What gets six miles a gallon and costs twice as much to run as last year? Local school districts know well the economically painful answer… It's your neighborhood school bus.
As classes begin at Northeast Ohio schools, districts are juggling routes, raising prices and even cutting back bus services.
The situation in Akron is typical -- a few decades ago the district switched over from conventional gasoline-powered buses to those that burn diesel - that was when diesel was much cheaper than regular gas. But in the last year, diesel fuel has doubled in price. And that's sent Debra Foulk, business affairs chief at Akron Schools, scrambling to find ways to save money.
Foulk:"The morning run could be a middle school dropoff at 7:30, And once they're dropped off at that middle school, the bus then continues to an elementary school;and the reverse is in play in the afternoon. By being able to double route, or triple route if you had to, and I do know some schools that triple route, you are efficiently using the limited physical asset you have in the buses."
Under state law, districts aren't required to bus high school students, but they must transport kindergarten through eighth graders who live more than two miles from school.
In Cleveland, high school students who live farther than three-miles from school are given a free voucher for the city bus. Nicholas Jackson, the Cleveland Schools deputy chief of business operations, says even with help from city buses, school buses still go through 500,000 gallons of diesel fuel each year at a cost of almost $2 million.
So like his counterparts in other districts, Jackson is experimenting with routing. And, he says - alluding perhaps to an issue raised in the presidential campaign - he's beefing up the maintenance schedule.
Jackson: "We're making sure we stay on top of the maintenance of them to make them be as efficient as they can be -- you know, proper inflation of tires."
And you may not notice, but something will be missing next time you pull up to a Cleveland school bus.
Jackson: "No idling. We make sure they don't idle at the bus depots and don't let them idle at the schools."
Some school districts have taken advantage of state grants to purchase bio-deisel fuel made from soybeans. It pollutes much less than petroleum diesel. But soybean prices went up right along with corn prices and gas prices. And hybrid buses -- which use a mixture of electric and diesel power -- could double the mileage of a traditional school bus. But at three times the price, those are a tough sell even for relatively well-to-do districts. In an urban district like Cleveland, , Jackson says, it's almost inconceivable.
Jackson: "At this point our fleet averages only 5-6 years old -- maybe seven, so to talk about replacing buses at that point becomes pretty challenging and there's obviously the capital investment to do so."
With 80 percent of Ohio students taking a bus to school, districts have precious little wiggle room. One possible savings would be to eliminate trips for extra curricular sports and educational activities. But school officials we spoke to in Summit and Cuyahoga counties say they have no plans to cut back in those areas.
High fuel prices have kept the phones ringing at the Ohio School Boards Association lately. Spokesman Scott Ebright's been telling worried districts help isn't likely to come from the Ohio Legislature.
Ebright: "Three hundred school districts were flat funded last year and just a shade over 200 were flat funded this year with no increases, so I don't know if the legislature is in the mood to bail schools out for the crisis caused by the rising price of gas and diesel fuel. "
One option that so far no school district in Ohio has explored is converting buses to use a fuel that's currently a fraction of the cost of petro or bio diesel.
Schools in a few states are using straight vegetable oil, which can cost under a dollar a gallon. Sam Merritt of Oberlin has done several such conversions.
Merrett: "We can say for sure that yes, we can make that vehicle run flawlessly on vegetable oil, but I can't promise the availability of vegetable oil to people. "
Money saving measures taken by school systems might seem like small steps, but they're vital in a financial environment in which fuel prices are at best unpredictable, and where voters seem to have little inclination to pass new school levies.
Kymberli Hagelberg, 90.3