Vidalia &8212; Concordia Parish schools will now be spending &8212; depending on many factors &8212; about $10,500 a month to pay the bus driver operational allowance approved Tuesday.

That&8217;s about $2,500 more a month than they&8217;ve been spending.

Of course when you talk gas prices, numbers change, comparisons are impossible and nothing&8217;s predictable.

The $10,500 figure is based on a month with 17.5 actual driving days when gas prices are $2.52.

The operational allowance &8212; gas money &8212; increase came Tuesday night after a month of demands and debates with the drivers. And it didn&8217;t come easily.

Drivers wanted to be paid for double the amount of miles they&8217;ve been getting paid for on local and state formulas. The school met them halfway.

&8220;I kept thinking, there&8217;s got to be something in between,&8221; Superintendent Kerry Laster said Wednesday. &8220;We cannot afford what they are asking for. We kept thinking through ways we could come to a happy medium.&8221;

The school board voted last week to increase the amount drivers were paid per mile to keep up with gas prices. But that plan only paid for one-way travel. Drivers wanted to be paid for two-way travel.

&8220;What they really wanted was double what we were offering,&8221; Laster said. &8220;The only logical thing was if you can&8217;t go double, go halfway.&8221;

But even halfway is a strain on a public school district that constantly battles state funding cuts.

&8220;With the business department, we worked on it until right before we had the board meeting,&8221; Laster said.

Business Manager Tom O&8217;Neal said he&8217;ll definitely be making some adjustments to his budget to accommodate the increased allowance.

Luckily though, he said, major budget revisions won&8217;t be needed since it&8217;s still early in the school&8217;s budget year. The fiscal year runs from July 1 to June 30.

&8220;If this had happened in April or May it would be necessary to revise the budget,&8221; he said.

The money to fund the increased driver operational allowance will come from the general fund, more specifically local dollars from the levied property tax.

A roughly $1.2 million transportation budget is part of the general fund. The $1.2 covers the allowance and bus drivers&8217; salaries, among other things.

Because it&8217;s early in the year, the budget is still full, and finding the extra money won&8217;t be a problem.

But as the year progresses and money is spent, adjustments will have to be made, O&8217;Neal said.

The district&8217;s total budget is nearly $30 million a year.

The operational allowance drivers receive will now go up one cent for every seven cents gas prices go up; it will go down one cent for every seven cents gas goes down.

Drivers will get the allowance only for days driven.