From bus routes to ball games, diesel prices are squeezing rural Montana school budgets

At Beaverhead County High School in the southwest corner of Montana, superintendent Josh Patterson had a dilemma last month when the school’s football team, the Beavers, qualified for a state playoff game in Whitefish. Patterson had to get students back and forth from Dillon to Whitefish, a roughly 12-hour round-trip bus ride.

“ What used to be a celebration has now become a quick kind of scramble to calculate, ‘Ok, how are we going to afford this?’” Patterson said.

And Patterson is not alone in trying to reconcile the high cost of fuel with already strapped school budgets, especially in smaller districts.

Rural school districts across the state are coping with the elevated price of diesel, a result of tensions in the international market. Everyday bus routes are partially subsidized by state and county governments, but the majority of the bill is still paid by local school districts. And travel for extracurriculars — think sports or speech and debate teams — receives no direct government subsidies. That means hard choices for rural schools that face long drives to students’ homes and even longer trips for major, statewide competitions.

In Dillon, Patterson even considered taking money budgeted for school supplies and books to help pay for the trip to Whitefish.

“I’ve got some money allocated for curriculum, for textbooks. And I hate to do this, because that’s a priority, but activities is also a priority to our kids, and it’s one thing that helps keep our kids in school,” Patterson said. 

He called the prospect of choosing between academics and extracurriculars “unfortunate.”

And the hardship isn’t confined to sports. Patterson is also dealing with the rising cost of day-to-day school transportation. In 2025, Patterson estimated that Beaverhead spent between $8,000 and $10,000 on diesel each month. A recent bill for a month’s gas was just over $20,000.

“That was rather shocking,” Patterson said.

The cost of diesel skyrocketed in March, days after the U.S. launched missiles at Iran. The prolonged conflict has kept the price high. On top of that, fighting between Ukraine and Russia has made the latter less eager to sell diesel on the international market. In Montana, where residents spend 27% more per capita on fuel than other Americans, that’s undercut the bottom line of ranchers, farmers, truckers and everyday motorists. School districts have not been spared.

HOW MONTANA FUNDS PUBLIC SCHOOL TRANSPORTATION 

A school’s transportation budget breaks down into two categories: regular bus routes and extracurriculars. State and county governments help somewhat with the everyday routes. Extracurriculars, though, are paid for by local districts. 

Everyday bus routes are partially subsidized by state and county funding, based on a district’s buses and the number of miles each bus travels. And although the Legislature in 2025 increased the amount of money the state kicks in for school transportation, those costs typically far exceed what the government contributes. The remainder falls almost entirely on the local districts. 

Larry Crowder, executive director of the Montana Rural Education Association, called the bill passed during the last session “a good step forward towards addressing the disparities that were caused by 20 years of no increases.” But even with the Legislature’s bump, the state only covers a portion of everyday transportation costs. Between July 2025 and July 2026, statewide districts budgeted $89 million through local levies for transportation costs. That’s more than twice the $36 million they are expected to receive from state and county subsidies, according to the Montana Superintendent of Public Instruction’s data on school districts’ adopted budgets. 

In Power, a roughly 200-person community about a half-hour drive northwest of Great Falls, the school district has struggled to fuel three school buses that travel a total of about 280 miles each day. Stephani Johnson, Power School District’s business manager, told MTFP in October that school officials “kind of had an idea” that their fuel bill would be higher than past years when they set their budget this summer. But since July, the price has increased 37%. Johnson said what they planned for may not be enough. 

“ I don’t think we really planned on it getting this high and potentially going even higher, so we might have to pull some funds from some other accounts to make up for it,” Johnson said. Johnson called it “just kind of a waiting game to see if it does go down, hopefully.”

“But it definitely impacts us a lot with the fuel bills,” Johnson said. 

Chester-Joplin-Inverness Public Schools, situated along the Hi-Line between Havre and Shelby, serves about 220 students in a single building. Superintendent Luke Haggerty told MTFP that he would support even further increases in the reimbursement rates. Haggerty said he was “very grateful” that the 2025 Legislature made changes to reimbursement policy, but he acknowledged the increase wasn’t “enough to really make a huge difference.”

“It can be frustrating as a district when you’re seeing the price of everything go up around you, and then your budget’s not going up with it,” Haggerty said.

Haggerty said he feels the strain of high diesel prices most acutely when it comes to extracurriculars. The Montana High School Association does offer some support for postseason games, including a $2.50-per-mile reimbursement and a modest per diem for each student. But that doesn’t always add up to much.

In March, Chester-Joplin-Inverness sent its boys and girls basketball teams — and a pep band — to a tournament in Missoula. The cost of food, lodging and the three buses going there and back? About $28,000. Haggerty said the Montana High School Association provided a $5,200 reimbursement, about 19% of the total bill. 

“That was when gas was a lot cheaper too,” Haggerty said. “We’re hopeful we’ll send both teams again this year. Who knows how much it’ll cost.”

TRYING TO MAKE ENDS MEET

Some rural school systems minimize fuel costs by design, mitigating the recent impact of high diesel prices. For instance, Havre, a north-central town of about 9,000, has maintained two electric school buses for several years. 

The Sun River Valley School District in Simms, a small community about 23 miles east of Augusta, consolidated its students’ sports transportation by combining middle and high school teams onto a single bus for games and other competitions, superintendent Dave Marzolf told MTFP. 

Additionally, Marzolf said that the district purchased a 15-passenger van in 2024 that runs on unleaded fuel, and when one bus driver retired, the district reduced its four-bus route to three. While he said that during his 18 years as superintendent he hasn’t seen diesel rise above $6 per gallon, Marzolf said his district was prepared for the higher bills.

“ I know we’ll have enough money,” Marzolf said. “A smart superintendent budgets for that kind of stuff at the beginning of the year in August, so we should be pretty close. But yeah, we combine kids and that kind of stuff; it saves a little bit of money.”

Patterson, the superintendent at Beaverhead, told MTFP that he wants the Legislature to amend state statutes to allow local districts’ permissive levies, which many already use to fill gaps in regular bus routes, to be an eligible funding source for transportation to extracurricular events.

“Our citizens and our constituents support our sports and our activities,” Patterson said.

“ Not only are we an activity-driven county here, we’re an activity-driven state,” he added. “If we’re being honest, in Montana, we love our sports and our activities. They keep us going. They are the pulse of our communities, our small towns. The whole town shuts down, and we’re all at the game Friday nights, whether it’s in the gym, on the field, or at the track. So I think it’d be something that our lawmakers could support.”

So far, lawmakers haven’t gotten behind the change. The Legislature’s Education Interim Legislative Committee reviewed a bill draft related to school transportation funding in September. That document did not include Patterson’s policy proposal. 

Montana School Boards Association executive director Lance Melton told MTFP he would prioritize securing more funding for everyday bus routes rather than pushing to allow schools to use local tax base money for extracurriculars. Melton argued that Patterson’s proposal would disproportionately benefit high schools, which transport students for after-school activities a lot more than elementary and middle schools do.

“ I think we’ve gotta take care of those regular rates for getting kids to and from school, which affects everybody in the state fairly equally,” Melton said. 

Melton said that Patterson has a great idea for addressing the issue and agreed that extracurricular activities are an important part of students’ education. But he added that he wants to instead focus on increasing subsidies for daily school transportation. 

“Fix what’s broken now,” Melton said. “Second step, talk about enhancements.”

PAYING THE WAY

While Beaverhead didn’t go too far in playoffs — Whitefish won 36-12 — bus fuel for the trip totaled about $600. Patterson said the district paid for it from its activity fund. He is still concerned, though, about how the school is going to pay for more travel the rest of the school year.

“ The biggest thing we didn’t account for is just the doubling of the cost of fuel when it comes to activity transportation,” Patterson told MTFP. “ We have a budget for half of what we are seeing now  because we was thinking fuel was gonna be around anywhere from $3.25 to $3.50, not $5.50.”

Patterson said he hopes to give local communities authority to support extracurriculars, what he describes as the “soul of Montana schools.”

“ I think people would understand that need and understand we’re not asking for a lot and that we’re not asking for state money,” Patterson said. “I’m not asking for state money to do this. I’m not asking for money from any other district or region. I’m just asking for the ability to do this locally and do it responsibly.”