Some school departments in Southern New Hampshire are taking a novel approach to coping with fuel costs for their athletic programs: They're planning to do less driving.
It shouldn't be novel, of course. It should be the obvious thing to do — it is, after all, what individual households have to do — but unfortunately, in the public sector, the tendency is to demand more in taxes or an increase in fees.
So kudos to school officials in districts like Pelham, Sanborn Regional and Timberlane Regional, who are trying to modify athletic schedules so they don't require carrying their teams on so many trips of an hour to nearly three hours.
It is not as simple as just deciding to play nearby schools instead of those that are far away. Schools are grouped into classes based on enrollment. Pelham is a Class I (intermediate) school surrounded by Class L (large) schools. So the effort there, and in other districts, is to craft a schedule that will allow teams to play more home games and to coordinate schedules so different teams can consolidate buses.
Other possibilities include simply playing fewer games, cutting the size of junior varsity programs so only one bus, instead of two, is needed for a game, or to play games at a neutral site between two schools.
The New Hampshire Interscholastic Athletic Association, which organizes the state tournaments and regulates high school sports, is also getting involved, discussing ways to regionalize competition to cut down on travel.
The efforts in some districts go beyond sports, ranging from consolidating bus stops to reducing field trips.
These are all unfortunate, but necessary considerations, given the price of fuel and the state of the economy. And there may even be some benefits — local rivalries are usually much more intense and colorful than those with districts far away.
Even with the proposed reductions, it is better to have a program that is accessible to everyone, rather than one that theoretically remains the same, but is less accessible because of escalating, unaffordable user fees.
