From bus routes to ball games, diesel prices are squeezing rural Montana school budgets

At Beaverhead County High School in the southwest corner of Montana, superintendent Josh Patterson had a dilemma last month when the school’s football team, the Beavers, qualified for a state playoff game in Whitefish. Patterson had to get students back and forth from Dillon to Whitefish, a roughly 12-hour round-trip bus ride. “ What used to be a celebration has now become a quick kind of scramble to calculate, ‘Ok, how are we going to afford this?’” Patterson said. And Patterson is not alone in trying to reconcile the high cost of fuel with already strapped school budgets, especially in smaller districts. Rural school districts across the state are coping with the elevated price of diesel, a result of tensions in the international market. Everyday bus routes are partially subsidized by state and county governments, but the majority of the bill is still paid by local school districts.

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