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Fuel Costs Hurt Bay District Schools Budget

Posted on: Monday, 25 July 2005, 21:00 CDT

Jul. 23--Bay District Schools is increasing its fuel budget in an attempt to cover the rising cost of diesel.

According to AAA Auto Club Southeast, diesel has risen from $1.80 a gallon to $2.44 a gallon in the past year. To offset the increase, school officials have proposed setting aside an extra $110,000 this year to keep the district's 140 buses on the road between August and May.

Each year those buses travel an estimated 3.5 million miles carrying 15,801 students to and from school, according to school officials.

According to the tentative 2005-06 budget, the district is allocating $550,000 this year compared to the $440,853 that was earmarked for 2004-05. However, the district spent $653,548 last year and had to take about $100,000 from its unappropriated fund balance to cover the overage.

District Chief Financial Officer Dan Nix said the district expects to exceed the allocated amount again this year. He said an additional $100,000 will be covered through reimbursements from field trips and other miscellaneous items.

Individual schools pay the transportation department a fee when they take their students on field trips.

On Friday, the School Board was given the tentative 2005-06 budget and voted to advertise it to the public. Nix, Superintendent James McCalister and a finance committee put the budget together before handing it off to the board.

School Board members now will comb through the budget and decide how much can be spent on everything from employee raises to new construction to sports. While their total budget is $328,968,368, almost all of that money is tied up in annual costs such as fuel, salaries, and maintenance bills. The district has $2,942,031 in its unappropriated fund balance -- the fund used to pay for raises and rising costs.

The school millage rate is decreasing this year. The rate will go from 8.148 to 7.935 due to increases in property value.

Any extra money generated through property taxes should be spent on class-size reduction, employee compensation and ensuring that the district has a strong reading program, said School Board member Thelma Rohan. But making those decisions in front of the public always is arduous, she added.

"Putting a good argument together is a difficult thing to do," Rohan said.

Many of the money decisions are not in local hands, though. The district is controlled by mandates from the state and federal government, and legislators leave local leaders little room to maneuver, Rohan said.

"Unfunded mandates are not fun to have to work with," she said.

Board member Donna Allen said the board is responsible with tax money.

"We just look at every penny," she said.

This year some of those pennies will be spent on extracurricular travel, middle and high school reading remediation, athletic trainers, school resource officers and textbooks.

Travel will cost more than $206,000, reading remediation will cost $64,464, athletic trainers will cost $100,000, school resource officers will cost $708,456 and textbooks will cost $2,215,535.

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Source: The News Herald

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