Tuesday, September 6, 2005
Schools and Gas Prices
The continuing climb of gas prices is hitting everyone hard. But of all the people hit by the prices, schools are one of the hardest hit. Most schools, under the NCLB Act, already are under funded and over tested for the money they do get. And with the money that they do get, under the current gas prices, school systems are putting ever more money into the gas tanks of the school buses and less toward schools. In a recent article from the Sioux City Journal, some schools are almost doubling the amount that they are paying for gas over the last year. The example quoted in this article, shows that the Atlantic School District was normally paying about $8,700, but now with the increase in prices, the school district is paying about $6,250 more for a total of $14,950 for one 5,000 gallon, two week supply of gas. This problem needs to be addressed. Most schools need to run buses, and most cannot justify charging a fee to use the school buses, so more of a school budget is being put toward getting the kids to school and is taking that money away from teaching the kids once they are at school. With already tight budgets because of the recent rescission and because of the NCLB Act, most schools already are on a tight budget and this one problem is one being faced by all schools nationwide.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
You complain about gas prices, yet you also complain about so called global warming. If gas prices are high, then people will use less gas, therefore creating less polutents there by lowering Greenhouse gases. So I would think that a good enviromentalist like you would want prices to be as high as possible, but then that would be counter to one of your other goals, Oil companies would make more profits. interesting dilemma No?
Well, I believe that we should not price people out of using gas. I believe that america needs to take a more proactive approach on dealing with oil dependency. Once we are decreasing our use of oil, the global warming will SOMEWHAT be decreased. I am not an expert so I do not know how much that is, but from what I have seen, less fossil fuels buring equals less global warming. And also, these companies are earning BILLIONS of dollars per QUARTER.
What proactive course would you take, Americans are not going to stop using oil until the alternatives are as cheap and convenient to use. Well one way to make things cost conpetative is to make the price of gasoline high enough that the other alternatives attractive from a cost standpoint.
For instance I am considering buying a Hybrid for my next car. I would not have thought about it if gas had not risen above $2.00 a gallon. The upfront cost was too much, however with the savings in fuel the over all cost of driving will be much lower, making it worth possibly buying.
Studies show that the majority of Americans will not change their driving habits significantly until gas reaches around $5.00 a gallon.
Good or bad Mass behavior is driven by the market.
By the way the reason Oil companies make so much money is because they sell so much oil, even if they only make $1.00 per barrel of oil, then with millions of barrels a day being sold that is going to be a lot of money. It is basic economics.
Post a Comment