How the soaring coast of diesel is hitting school budgets

0:00Kenny Anthony:Support for Here and Now Anytime comes from MathWorks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink software, to design and develop engineered systems, accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science. Learn more at mathworks.com.

0:16Oxford University professor:WBUR Podcasts, Boston.

0:21Trevor Greene:So we're talking about the difference of having one teacher in our district, which is significant if you're a student.

0:28Oxford University professor:The high price of diesel has impact far from the gas pump. One school district in Washington state says they're paying an extra$100 ,000 a year to fill up their fleet of buses, money they could have spent on hiring another teacher. It's Friday, September 4th, and this is Here and Now, anytime from NPR and WBUR. I'm Chris Bentley.

0:56Oxford University professor:Today on the show, it's a back-to-school special. Depending on where you are in the country, kids have either been back in school for a month or so, or they're about to enjoy the last weekend of summer before returning to the classroom. Of course, for some people, the classroom is at home. In fact, homeschooling is on the rise in the U.S. We'll learn why.

1:15Trevor Greene:I think in the public's mind, it's been associated with maybe religious conservatives or political conservatives, but that's not necessarily only true.

1:25Oxford University professor:And we'll talk to author Catherine Rundle, who says children's literature is not just for kids.

1:31Kenny Anthony:The greatest children's books are, I think, a way of accessing that which is most sharp and clear within us.

1:39Oxford University professor:But first, schools across the country are getting squeezed by funding cuts and rising costs. One place they're feeling the pinch is in the cost of transportation. A third of districts said they had to tap into emergency funds this year to help fuel their fleets of school buses. Diesel is on average$2 more expensive per gallon than it was one year ago. Trevor Green knows that well. He is superintendent for Yakima School District in Yakima, Washington. He said they burned 87 ,000 gallons of diesel last year. At the current price, That'd be over half a million bucks for fuel. Green tells Peter O'Dowd they sometimes get cheaper diesel from the nearby Native American reservation, but he says higher costs are definitely having an impact.

2:28Trevor Greene:Well, we're strained in our budget in the state of Washington. Education is not fully funded, even though that's the paramount duty of the state. We do anticipate that the price level of the district could expend an additional$130 ,000 this coming year on diesel fuel. So to put that into perspective, the average cost of a single teacher in the district is just under$140 ,000 with salary and benefits. So we're talking about the difference of having one teacher in our district, which is significant if you're a student.

2:57Oxford University professor:Yeah. Wow. So across the country, schools are making kind of tough choices about programs and bus routes and maybe even staffing. What have you had to consider? What have you done to make up the difference?

3:10Trevor Greene:We've worked on offsetting the cost by rerouting our buses and changing bell times, and that should actually lead to some savings. So the good news for us is it's given us a good excuse to look at doing work or operating a little bit differently. And with that, we think we'll be able to offset the cost this year.

3:29Oxford University professor:Tell me about shifting bell times. How does that help you?

3:32Trevor Greene:Well, when we have multiple elementaries going at the same time, we have to have more buses out on the road. So if we can consolidate some of the routes and make them maybe a little bit longer, but half of our elementaries now start earlier, about 15 to 20 minutes earlier than another cohort of elementaries, which allows us some flexibility in having some rerouting issues and allows us to save and offset some of those costs.

4:01Oxford University professor:It sounds tough for your schools. What about the families that you serve in this part of Washington State? Are they feeling the price of diesel?

4:10Trevor Greene:They're feeling the price. Our families of every cost that does go up. We live in a community that's over 80%. Our students are in 80 % poverty on a scale of 100%, obviously. And it does impact, you know, prices go up and And job salaries don't go up. And so that does create some decisions that have to be made, just like we're making here as a district. And looking at streamlining opportunities that we have out there and looking at the challenges, as I just said, as opportunities and recognizing what we can control and what we can't. So, you know, it's important not to admire the problem, but to actually come up with a solution.

4:47Trevor Greene:And we're fortunate to have a small geographical footprint. So we're actually about 15 square miles. So our routes are shorter than most of our neighboring rural districts. So I do become more concerned, I think, if you're talking about some of the elongated routes of the mountainous regions. We have Natchez, which is near us. It has probably the greatest, largest geographical area in the state and serving students in a very small district. So I would imagine it's impacting them much differently.

5:14Oxford University professor:To your point about solutions, we don't know when this conflict in the Middle East will end or when prices will eventually come down for fuel. Have you been thinking about the future? I mean, you know, maybe doing something like an electric bus so you wouldn't be beholden to the price of gas?

5:31Trevor Greene:We've already explored that option. We do have a small number of propane buses as well as six electric buses. The electric buses that we do have were grant funded. The issue that we have with them is it's operationally challenging because they don't necessarily function as well in hot and cold weather. So they are good for us in certain conditions and they're working well right now. But we do live in an area that will get quite cold in the winter and typically around July, June, July. It's a little bit different for us. So we'll continue to work with the mix of having the regular diesel, electric buses and propane buses.

6:10Oxford University professor:Trevor Green is superintendent for Yakima School District in Yakima, Washington, which is spending well over$100 ,000 extra in a school year to accommodate the cost of diesel. Trevor Green, thank you for your time. Well, thank you much. Appreciate it.

6:36Oxford University professor:Coming up next, what's behind the increase in homeschooling lately? Find out in just a minute.

6:46Trevor Greene:This message comes from Satva. Big days require deep, restorative sleep the night before. The kind of sleep Sattva mattresses are designed for. And now save up to$625 on$1 ,000 or more at sattva.com slash NPR. This message comes from Grainger. This is the story of the one. As a maintenance supervisor at a manufacturing facility, he knows keeping the line up and running is a top priority. That's why he chooses Grainger. Because when a drive belt gets damaged, Grainger makes it easy to find the exact specs for the replacement product he needs. And next day delivery helps ensure he'll have everything in place and running like clockwork.

7:26Trevor Greene:Call 1-800-GRAINGER, click grainger.com, or just stop by. Grainger, for the ones who get it done.

7:35Oxford University professor:Aside from rising costs, schools are also grappling with the rise of artificial intelligence. We've got lots more on that topic. Scroll back in the feed to Wednesday, September 2nd. Among other things, we dug into New York City's policy banning public school kids from using AI until high school. And last Friday, on August 28th, we looked at how AI is making its way into all sorts of emergency services, for better and worse. But rules restricting AI use in public schools would not apply to the increasingly growing share of families that are homeschooling their kids. About 30 states plus Washington, D.C., track homeschooling trends, and more than a third of them say they hit record numbers last year.

8:20Oxford University professor:Kenny Anthony has been looking into why this is happening. He's a retired education professor from Mississippi State University. He tells Scott Tong, a lot of families tried homeschooling during the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, and some of them never came back to the classroom.

8:36Trevor Greene:And today, or I guess last school year, about 3.4 million school-aged children were being homeschooled. And that's about 6 % of the school-aged children in the United States. And, of course, you're probably familiar with the idea that there's been disappearing children from public schools and private schools. And some of those were just, you know, they've kind of lost in accountability. But a large number of those are being homeschooled. And we did some research into homeschooling and motivations to homeschool. And so we looked at people who had homeschooled before and people who had homeschooled after started homeschooling during COVID.

9:14Trevor Greene:And so we asked them, why do you homeschool? And the interesting thing is that everyone had a chance to experience learning at home. And for many of those families, maybe some of these that are in the growth of homeschooling, they realize that, hey, I can actually do this on my own. They may have, we called it kind of like a catalyst that COVID didn't cause it, but it was a catalyst to allowing them kind of opening the door. Oh, so some parents maybe were already thinking about it and the pandemic gave them the chance to try it? Yes. And so a long time ago, people should think that homeschool parents or parents who decide to homeschool their children are angry or mad at schools or there's something that's a negative decision.

9:58Trevor Greene:Most of the research shows, including the research that we did, shows it's a positive decision. But often you need something to push you into that decision. And it could be a negative like COVID. Back in 2009, I did some research that showed it was a smaller qualitative study. the families that I interviewed, they said, you know, yeah, I was frustrated with something at the schools. Maybe I had too many bus, you know, hadn't many school drop-offs. I had to take my kids to four different schools. Or maybe there was something with my child, the learning, something my child wasn't getting from the school as far as individualized learning.

10:30Trevor Greene:And that made me think about homeschooling and maybe even pushed me to homeschooling. But what happened was once they got into homeschooling, they realized that there were some pretty good benefits to homeschooling for their family, for their children. And they stayed for that positive reason, if that makes sense. Yeah. And let me ask you about the benefits as the parents saw them from your research and others. What do these parents say are the benefits? This first is curricular benefits. You can individualize instruction. If the children have an interest or a specific need, the parent can go find a resource to tap into that.

11:07Trevor Greene:And of course, there are the concerns, there are ideological concerns about whether or not what's taught maybe in schools. Maybe there are some differences there. And so they have the ability to reinforce at home the family values or religious values that they have. Do you find from the data that a good percentage, a good portion of families that are homeschooling have an ideological religious motivation? I would say that our research mostly shows that homeschool families are across the ideological or partisan spectrum, political spectrum. You've got liberals, you have conservatives, you have libertarians, you have religious people, you have non-religious people, you have atheists.

11:46Trevor Greene:The movement now, I think, in the modern iteration of it, the past 20, 25 years, I think in the public's mind, it's been associated with maybe religious conservatives or political conservatives. But that's not necessarily only true, that you find people who homeschool across the board, if that makes sense. Fascinating, yeah. But regardless, they may make their decision, though partially based upon ideology, whether the conservative or liberal. Yeah. And do I understand, Kenny Anthony, you have personal experience with homeschooling? I do. And so it's interesting. I am actually, you know, I'm nonpartisan when it comes to schooling.

12:26Trevor Greene:I've had children in public schools, private schools, and now homeschooling. And we made our decision, I had a chance to move for a year up to Rhode Island. And while we were up there, we decided that our kids will homeschool our children, mainly because of that flexibility. I was only going to be working about half a day, and so I'd have a lot of time, and it was an opportunity for us as a family to go and do things together in a part of the country where we didn't live. If you'd have asked me when I got into homeschool research if I homeschooled my kids, I'd say never. Really? Because it's hard.

13:00Trevor Greene:It's difficult. It's hard on the family. It's a huge sacrifice. You're sacrificing probably one income. You're also sacrificing a lot of time, and you're taking a risk. Not only a risk, but you're assuming most of the responsibility for the education of your children. And I guess I'm an example of the guy who realized that at this time in my life, it worked for our family, but I had no problem. I had children who, you know, my children attended all types of schools. I've taught in public schools, and I support public schools, I guess is my point. And I think public schools are vital to the United States and its success, you know, as a society.

13:37Trevor Greene:We've been talking about the rise in homeschooling in this country with Kenny Anthony, retired education professor from Mississippi State University. Kenny, thanks so much for the time. Thank you. Appreciate it.

13:58Oxford University professor:well our next story is about something school kids and adults can do together a famous children's author says her books are not just for kids katherine rundle is just out with the third novel in her impossible creatures series that one's called the never fear and she's also written an essay called Why You Should Read Children's Books Even Though You Are So Old and Wise. She makes the case to Indira Lakshmanan after the break.

14:31Trevor Greene:This message comes from Granger. This is the story of the one. As a procurement manager for a hospital system, she keeps every facility in her network stocked and ready. That's why she counts on Granger to be her single source for thousands of products, from disinfectants to lighting, air filters, and more. And with fast, dependable delivery, Grainger helps her keep every facility stocked, safe, and running smoothly. Call 1-800-GRAINGER, click grainger.com, or just stop by. Grainger, for the ones who get it done.

15:04Kenny Anthony:We're taught that growing up means putting away childish things. That includes trading the magic of fairy tales for serious adult novels. But what if discarding children's literature is a mistake? Catherine Rundle believes it is. She's a Renaissance literature scholar at Oxford and the first British children's author since J.K. Rowling of Harry Potter fame to hit number one on the U.S. and U.K. sales charts. Disney made a seven-figure deal to adapt her fantasy series Impossible Creatures into films. Catherine Rundle, welcome to Here and Now. Thank you so much for having me. I want to start with why most people stop reading children's novels when they grow up and why you think that's a mistake.

15:46Kenny Anthony:I think we have been embarrassed by the idea of children's fiction since children's fiction began. Martin Amis famously said, you know, people ask me if I ever write a children's book and I say if I had a serious brain injury, then I might write a children's book. But my argument would be not only do children deserve our very finest work, because every time you write for a child, you might be writing someone for whom you are the first book they have ever read in its entirety. but also the greatest children's books at their finest are I think a way of accessing that which is most sharp and clear within us they can speak to us about huge themes like power endurance fear faith care love doubt passion all of these things you can find in northern lights in Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea, in Pippi Longstocking, in Paddington Bear, in Stuart Little.

16:55If you turn to children's fiction, you can, I think, find what endures of us when all our adult

17:03Kenny Anthony:compromises and poses are stripped away. You can, I think, find the very meat of a human heart. So if the greatest children's literature distills our purest emotions, Who do you write for, your 12-year-old self or your adult self? So I think I'm writing for both simultaneously. And of course, for the child of this moment as well. So I think I write for three people, for what I longed for when I was 12. And that would have been big adventures, peril, food descriptions, jokes. But also, as an adult, I want reality. Not necessarily reality of plot. reality in the sense of truth, the truth about our aggression, our capacity for darkness, you know, the rat that lives at the heart of, you know, the human stomach.