PENINSULA DAILY NEWS

PORT ANGELES — Driving pinches your wallet as long as pump prices stay high.

But imagine having to continually fill up a fleet of big yellow school buses that get about 6 miles per gallon in city driving and annually consume tens of thousands of gallons?

That’s the reality facing officials at school districts across the North Olympic Peninsula.

According to Frank Walter, Quillayute Valley School District superintendent, the district’s buses burned up 23,155 gallons of fuel covering 216,701 miles last year.

That cost $47,468.

Those miles were traversed mainly to transport students to school, home and athletic games.

The problem, Walter said, is that the state didn’t pay the district enough money to cover often-unpredictable gas costs.

Currently, the state pays districts for fuel through pupil transportation fund allocations, which covers insurance, maintenance, mechanical and other expenses related to transportation.

Quillayute Valley last school year received enough revenues through this allocation to pay for 85 percent of its total $372,000 pupil transportation budget.

Money for the remaining 15 percent — about $57,000 — had to “be eaten out of other areas,” Walter said.

This was true even though most school districts buy their gas at bulk rates and at a lower cost than individual consumers.

Forks’ situation is mirrored across the Peninsula.

More gas allocations

Even though school districts from Neah Bay to Port Townsend have all allocated more dollars this year to their transportation budgets to account for higher pump prices, it may not be enough.

Jim Jones, district business manager for Port Angeles School District, will keep a wary eye on those prices as the year unfolds.

“If rates stay where they are [near $3 a gallon], it’s a big worry,” Jones said.

“A huge worry.”

Port Angeles budgeted $63,000 for diesel fuel in 2004-05, but this year the district increased the figure by more than 10 percent to $70,000, Jones said.

With all the variables out there, it’s too early to tell if it’ll be enough.

“We just don’t know how deep the problem will be,” Jones said.

“But if the gas rates don’t fall, then during the year we’ll have to make some adjustments and figure out how to deal with it.”

In Sequim, Superintendent Garn Christensen said the district upped its fuel budget by 25 percent.

“It’s always a good idea to budget much higher than you anticipate,” Christensen said.

Port Townsend School District Business Manager Steve McIntire said the district budgeted $44,000 for fuel last year.

But the actual cost was closer to $60,000 because of gas price increases, he said.

This year, Port Townsend’s fuel budget allocation is for $53,000, more than a 20 percent increase over last year.

‘Not sure it’s enough’

“I felt like I was adding quite a bit of money,” said McIntire.

But with prices topping $3 per gallon in some places, “now I’m not sure I added enough.

“Depending on how far prices go up . . . it will definitely be an additional drain on our budget.”

With Port Townsend School District’s budget stretched so tightly already — to the point it necessitated staff cuts — any additional costs for fuel may have to be taken out of the fund balance, McIntire said.

The fund balance is a small pot of money every district keeps for unexpected costs, he said.

“But if we do that, we’ll have less of a cushion at the end of the year to protect us,” McIntire said.

In Chimacum School District, the fears are the same.

Art Clarke, Chimacum business manager, said the district recently rerouted its buses and reduced driver time to cut fuel costs.

Similar measures were taken in Port Angeles and Sequim districts in recent years.

District 24 Rep. Lynn Kessler, D-Hoquiam, said she expects the Legislature to propose additional funds in an upcoming supplemental budget to help districts cope with gas costs. Her legislative district includes Jefferson and Clallam counties.

No Child Left Behind

Cape Flattery School District, which runs Neah Bay and Clallam Bay schools, has its own problem with the high price of gas.

Under the No Child Left Behind Act, parents can take students out of Neah Bay School, which hadn’t met federal adequate yearly progress standards, and have them bused to Clallam Bay School, which has met the progress standards.

Last year, 12 students rode a bus 20 miles from Neah Bay to Clallam Bay under that arrangement, said Jim Longin, Cape Flattery district deputy superintendent.

“The actual cost of running that bus was $25,000,” Longin said.

While the district was allowed to take $12,000 from its federal Title I funding to pay for the bus, $13,000 had to be paid out of district coffers for the balance.

No extra federal dollars were provided.

“If there’s an increase in gas costs this year, we’ll have to eat that increase locally,” Longin said.

“The sad part of it in my mind is that’s . . . money we can’t use instructionally.”

Coaches feeling the effect

In Forks, coaches are beginning to feel the effect of higher gas prices, as evidenced when Forks High School’s cross-country team participated in a meet in Elma two weeks ago.

When district officials learned that two of the team’s athletes weren’t going, they realized that they could take the school van instead of the costlier bus, which also needs a bus driver.

“However, as we checked everything we noticed the coach’s drivers license had expired,” Walter said.

“She [Andrea Peppers] felt so terrible that she ran out Thursday morning and renewed her license to take the team in the van.”

A bus trip would have cost $285 for fuel and the vehicle, Walter said.

Peppers’ quick action saved the district $180 — a drop in the bucket in a $10.6 million annual budget, Walter said.

But with all the uncertainty over future fuel costs, “these costs can add up pretty fast.”