Published: May 12, 2008 12:20 am            

School districts run out of funds and out of gas

Superintendent Jim McCharen would like to hire 10 new teachers for his Choctaw-Nicoma Park Public School District to keep pace with a growing student population and keep class sizes down in the suburban Oklahoma City district.

But McCharen won’t hire any new teachers for the upcoming school year as he struggles to keep the district’s yellow school buses on the road and joins a growing list of school administrators across the state who are sapping money from the classroom to keep up with skyrocketing fuel prices.

“We have to cut programs just to buy gas. That’s where it gets very frustrating. We get very angry about it,” said McCharen, whose 4,800-student district encompasses about 60 square miles east of Oklahoma City.

The district’s annual fuel budget totaled $225,000 three years ago, when prices averaged a little more than $2 a gallon. This year, the budget is around $350,000.

“It rolls downhill to the classroom,” McCharen said. “Sometimes, the belt-tightening choices should not be on the back of our school kids.”



The local impact



With the price of regular gasoline at $3.50 a gallon and diesel fuel even higher in Oklahoma, school districts are looking for new ways to trim transportation costs and save money to continue busing students to and from school.

Incoming Enid Superintendent Shawn Hime said it is a significant problem for all schools. He has talked to superintendents across the state, and everyone is looking at ways to minimize cost and looking at their operational budget to determine what it will look like next year.

Costs of diesel are anticipated to reach the $4.50 range by next year, and with prices hovering around $4 currently, he said that is not hard to believe.

Hime said he met last week with Enid school officials including Jim Gilthorpe, transportation superintendent; Karl White, financial director, and Kem Keithly, current superintendent who will retire at the end of June.

They discussed cost increases for next year and what can be done to minimize impacts on the budget, Hime said.

“Some of that, we will be looking at how many activity trips we take and how far we go on those trips,” he said. “Basically all schools are in the same boat. We only have so much money for operation of the district, and when fuel goes up we dip into carryover or any reserves,” Hime said.

Most schools do not have much carryover and must find places to make cuts, he said.

“We hope energy costs increases are somewhat offset in Oklahoma by growth in the economy by the energy sector,” he said. A portion of fuel taxes in the state goes toward education.

“Hopefully, in the future,” Hime said, “we will receive money from the state going to the school budget to offset those increases.”

Looking for efficiency



School districts across the state are re-examining their transportation policies and staffing levels after the Legislature did not grant an increase in school operational expenses requested by state Superintendent Sandy Garrett.

“We can’t continue to offer all the services we’ve always offered and function without losing money,” said Terry Simpson, superintendent of Guthrie Public Schools. It typically costs hundreds of dollars to fill up the fuel tank of a school bus, which gets less than 10 miles per gallon of fuel.

“We’ve got to do something to be more efficient with this,” Simpson said.

This fall, the 3,300-student district will implement a new transportation policy that does away with bus routes for students living within 1.5 miles of the school they attend — a policy that already has been implemented by districts in Clare-more, Crescent, Norman, Sapul-pa and Moore, Simpson said.

Students who live outside that boundary will continue to be bussed but will be picked up and dropped off at designated sites. Buses no longer will stop at individual students’ homes.

Those inside the boundary will walk or bike to school or be transported privately.

Announcement of the transportation policy was posted on the school district’s Web site after it was approved by Guth-rie’s Board of Education last month. It said Guthrie schools received $131,142 in state funds this year to pay for transporting students but actual costs for the year will be between $900,000 and $1 million.

“The Guthrie Board of Education realizes that school bus transportation has become an integral part of the modern day educational process,” the Web site states. “At the same time, the state of Oklahoma has determined that school bus transportation is to be considered a privilege and not a right of the students attending the state’s public schools.”

Public schools in Oklahoma have no legal obligation to bus students to and from school, Garrett said.

“It’s not mandated, but it is expected,” Garrett said. “Parents expect it and the community expects it in this day and time when so many mommas are working and families are busy.”



Not good politics



Financial problems surrounding rising fuel prices have been compounded by the Legislature’s failure to increase appropriations for school operating costs, including fuel, the cost of school buses, insurance and utilities, school superintendents said.

“We tell them we need some operational funds. But it’s not politically advantageous to them to get re-elected,” said Bill Denton, superintendent of the 7,000-student Yukon Public School District. “That’s not real popular to say they’re giving money for operations.”

Figures provided by the state Department of Education indicate the state provided about $23.3 million in transportation funding in the 2001-2002 school year although the actual cost of daily bus routes and activity trips totaled about $144.7 million.

In the 2006-07 school year, the state provided almost $27.8 million in transportation funds, although actual transportation costs totaled almost $175 million.

“It takes more money to run a school than it ever has,” Garrett said. “If indeed schools stop the yellow buses from running next fall, it’s going to put a great hardship on our families.”



‘We need to get kids to school’



Simpson said school administrators in Guthrie are responding to parental concerns about student safety and convenience posed by the district’s new transportation policy.

“They’re concerned about their child walking a mile,” Simpson said. “That’s going to put an additional burden on the parents. That’s unfortunate. That’s not our goal.”

He said the district will expand the hours of before- and after-school programs at each elementary school in the district to accommodate parents’ work schedules. The schools include daycare facilities licensed by the state Department of Human Services.

“Our intent is to open those up early, keep them open late,” Simpson said.

In spite of rising fuel costs, some school districts are reluctant to curtail their student transportation services.

“Our patrons would not stand for their kids not to be bused,” McCharen said. “We absolutely know that we need to get kids to school. We bear that burden like every other school district.”

The dilemma created by rising fuel prices is more evidence public schools are losing ground in the state budgeting process, the superintendents said.

“It’s as though we’re going backwards,” McCharen said.

“We’re getting less of a percentage of the pie for the entire budget than we’ve been getting years before,” Denton said. “It doesn’t bring money in for us to pay our bills. It’s pretty frustrating.”