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Rising fuel costs and a dearth of state money may force local school officials to raise annual bus fees from $180 to $270 per student beginning next school year.

Tracy Unified School District may also spend up to $1.6 million to buy 13 more buses to keep up with its burgeoning student population. Trustees are set to decide at a December meeting whether to go ahead with the purchase and fee hike.

In the past, state money combined with bus fees covered the cost of transportation for all but special education students. With fuel prices steadily climbing, driving students to and from school will start eating away at the district’s already tightened operating budget, Superintendent of Business Services Casey Goodall told trustees at a board meeting Tuesday night.

The proposed fee hike, which would make school buses match the $1.50-a-day price of the city’s Tracer buses, is just one way the 16,500-student district will try to recover costs in the face of mid-year budget cuts and the possible purchase of new buses.

“This is the biggest jump, the biggest change I’ve seen (proposed) in the district since I’ve been here,” said transportation director John Heerema, who has worked for the district since 1994. “Until now, we’ve slowly increased in size (and) bought our buses in increments.”

About 140 more students from Mountain House are expected to join Tracy’s high school population come fall 2009. Also, with the redrawn boundaries finalized this summer to accommodate the under-construction Kimball High School, more students who live farther than walking distance from West or Tracy high schools will use public school buses to get to class.

Heerema’s department — which already struggles to accommodate students with the buses it has — will likely serve about 280 to 300 more students in the coming school year, based on studies conducted earlier this year to figure out how many students would attend which high school from different parts of Tracy.

Plus, a new special education class at Kimball High, which opens its doors next fall, means several more students who need extra attention and specially equipped buses, Heerema and Goodall told trustees Tuesday.

Heerema asked trustees to consider their options: The district can either hire 13 new drivers to staff an enlarged fleet, or more custodians can be trained to be bus drivers.

Either option will require the district to spend roughly $1.6 million on the new buses. But to fuel the new buses and train existing employees to drive them will cost the district about $305,000 a year. To hire all new bus drivers for the 11 regular and two buses outfitted for handicapped students will cost the district $1.04 million a year in salaries and fuel costs.

For the past few years, it has cost the district $15,000 to fuel a single bus in the 51-bus fleet. This year saw diesel costs skyrocket to as much as $5 a gallon, meaning it sometimes cost the district more than $380 to fill up a single bus tank.

Next year and in years ahead, the cost of diesel and natural gas is expected to continue to rise. Charging parents more to bus their kids to school will help offset the shortfall and save the district roughly $60,000 a year, Heerema said today.

• Contact a Tracy Press reporter or editor at 835-3030 tpnews@tracypress.com.