High fuel prices are taking a bite out of school district budgets

09/13/05 -- School officials were already worrying about the high cost of fuel. Then Hurricane Katrina blew in, damaging refineries on the Gulf Coast and disrupting the distribution systems, leading to even higher prices.

As fuel prices change every day, school administrators are pondering what steps they can take to ensure they have enough funds to purchase fuel to transport students and are looking ahead to planning for high heating costs next winter.

The school board of the Palisades School District in Kintersville, Pa., considered charging students $1 for each ride on the school bus to offset rising fuel prices in the 100-square-mile district. They dropped the idea, however, because state education guidelines require student transportation to be “free and paid for out of district funds.”

Instead, the district will be forced to continue to limit field trips and eliminate late buses. “The late bus service that served only 30 kids cost $755 per child per year. It was just too cost prohibitive,” says Transportation Manager Meri Hedrick.

Last year, the 2,000-student, rural district paid $70,300 to fuel its 50 buses. “This year, it’s about 42 to 45 percent more than last year, and twice what it was two years ago,” Hedrick says. “It’s a national crisis.”

“We’re doing the best we can. We don’t idle our buses any longer than we have to, we take the shortest routes,” she says. “When we do send some small groups on field trips paid for by parents and PTAs, we use the smaller buses just to conserve the little bit of fuel we can.”

The Pinellas County, Fla., school district uses 13,000 gallons of diesel fuel a day to transport 44,000 of its 112,000 students to and from school. The district’s 720 buses get about eight miles to the gallon and cover 87,800 miles a day.

On Sept. 2, the district had only 6,500 gallons of diesel fuel in reserve. “Our problem wasn’t related to increased fuel prices as much as it was to disruptions in fuel delivery due to Hurricane Katrina,” says spokesperson Sterling Ivey.

The district was prepared to use its automated telephone system to let parents know that they might have to make other arrangements to get their children to school. “Closing school was absolutely not an option because parents rely on schools to care for their children while they are working,” Ivey says.

Fortunately, the district did receive the shipments on time.

Reserves were built into the budget to provide for rising fuel costs, says Ivey, but with prices at almost $1 more a gallon than they were a year ago, “it could eat up the reserves in just a couple of months. And we will have to find money from other areas.”

Ironically, the district added 3,000 bus stops to its routes this year to provide safer stops for students -- a measure it might not have taken if it had foreseen the rising fuel prices.

Pinellas County officials are not allowing school buses to idle and looked into eliminating extracurricular bus trips. “But two months of no field trips or other extracurricular activities would only yield a one-day savings of fuel,” Ivey says. “That would cause more problems to the system than savings so we decided against that.”

“I think we’re doing what’s right and what’s appropriate for the citizens of our county, and if it costs us more money to deliver that service, then I think we have to be willing for pay for that,” he says. But the district is also looking at other options.

One possibility is dropping the current system of separate buses for elementary, middle, and high school students. “If we go to a two-tier system and couple the high school students with the elementary students, we might be able to eliminate some trips,” says Ivey.

School officials in several Massachusetts districts are more concerned about providing heat next winter than the rising cost of bus fuel. That’s because they have locked into multiyear contracts with private companies to bus students to school and the companies are absorbing the costs -- at least for the short term.

A more pressing problem for the Haverhill, Mass., school district is paying for crude oil to heat their buildings and truck in classroom materials, food, and other necessities.

In 1991, budget cuts forced the Sequatchie County, Tenn., school system to suspend bus service for two months, but school officials won’t let that happen again.

The district, which has 2,200 students, increased its fuel budget by 33 percent over last year in anticipation of rising costs, but will still probably have to dip into its reserves to keep its 15 buses running.

“We’re the fastest growing district around here, and so we’re getting money from the state because of that,” says Superintendent Johnny Cordell. “We’re not exactly in good shape, but we’re a little better able to weather the storm than a lot of neighboring districts.”

However, as gas prices continue to rise, many high school students who were driving to school are now taking the bus, and the district might have to add to its fleet, he says. “It’s a double-edged sword.”

In the early 1990s, school buses went door to door to pick up students. The district has since converted to bigger, more fuel-efficient diesel buses and shortened some routes -- thus cutting fuel consumption in half.

“Some of the districts around here are considering a four-day week to save on transportation, but we’d never do that,” Cordell says. “Parents wouldn’t stand for it.”

The district is also expecting a 7 to 8 percent increase in heating costs for its three schools and might have to dip into its reserves, he says. “We’re okay now, but it will impact us down the road -- not this year, but in future years.”

Rising gas prices is “a pervasive problem that really has us in a quandary right now,” says Mike Martin, executive director of the National Association of Pupil Transportation.

The typical price for a gallon of diesel fuel was 85 to 95 cents in the 2003-04 school year, rose to $1.30 in 04-05, and this year was around $1.95 and up to $2.20 at the high end before Katrina, Martin says. “So it had almost tripled in three school years. Most people did not budget for, or anticipate, this virtually unprecedented increase in the price of fuel.”