strauss said. “The costs have gotten out of hand.”

Safety was also a concern, especially after the death of 18-year-old Ethan Jones following last year’s prom. He died after he fell asleep at the wheel on his way home from Long Beach.

Twelve 47-seat buses from Antelope Valley Bus Inc. will begin loading students outside the school at 6 p.m. Students will depart the hotel at 11 p.m.

The students attending the prom signed a contract agreeing to return to the school on the bus after the prom. If they do not, seniors will not be allowed to participate in their graduation ceremony and underclassmen will be barred from the prom next year, Strauss said.

“Providing safe transportation is a step in the right direction,” Newman said. “But sober transportation from bus drop-off to students’ homes also needs to be planned in advance. If parents could fill this gap that would be marvelous.”

The Antelope Valley High School District has been busing students to proms held outside the district for more than seven years. District policy dictates that students must take buses to events outside the area.

“The farther we travel,” Quartz Hill High Vice Principal Paul Arnold said, there’s “more potential for accidents.” This year, 800 Quartz Hill students will attend their prom at Long Beach Harbor, and tickets sold out in five days, Arnold said.

Buses might eliminate accidents to and from the prom, but what the students do after they get off the bus is another matter, Strauss said.

Hart senior Brian Henriksen, 18, agreed. “They’ll bring us back in a bus, and we’ll go back down to the San Fernando Valley anyway,” he said.