BC Hydro increases will add nearly $29.5 million over the next five years to the $35.5 million school districts already pay for electricity, says a letter from the BC School Trustees Association to Energy and Mines Minister Bill Bennett.

Without extra funding, districts can't absorb these costs -- a 29 per cent increase to their budgets by 2019 -- so trustees are asking Bennett, along with Education Minister Peter Fassbender and deputy minister Rob Wood, to either exempt districts from the fee hike or lower the increase.

"It's moving public dollars from one place to another, and we do think that it's absolutely worth a conversation," said Teresa Rezansoff, president of the trustees' association (BCSTA), during a break from the association's Trustee Academy happening in downtown Vancouver until Saturday.

This isn't the first letter the BCSTA has written government about funding issues, with other letters typically issued after funding resolutions at the association's annual general meeting. But today's letter comes without any prior resolutions.

"This one just serves as a really good example, and we were able to get the hard numbers as to what it was going to be," said Rezansoff.

Previous letters have received the same response from Minister Fassbender, she said: "[He says] 'Yes, we understand, it's tight fiscal times and we all need to be doing our part."

Sometimes government responds with additional funding or a tweak in the funding formula to help cover some costs, however, like the Learning Improvement Fund it introduced in 2012 to help classes with more than 30 students.

Other districts like Vancouver and Kamloops-Thompson have sent individual letters to Minister Fassbender asking him to fund the cost increases by raising education overall funding. Fassbender responded to calls for more funds in a CBC radio interview yesterday morning. He said that while he was sympathetic to the hard decisions boards need to make in their budgets to cover costs, they have to be made.

"We have had to, as government, look at every single line item in our budgets. I'm asking school districts to do the same thing. And I know that there are efficiencies that can be found and other districts have found them," he said.

Rezansoff said her own Boundary School District has made several hard choices in the last decade: shortening the school week to four days, turning schools into family centres where other services for families are offered in addition to schools, and cutting groundskeeper hours.

She also dismissed Fassbender's claim all districts have surpluses. Every line item in a district's budget has a context, she said, and if boards aren't saving up to cover roof repairs they know are needed in the next five years, or much-needed computers for an increasingly technologically-dependent education system, they can't provide students with stable and predictable funding.

"That's why there is that constant pressure, because boards want to and feel that it's critical to provide that sense of stability for students," she said.

Rezansoff was quick to point out that this isn't the beginning of a fight between the trustees association and the government, adding respectful cooperation is the best way to work together.

Minister Fassbender will address trustees during a lunch talk at the Trustee Academy on Friday. A Q&A session following his presentation is expected to include discussion about cost increases.

"I think the minister does have a very good understanding of the complexities of what we're doing, and he also understands and has acknowledged the cost pressures that we're under. I think that this government's view right now is one of tight fiscal prudence and boards of education understand that," she said.

"But the needs of our students are here right now, and we're doing our best."

Katie Hyslop reports on education and youth issues for The Tyee Solutions Society. Follow her on Twitter.