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Fuel Price Increases Hurting School Districts

Posted on: Wednesday, 10 May 2006, 15:03 CDT

By David J. Lee, Odessa American, Texas

May 10--It's not the gasoline fumes watering the eyes of school district administrators throughout the Permian Basin.

"We're crying," Billy Collins, Grandfalls/Royalty ISD superintendent, said. "We're taking a big hit is what we're doing."

The rising cost of fuel is siphoning off the budgets of districts throughout the area.

Collins said small school districts face a particular difficulty in dealing with fuel costs, especially those associated with busing.

"We have about 50 miles of bus routes," he said. "Our district's pretty small geographically. The proportion of our budget is large, though, and we're a small district. We have the same bus routes whether few kids or whole bunch of kids."

Like many other school districts throughout the state, Grandfalls/ Royalty is having to evaluate its fuel budget and ways to save money in the face of ever-rising fuel costs.

"We really review our travel and look to make sure when we are going somewhere it's really a place our kids or our teachers need to travel," Collins said. "We save mileage when we can and get the best fuel prices we can.

"We've reviewed our bus routes and put a smaller vehicle on one route, so we're not running a big diesel bus on a route with three kids," Collins said. "We're using a Suburban. When diesel is as expensive as it is, the mileage on Suburban is whole lot better."

Alan Swinford, Crane ISD director of physical services, said fuel is not the only increase districts are facing.

"Our costs have increased dramatically," Swinford said. "There's no way around that. It's not just fuel, but anything that goes along with that. Any plastic parts are higher. Engine oil, additives -- all that is higher. You see the same percentage increase in those products."

Crane sends buses about 20 miles north of town, up on to the Caprock escarpment daily. A special education bus also makes twice daily runs to Ector Junior High.

Swinford said some Ector County students are busing to Crane right now, as well. All that costs money.

"We tried to bump our budget up 25 percent last year thinking maybe we'd see some relief," he said. "It hasn't happened. It's going to raise budget considerably."

Collins said the Grandfalls/Royalty school district was fortunate to have planned for rising fuel costs.

"One good thing about it is that we anticipated this last summer," he said. "We really established our budgets for extracurricular travel and other kinds of travel on $3 a gallon gas. We budgeted about 40 percent more on our fuel than we did last year based on anticipated price."

The Wink/Loving Independent School District has also budgeted for a dramatic fuel increase.

"We really haven't curtailed anything as of yet," Superintendent John Benham said. "We'll still continue with trips."

However, Benham said if costs continue to rise, things may change for next year.

"We're working on a budget, and if this stay high, we'll add a lot of line items as far as fuel," he said. "We'll slowly increase the fuel budget for next year."

Meanwhile, in order to try and save money, Swinford said Crane teachers are encouraged to "be smarter about the way we travel."

"Teachers ride together to go to training," he said. "And we use more electronic training here -- anything the region center can send here over their network."

Furthermore, Crane ISD transportation workers are encouraged to conserve wherever they can.

"We don't let our vehicles idle. We turn them off," Swinford said. "We do all the fuel conservation things we can."

Both Grandfalls/Royalty and Crane have said the districts are not cutting extracurricular trips for students.

"We haven't done anything that we feel would adversely affect kids in their activities or opportunities," Swinford said. "The last thing we would affect is our students."

Collins said likewise.

"We're trying our best to deal with it and not reduce our programs and offerings we have for kids," he said.

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Copyright (c) 2006, Odessa American, Texas

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Source: Odessa American

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