By Jeff Labine

The Hastings and Prince Edward District School Board has had to use reserve funds to balance this year’s budget because of an increase of fuel prices.

The school board met June 16 to discuss the budget. To allow existing programs and services offered by the school to continue unaffected, the board had to use just over $600,000 reserve funds to balance the budget.

Dave Rutherford, the superintendent of financial and facility services, gave an overview of the budget and voiced his concerns over the prices of fuel. Increases in fuel costs are become a growing concern with diesel fuel prices going as high as $1.40 per litre.

“ There are huge issues with respect to diesel fuel. All of our buses for student transportation run on diesel fuel so when you look at today’s price, a $1.40 per litre — in March — it was $1.15 per litre and we’ve seen a portion of our whole transportation budget fuel base rise substantially,” said Rutherford.

“It is putting a lot of pressure on the board’s budget as well as the other members of Tri-board and across the province.”

Tri-board is a student transportation service offered to students who need to use bus services to get to school. Tri-board covers the three boards of Limestone District School Board, Algonquin Lakeshore Catholic Disctrict School Board, and the Hastings Prince Edward District School.

Rutherford said that the buses run on diesel fuel over gasoline because the engines run longer on diesel fuel compared to gasoline.

“A school bus can stay on the road for 11 to 12 years were as a gasoline engine can’t stay on the road as long. That’s why we always had diesel fuel and it was always cheaper then gasoline until just the past year.”

Fuel costs have also been shown a large component of the Tri-board student transportation contract. The costs have increase to 25.7 per cent in this year’s budget from 19.5 percent of the total costs of last year’s budget in the Hastings and Prince Edward District. The board is still requesting more funds from the Ontario Ministry of Education because Rutherford says that if the prices were to go too high the board couldn’t fit it into the budget.

“Our best guess, based on where we are currently sitting, predicting that in the next school year, is that our fuel cost will increase budget-to-budget by $1.3 million. Now if fuel prices go up to $1.50, we may not have enough money in the budget to accommodate.”

After a brief final discussion, the budget was approved. The totally expenditures are projected to be $170,766,033 for the 2008-2009, up 0.1 per cent over the 2007-2008 revised expenditures. The expenditures for transportation are $14,931,549 consisting of 8.74 per cent of the total expenditures, with the highest being classroom expenditures at 65.40 per cent.

Rutherford said that the ministry has increased its fuel costs to $260,000 to help offset future fuel prices. The total projected spending on fuel for student transportation is expected to be $1,315,552. However, despite this amount Rutherford said this amount is not enough to offset the increase in fuel prices. Rutherford is asking for the ministry to monitor prices and try to provide the board with additional financial support.

Despite these feelings towards rising fuel Rutherford still calls the budget a “good news budget.”

“As long as I can remember, in the last five or six years, we’ve been cutting back, trying to shape programs to save money to offset that loss in funding. We were hopeful, going into this year we wouldn’t have to do any of that because of some of the funding. “

Director of Education Kathy Soule called this year “unusual year” and Rutherford agreed. Rutherford said that because Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty calls himself the Education Premier, he has been very supportive of education in the province. Rutherford said a lot more funds are coming into elementary and secondary schools.

This was the last meeting of the regular school year.