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Thursday, June 19, 2008

Rural Districts Left in Dust



      Nearly every student in the Moriarty-Edgewood School District rides the bus to school every morning and back home every afternoon.
    But now the district is scrambling to find a solution before school starts in August to the problem of its main bus contractor closing up shop. Plant School Transportation's announcement that it would be shutting its doors came a surprise to the Moriarty-Edgewood School District.
    But in looking at the problems Plant cited in a letter to its employees — high gas prices, finding qualified drivers and getting drivers to show up for work — perhaps it shouldn't have been a shock for the sprawling rural district. The state pays school districts about $2.65 per gallon for fuel used in school buses, which usually run on diesel fuel that costs as much as $4.25 per gallon.
    Add the high cost of fuel to a declining enrollment, and increases in health insurance premiums and other energy costs, and that leads to the district's inability to offer much in the way of raises to any employee. It's a recipe for financial problems the Moriarty-Edgewood School District and other school districts around the state have been warning about for years.
    However, the state Legislature determined that the plight of the Moriarty-Edgewood School District, along with others in rural areas of the state, is of little concern.
    The Legislature had the opportunity during the most recent session to change the way school districts are granted funds from the state. Instead, a bill sponsored by Rep. Mimi Stewart, D-Albuquerque, that would have increased school funding throughout the state by 15 percent died quietly before it could even make it through the Senate Finance Committee.
    So the formula used in the past is being used again, even though there has been mounting evidence that it doesn't work for smaller, rural school districts. While Gov. Bill Richardson should be commended in his efforts in the past couple of years to get teacher salaries increased, and while we have no qualms about teachers getting paid what they deserve, the support staff in school districts is getting left behind.
    As for buses: a quality education is nothing if the students can't get to class.
    In the case of the Moriarty-Edgewood School District, the opening of the new Wal-Mart in Edgewood brought home the realization that many people could make better money at the retail giant than at the school district.
    We're confident the school district will find a way to get our children bused to school when classes start in August. But at what cost to other programs?
    The state and the governor need to step forward and prove they care about rural school districts.
   

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