Fuel price straining education budget

With gasoline and diesel prices at record highs, area schools are feeling the pinch and preparing to tighten their belts for the upcoming school year.

The American Automobile Association reported the statewide average for a gallon of regular unleaded was $3.92 Thursday, an increase of about 30 percent from one year ago. Diesel was at $4.59 per gallon, an increase of nearly 65 percent since last July.

“That’s a huge issue for us,” Laverne Superintendent Ed Thomas said. “We have a large district and it’s gonna be a big deal for us.”

“Oh man, are we nervous,” said Emma Sidders, Sharon Mutual Superintendent.

“Fuel costs are kinda having rippling effects on school budgets,” Woodward Superintendent Vickie Williams said. “Transportation is one of the issues we’ll have to address.”

Compounding the problem is a lack of funding increases from the state.

“There are no additional revenue allocations from last year to this year,” Shattuck Superintendent Randy Holley said. “There’s no new revenue coming in and expenditures are going up.”

Williams said the legislature appropriated no additional operational dollars for fiscal year 2009. Transportation costs come out of the district’s operational budget, Williams said.

Last year, Woodward schools spent nearly $54,000 on gasoline and more than $90,000 on diesel. At the percentage increases specified above, Woodward would have to spend an additional $75,000-plus on fuel.

Those percentages, however, do not reflect the steady increase in gas and diesel prices from July 2007 through the end of the last school year, which are included in the dollar amounts reported.

Still, significantly more money will have to be spent on running school buses for the 2008-2009 school year, especially if fuel prices continue to rise.

In Laverne, Thomas said, the district’s buses run close to 800 miles every day and get only seven miles per gallon “on a good day.” With nearly 180 days in the school year and diesel at $4.59 a gallon, Laverne would have to spend nearly $95,000 dollars on fuel alone--and that’s if diesel prices remained the same through the end of the next school year.

Making bus routes shorter or making fewer stops are possible solutions.

“Some districts are talking about cutting them down,” Holley said. “Some school districts were talking about charging kids for running buses,” he added, much as districts currently do with school lunches.

And, Holley said, rising fuel costs affect prices for other district essentials, like those lunches.

“Not only has fuel went up, but because fuel rates have went up grocery prices have gone up,” Holley said. “We’ve got to figure ways to save in one area to pay for those essential costs.”

“The only place you can save money is teachers,” Thomas said. Cutting teacher salaries or letting teachers go, Thomas added, is a worst-case scenario in Laverne.

“Projects for classes and things like that...they may have to do fundraisers,” Sidders said.

Oklahoma state law does not require school districts to run bus routes, but, as yet, no superintendent interviewed for this article was considering terminating bus services.

“We wanna provide as many services as we can to our patrons and our students,” Williams said.

“We’ll probably continue like we’ve been going,” Thomas said. “When it comes time, we’ll be faced with cutting services.”

In the meantime schools will have to save money wherever they can.

“We’re gonna look at our bus routes and try to make sure that they are as efficient as possible,” Sidders said.

“We’re gonna get into our carry-over, our surplus funds,” Thomas said. “We’re gonna try to get the most bang for our buck. Of course, we feel like we do that anyway.”

“We’re gonna try and tighten our belts,” Holley said.

“We’re just gonna have to look at all of our expenses and be as conservative as we can,” Sidders said.

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