Commuters across the country have been feeling the pain at the pump these last few months amid higher gas prices. And public school superintendents say they have been too.
The situation had WFDD’s Amy Diaz wondering how increased fuel costs are affecting local districts’ budgets. For this edition of Carolina Curious, she looks at the impacts in Davidson County.
Think about how much you’ve spent every time you’ve filled your car up with gas lately. Now, imagine your car is a bus. And you have 178 of them that need to be on the road every day, transporting thousands of kids to and from school.
You might feel a little bit like Davidson County Schools Superintendent Gregg Slate.
“It's stressful, but kids have to go to school. We still have to provide an education, and a high-quality education at that, for our children," Slate said. "So, knowing that we have to run buses regardless is something that we've had to accept.”
But just because he’s accepted it, doesn’t mean it’s not causing problems.
Slate says the district has recently been spending around $60,000 a week on fuel. While diesel costs have dropped slightly in recent days, they’re still about 50% higher than they were in North Carolina a year ago.
“We're starting to run out of money," Slate said. "Our budget would have taken us to the end of the year, and we would have been fine, but because of increased fuel costs, we only had about a million dollars left at the beginning of May.”
That’s for the district’s transportation budget, which pays for personnel and other things too. But by the end of last month, more than a third of that million dollars had gone toward fuel. In order to make payroll, Slate says the district’s dipping into its savings.
And the hits are not only happening at the pump.
“It's hot outside, so we have to work on HVACs, and I don't have, you know, a lot of HVAC workers, so I have to contract out with various companies," Slate said. "And every time they come out, they hit us with a fuel surcharge.”
After all, the cost of doing business for these companies has gone up, too. But there’s no extra money coming in from the state or federal government to help out with things like this.
Instead, Slate says he has to turn to the county in hopes of covering the increases in fuel and overall operations. If not, the district is going to have to cut positions next year.
And Davidson County Schools isn’t alone. The other Piedmont Triad superintendents Slate talks to are all facing the same problems.
“It doesn't really matter how big your school district is, if you're large, like Davidson County, or if you're small, like Mount Airy, I don't think it really matters," Slate said. "I think we all get hit, and proportionally it's still kind of tough.”
In a national survey of nearly 200 school district leaders, more than half said they were running over budget for fuel costs.
And if prices remain high next academic year, roughly 30% said they’d have to cut extracurriculars or defer maintenance on facilities.
About a quarter would need to cut staffing, like Davidson may have to.