Huffman said the state sent a directive to all of the school districts with suggestions of how to save money through operations: reducing idling time, turning the buses off when they get to school, careful acceleration and braking and not driving buses back to their bases.

"They may be little things, but when you have a diesel-powered school bus that gets about five to eight miles a gallon and fuel costs $2 a gallon in a 100-gallon tank, that adds up a whole bunch," said Huffman. "And we have almost 3,000 school buses in the state of Utah."

Districts are exempt from paying fuel taxes, and currently they are paying around $2 a gallon.

Robert Smith, business administrator in the Alpine School District, said regardless of the districts' moves to save money, they will not be able to continually keep up with costs without additional resources.

Smith ran a study looking at fuel costs for more than half of the state's districts. Since 2001, costs have gone up an average of 135 percent — and that doesn't count the spike in the past 60 days.

"The concern is revenues are flat but the costs have spiked significantly, and that poses a very significant challenge for school districts," Smith said. "Lawmakers either need to look at modifying the mandate (to provide transportation), eliminating the mandate or providing additional resources to accomplish the mandate — those are really the only choices we have."

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