Diesel and gas prices in North Carolina have soared in recent months, which experts attribute to ongoing international conflicts, including the US war in Iran and Russia’s war in Ukraine. Diesel in particular reached a record of more than $6 per gallon on average, a first for the state. While few Americans drive diesel cars, most heavy-duty trucks and commercial vehicles run on the fuel — including school buses.
North Carolina’s school districts are feeling the economic strain.
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Filling up comes at twice the price it did last year for some. School districts told Carolina Public Press they are already on track to outspend their fuel budgets by the academic year’s end if prices don’t decline. One district has invested in propane buses instead of diesel to cut costs long-term. Others are hoping for financial relief from the state to come sooner rather than later.
“The fuel thing, it’s kind of the elephant in the room,” said Britton Overton, transportation director at Pender County Schools.
Balancing the budget
North Carolina’s Department of Public Instruction uses a formula to determine the funds that each local education agency — both county and city school districts — receives for transportation each year. It factors in “efficiency” aspects, like number of students transported and number of buses operated.
While the state uses an average fuel price to calculate the transportation budget, they couldn’t have possibly anticipated how high diesel would get, said Daniel Wall, transportation director at Burke County Schools.
A full load of fuel, around 7,500 gallons, ran at about $17,000 in May 2025, but at the most recent prices for diesel it would cost $39,000. Most of their buses have 100-gallon tanks, and the district goes through roughly 900 gallons a day, so that load of fuel will last somewhere around 10 days, Wall said.
They get a bit of a cheaper rate buying the fuel on a state contract, Overton said. Still, Pender’s last refuel was $5.45 a gallon for around 7,000 gallons — more than $38,000.
It’s still early in the school year, so they theoretically have a pot full of money, Overton said. But districts have to make their share last until summer. There’s not currently any emergency money coming down the pipe that he knows of, despite the high cost.
Wall said he’s heard rumblings that the state will provide some relief for the high diesel costs, though there hasn’t been any official communication. NCDPI did not respond to CPP’s request for comment.
“If we go over budget, which we will with fuel like it is, then the local system, our board of education will have to make a cut somewhere else or take money out of a rainy-day fund,” Wall said.
“Those are the only options as far as plans to try to overcome it. There’s just not much you can do. You’ve got to have fuel.”
The state legislature voted Wednesday to suspend the gas tax through November. Prices could be slashed by as much as the entire state gas tax of $0.41 per gallon, though legislators said that could take time and it might not decrease by the full amount. However, vehicles owned by a “political subdivision of the state,” such as a local board of education, are already exempt from the gas tax, so there’s no savings for school districts in the tax cut.
Rural areas face unique challenges that can result in using excess fuel.
Pender is one of the fastest-growing counties in the state, however much of the area is still largely rural, particularly on the western side of the county further from the coast. It’s around 870 square miles by land area — one of the largest counties in the state, giving it a lot more ground to cover.
Across the state, Burke is a mid-sized rural county, a little over 500 square miles, in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, crossing over into the mountains in the northwestern part of the county. Burke’s buses travel more miles to transport the same number of kids compared with other nearby districts that are more densely populated, such as Catawba, Wall said. There’s geographical dilemmas too, like having to drive up and around Lake James.
“It’s a big sprawling county … we’re really spread out,” Wall said.
“So it does make us, by geographical nature, less efficient than a smaller, more dense county. Especially like Mecklenburg, how densely populated it is. They can drop off a lot of kids really fast, whereas our buses have to drive really long routes.”
The east side of Pender County faces significant traffic congestion on US 17 that’s worsened by ongoing construction on the Hampstead Bypass. That’s led to longer bus rides and, in turn, fuel loss, Overton said. Both Pender and Burke counties also face declining ridership — Overton cites frustration with the lengthy rides and wait times, while Wall attributes it to societal stigma around riding the bus — which can impact the size of the transportation budget a LEA receives later.
“For us, if fuel stays where it is right now, we’re going to spend about $260,000 more on fuel this year than we did last year,” Wall said.
“Our transportation budget’s $3 million. So $260,000 — 8% — of the budget is being spent over what we should have spent.”
Overton is working on getting an estimate for exactly when Pender will begin to run out of funds if diesel prices stay the same. Although the actual funds vary from district to district, the breakdown of their budgets is similar, which means districts will likely start to run out of funds all at once, he said.
“The major percentage of our budget is staffing. The next largest percent of our budget is fuel, and then we have a small percentage for like parts and just incidental materials,” Overton said.
“So theoretically, across the board, all the schools should kind of start running out similarly, around the same time.”
Searching for solutions to high diesel prices
According to NPR, a national survey found 40% of school districts were consolidating bus routes and 20% were limiting nonrequired trips, like field trips, to cut fuel consumption and costs.
Pender isn’t yet in discussions about cutting down on unnecessary trips, though it’s probably worth considering, Overton said. Otherwise, they’re just trying to ensure all trips are efficient, including by enforcing the district’s anti-idling policy, to hopefully stretch the budget as far as possible.
“We’re working to make our routes as efficient as we can right now — updating them, packing them full,” he said.
“The overloaded situation is what we worry about sometimes with sports and different changes in the year. Numbers change as some kids play sports, some kids don’t. … Efficiency and ridership is a daily, a weekly process of maintaining it. But we’re trying to keep them as efficient as we can and not running our buses any more than we have to, and conserve what fuel we can.
“We have an idling policy in our county where buses aren’t supposed to idle over a certain amount of time and run. Trying to really maintain that idling policy is big on saving fuel nowadays. They’re small increments that’ll hopefully just help us get a few more days, a few more weeks at the end of the year.”
With diesel prices so high, both Pender and Burke are discussing alternative fuels like propane and gasoline, respectively. Those decisions would be dependent on when buses are due for replacement and if the state would approve of gas-powered yellow buses. Currently, only white activity buses are permitted to use gas.
Onslow County Schools replaced older buses with six propane-powered buses ahead of the 2026 school year to cut costs in the long-term, and it plans to add more in the future, Chief of Operations Brendan Gartner told CPP in an email.
The cost of propane-powered buses typically falls in the middle of the road — more expensive to purchase than diesel buses, but cheaper than electric buses. Despite the higher upfront costs, their lower fuel and maintenance costs will result in greater overall savings over time, Gartner wrote.
“Parts and service of propane-powered vehicles is comparable to or less expensive than that of diesel-powered ones,” he wrote.
“For example, our diesel buses require a turbocharger, which can be expensive to maintain and replace. Propane-powered buses do not require a turbocharger. As for fuel, propane-powered buses are less fuel efficient than diesel-powered buses, but propane is considerably less expensive, leading to an overall savings in operating cost per mile.
“Additionally, most propane is domestically produced and is therefore less susceptible to global market fluctuations and a more stable price per gallon. Propane is currently much less expensive per gallon than diesel.”
As for the remaining diesel-run buses, Gartner said the money the county receives from the state for fuel generally doesn’t account for real-time cost fluctuations. The district is currently looking for ways to offset the increased cost of diesel fuel, including looking to the state to provide contingency funds, he wrote.
Not all are feeling the effects just yet. At the Wake County Public Schools System, a spokesperson said the district purchases in bulk, and times those purchases when fuel prices are down. At this point, the record-high diesel prices have made little impact because WCPSS made large purchases last year. It takes time for changes in price to make an impact, they said.
Wall, who also oversees child nutrition at Burke County Schools, said there is a sense of just having to wait out the high diesel prices. Pausing bus services simply isn’t an option in a rural county like Burke, no matter how much money it takes to keep buses running.
“I love kids, and I love feeding kids, and I love bringing them to school,” Wall said.
“We’ve just got to figure it out and wait it out. The budget will hurt, and there’ll be some things that we won’t be able to do, maybe, as a district. But you got to get the kids to school because the kids that do ride the bus mostly are the ones that wouldn’t have any other way to get here.
“… There’s so many of our parents in our rural, remote areas that just flat out wouldn’t be able to bring their kid to school. I mean, that’s terrible. We got to get the kids to school, and we got to feed them, and then we got to teach them. That’s what we've been called to do.”
This article first appeared on Carolina Public Press and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.