The Associated Press

OKLAHOMA CITY — 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.”

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

School districts are re-examining their transportation policies and staffing levels after the Legislature did not grant an increase in school operational expenses that was requested by Superintendent of Schools 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 who live within 1.5 miles of the school they attend — a policy that has already been implemented by school districts in Claremore, Crescent, Norman, Sapulpa and Moore, Simpson said.

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

Those inside the boundary will walk or bike to school or be transported with private transportation.

Announcement of the transportation policy was posted on the school district’s Web site after it was approved by Guthrie’s Board of Education last month. It said Guthrie schools received $131,142 in state funds this year to pay for transporting students but that 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, said state Superintendent of Schools Sandy Garrett.

“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.”

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 that 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 2006-2007 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.”

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 day-care facilities that are 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 that 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.”