A three-day weekend – every weekend – sounds like a schoolkid’s dream. Unfortunately, it may not be ideal for a child’s sound public-school education, or for their working parents’ busy schedules. No matter: the MacCray school district in western Minnesota has voted to go to a four-day school week. The reason? Soaring gas prices are to blame. The rural school district cannot afford to operate its school buses five-days a week – and working rural families cannot afford to drive their children long distances to school on Fridays.
I don’t know whether a four-day school week, with longer Mondays, is good or bad for children from a pedagogical point of view. I do know, however, that this decision had nothing to do with education, or with the best interests of children. The MacCray, Minn., school board was forced to make this decision because of gas prices. And so the children of MacCray are the latest to have their lives – and educations – directly subjected to the shock and awe of skyrocketing oil prices.
As the economy begins to suffer through the Bush recession, the unprecedented rise of gas prices and the windfall profits for Big Oil could not come at a more inopportune time for most Americans. The only ones set to ride through this recession with little change to their daily transportation habits are the very rich – and those who already use affordable mass transit and rail alternatives. It simply no longer practical for us to commute and travel the way we have for so long, using oil and other fossil fuels. And that will likely never change as long as we are dependent on oil.
The market has spoken: no more driving as usual. (Admittedly, the market would have spoken a lot sooner had it not been distorted by excessive subsidies and tax breaks for Big Oil and Gas.) The real question, however, is what are the alternatives?
Mass transit. Amtrak. Regional commuter rail networks. Electric, hybrid and alternative-fuel buses – both for dense urban cores and rural regional areas like the MacCray, Minn. school district. (It’s also worth pointing out that as fossil-fuel alternatives expand, the prices for oil and natural gas will likely drop.) Considering that it cost the Indiana public schools only $32,800 to retrofit their first hybrid school bus from a regular bus, the savings are well worth the cost since the savings are one-for-one to emissions. Harmful emissions coming out of the exhaust system are reduced by the same amount as the fuel savings; in other words, if fuel savings equal 30 percent, emissions are reduced by 30 percent as well.
Public school boards and mass-transit districts across the Nation clearly can be pro-active and change their existing fleets of vehicles – as well as plan for a fossil fuel-free transit future. We’re already uat the point where American schoolchildren have their educational schedules dictated by the price of foreign crude. Not only do we need alternatives, we need innovation.
Coming soon: electric cars, more efficient cars, and new forms of clean-fuel aircraft. We’re playing catch-up. But our economic health and welfare hang in the balance.
This week, watch this space for news from further news on Big Oil and transportation alternatives from Adam, our Program Director, other Progressive Future staffers, as well as a guest blogger on mass transit.
- Hugh
