The General Assembly will reconvene in November, and state education officials plan to ask lawmakers to help school districts pay for increasingly expensive diesel fuel for buses.
The state Department of Public Instruction will request a $40 million reserve fund to cover fuel costs that exceed state allotments. Geoff Coltrane, DPI's senior director of government affairs and strategy, said school districts and charter schools would be able to use the money for fuel costs that exceed what the state has allotted.
“We’ve been hearing from a number of school districts about the impact of, currently, diesel fuel costs on their school transportation budgets," Coltrane told the state Board of Education on Wednesday.
In the first two months of the 2026-27 school year, school districts spent about $17.1 million on 3.8 million gallons. That's roughly double what it spent in the same period, for the same amount of fuel, in each of the last two school years.
AAA reports diesel costs in North Carolina, $3.50 per gallon a year ago, are around $5.50 now as the Iran war persists. The state set up a similar reserve fund in 2023 when fuel prices rose after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Coltrane said DPI has notified legislative staff about the request.
