Soaring diesel prices since the onset of the Iran war are draining already tight US school district budgets, making it more expensive to bus students and run generators in a shock officials say they will not be able to afford for long, according to Reuters.
School districts from Yakima, Washington to Waco, Texas are tapping emergency funding reserves to keep buses running. In remote Alaska, officials are scrambling to secure enough fuel to keep the lights on, according to Reuters interviews.
“It’s more than a straw on the camel’s back, it’s like a haystack,” says Yakima Superintendent Trevor Greene.
The stress reflects one of many knock-on impacts of the US-Israeli war on Iran, which has disrupted the flow of around a fifth of the world’ss oil supplies.
US school bus operators are major buyers of diesel, consuming more than 800 million gallons of diesel annually, according to the American School Bus Council.
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