OCEANSIDE ---- When hundreds of seniors at Oceanside and El Camino high schools sit down next month to take advanced-placement exams for college credit, they can thank the community for some financial backing.

Small fund-raising efforts at both schools, various education grants, and contributions to the Oceanside Education Foundation raised $15,000 to help students pay for the exams, which will give them a leg up on freshman-level college courses such as biology and calculus.

Fund raising played a big role in covering test costs after the Oceanside Unified School District last year decided to reduce the amount of money it gave high schools to help pay the $82-per-test fee for advanced-placement exams.

District officials said advanced-placement test fees will tally about $75,000 overall, but the actual overall cost to students will only be $10,000. They said that's because in addition to the $15,000 from the foundation, the district has allocated $50,000 to help cover test fees.

"I think it's crucial to help these students out," said Dee Dee Kovacevich, a business teacher at El Camino High who helped students there raise money. She also applied for various grants to help foot the bill.

The test is important to most college-bound students because it translates into college credit if a student scores high enough to prove he or she knows enough in a subject area to "skip" a course in college general education requirements. Nowadays, most colleges and universities want students with advanced-placement credit.

Students have been known to take up to eight advanced-placement exams at a time to get ahead and to save money in college. Paying for the tests all by themselves could prove costly. A student taking eight tests would have to pay $656 if there wasn't any help from the district or the foundation, for example.

While district trustees once toyed with cutting the funding altogether, this year they gave $50,000, or $25,000 less than they had allocated in previous years. The advanced-placement program has been in place in Oceanside since 1982, when the district began funding the final exams in each subject.

The loss in funding, or $25,000, was the original fund-raising goal for both schools, said Larry Hatter, president of the Oceanside Education Foundation. Since the goal was not met, and students had to cover part of the cost out of their own pockets, Hatter said he is still trying to raise $10,000 to reimburse students.

But the effort, which started at the beginning of the school year, wasn't a flop.

Tierra Warren, a senior at Oceanside High who is enrolled in three advanced-placement courses, said the fund-raising worked for most students. She only had to pay $55 for three exams, she said.

"Now it's just getting ready for the tests," she said.