Economists use the term “opportunity costs” to measure the expense of alternatives foregone.

School Superintendent Quenten Clark didn’t use the term earlier this week, but he did provide a colorful example of the concept: paying for this year’s jump in fuel costs is like throwing three teachers into the furnace, he said.

“Just a few years ago we were paying 80 cents a gallon – less than $100,000 in total – for heating fuel. This year it’s looking like it’ll be half a million (dollars),” he said.

“In our district, it’s about a mill on the tax rate, about three teachers we can’t have – three teachers going into the fuel tank on an economic basis.”

School districts across the Sun Journal region are facing the same problem. Superintendent Terry Despres in SAD 36 says his district’s energy costs have gone up 50 percent in a one year. In the Oxford Hills School District, meanwhile, 42 buses carry 3,600 students about 777,000 miles per year, costing the district about $2 million.

It is sad and frustrating to think how much higher fuel costs are draining educational resources or costing taxpayers. It’s even more frightening to think how much exploding fuel prices are costing our entire economy.

Families face the same sort of “opportunity costs” as school districts. When heating and gasoline costs go up, we all lose the opportunity to do or buy something else.

For some of us, that means eating out less often or taking a less costly vacation. For many Americans, however, the costs are more painful: utility bills that aren’t paid or new school clothes for children that are not purchased.

Meanwhile, the high cost of fuel is pushing up the price of almost everything we touch. Wal-Mart is now the largest single private user of fuel in the U.S. Every store must be heated and air-conditioned, and everything from razor blades to shirts to fresh produce is distributed by truck.

Ultimately, of course, those costs are passed along to consumers, not just at Wal-Mart but for practically all the goods and services we use every day.

Worse, Americans aren’t sure who or what to blame: Congress, oil companies, foreign terrorists, global competition for scarce resources or some combination of the above.

It would certainly be reassuring for Americans to know that there was some coherent plan for alleviating this crisis. That would seem like an opportunity for either national political party with November’s elections looming.