HOULTON – The skyrocketing price of fuel oil and gasoline is affecting everyone, and the SAD 29 school board on Monday evening brainstormed ways to lessen the impact of the mounting costs on the district’s budget.

Superintendent Steve Fitzpatrick told the board that administrators are considering a limit on field trips, streamlining optional professional development conferences and focusing on further coordination of athletic events to cut back on transportation costs.

“If we maintain the number of sporting trips, field trips and scrimmages that we have scheduled right now, we will see a budget shortfall,” Fitzpatrick said at the meeting. “We have prepaid for some of our fuel oil, but we are at the mercy of the market as far as gasoline and diesel are concerned.”

Some strategies posed by the superintendent included scheduling tennis matches in the same locations as softball and baseball games so that the athletes could travel together. He made a similar suggestion for facilitating travel to fall sports, which would entail coordinating golf meets with soccer trips.

“A lot of these cost-cutting strategies are in place already,” Fitzpatrick said. “We already double up the winter sports teams by sending the junior varsity and varsity teams to games together. We are also not going to send teams to scrimmages and we will request that the booster club pay for some preseason hockey trips.”

Fitzpatrick admitted that the cutbacks may not be enough to stay ahead of rising fuel prices, but added that officials would continue to keep an eye on the matter and work to save as much money as possible.

In other business the board:

. Approved the nomination of Warren Tweedie as Title I teacher.

. Formed an ad hoc committee to consider accepting tuition students and setting tuition rates for students interested in attending SAD 29 from another school district.