This story (“Big, yellow and putting schools in the red“) in today’s Star Tribune details the woes of some suburban Minnesota school districts in covering the skyrocketing cost of diesel fuel for their bus fleets.
I don’t have the data to compare miles and fuel use between suburban and rural northern Minnesota school districts, but my family is in the transportation business up here and I know how the costs are rising. Kids in northern Minnesota live very far away from their schools, must take the bus and, until our economy really turns around there are fewer kids and less funding each year. So while we all share the problem of rising gas prices, and must solve it, up here we must also face that problem with fewer tools at our disposal.
Who cares? Well, if rural Minnesota becomes uninhabitable to working families, say hello to more sprawl, more costs, and more poverty for everyone. Until we take a statewide approach to improving K-12 funding (in a way that accounts for rising energy and transportation costs) that’s the path we’re heading down.
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