Squeezed by skyrocketing fuel and transportation costs, DeKalb County schools say they can no longer afford to bus students who transfer to better schools under the No Child Left Behind Act.

Instead, starting Monday with the first day of class, parents of the 2,300 students who this summer alone requested out of their struggling neighborhood schools will have to file for mileage reimbursement — as the federal law allows.

Likewise, starting in August 2009, the parents of the 1,200 students who have previously transferred to a different campus using the law will also have to find their own way to school and file for reimbursement later.

DeKalb officials began notifying parents of the changes on Tuesday, Superintendent Crawford Lewis said.

"We didn't have the financial resources," Lewis said, to buy or lease the 45 additional buses needed to accommodate the number of transfer requests for this year alone.

DeKalb is not the only metro Atlanta system to turn to mileage reimbursement over transportation to meet the federal requirements. Gwinnett County, which last year received 189 student transfer requests, has reimbursed parents for their transportation costs since the law was signed in 2002.

No other Georgia system, however, comes close to the number of transfer requests logged by DeKalb, which is Georgia's third-largest system but has the most standalone schools of any in the state.

The schools transfer crunch comes at an awful time for DeKalb, which is already facing multiple stresses:

• The state continues to provide less education funding than state guidelines require. Cuts in education funding will by next year have cost DeKalb $93.6 million since 2002.

• A gallon of diesel on average costs 60 percent more than this time last year, with even a 1-cent increase per gallon equating to an additional $22,500 annually for the system.

• A dip in enrollment — Georgia pays for public schools by attaching dollars to individual students — has already forced reductions and other cost-saving measures, including the loss of a popular German program in two DeKalb elementary schools. School board members have not raised the county's property tax millage for schools since 2002.

System officials are putting together a downsizing plan that, to save money, could mean layoffs starting next summer. Finding other ways to save money is a priority, Lewis said.

"This is probably going to be the first of several recommendations ... in regards to transportation," Lewis said, declining to elaborate.

A task force he commissioned has over the summer been studying the system's transportation efforts. It is expected to release findings in coming weeks.

The No Child law forces schools to measure up to academic goals annually or face consequences, with one of the first and most visible penalties being a requirement to allow students to transfer out of low-performing schools.

The mileage reimbursements measure the distance — round-trip — between a student's home address and their new campus. The reimbursement rate is 58.5 cents a mile.

Parents will receive the money through the school system. The system, in turn, receives the money from the federal government as part of its Title I program serving schools with a higher-than-average number of low-income families.