Haldane has applied for EPA grants
Across the country, more than 500 school districts are waiting on $1 billion in Environmental Protection Agency grants to help pay for more than 3,400 electric buses.
In Cold Spring, Haldane has applied for EPA grants to purchase four buses to meet Gov. Kathy Hochul’s mandate that schools no longer purchase gas-powered buses after 2027 and convert to electric fleets by 2035.
If approved, interim Superintendent Carl Albano said the EPA grants would offset $170,000, or almost half, of each $400,000 bus. The district is also hoping to get $147,000 per bus from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA).
Albano said that while he knows there have been questions about whether federal climate grant programs will continue under President Donald Trump, the district has received no indication that the program has been terminated. Haldane was told a decision would be made on its grant applications by the end of April. If it can’t secure federal grants, the district will likely seek additional state funding, he said.
So far, the Beacon, Haldane and Garrison districts do not have any electric buses, although Garrison has two hybrid vans. Haldane is seeking grants to buy its four electric buses and Beacon voters have approved the purchase of two, which have been ordered.
Statewide, only about 100 of 45,000 buses are electric, although about 1,000 have been approved or ordered as of February, according to Adam Ruder, director of clean transportation for NYSERDA. At the same time, residents in a handful of districts, including Hyde Park, have voted against electric bus purchases, even with state grants cutting the cost.
The New York State Educational Conference Board, a coalition of groups that represent superintendents, PTAs, school boards, teachers, business officials and administrators, has raised concerns. In January, the board published a paper stating that Hochul’s mandate “will force districts to reduce educational opportunities for students, increase taxes and spend exorbitant sums, and cause voter unrest.”
Although the Garrison School doesn’t own most of its buses — they are provided under contract with Orange County Transit — the district is studying the range of the electric buses that would transport students to and from Garrison’s K-8 campus and to Haldane, Putnam Valley and O’Neill high schools. The vendor’s seven buses are parked at Garrison during the day. If they were electric, the district would need to install chargers and the electrical capacity to run them, Joseph Jimick, the district business manager, said earlier this year.
A year ago, voters in the Beacon district approved the purchase of two electric buses at a cost of $495,000 each, including chargers. The district was awarded a $257,000 state grant and the buses are scheduled to arrive this summer and be put into service in the fall. “Our thinking is we’re still on track until or if we hear otherwise,” Superintendent Matt Landahl said this week. He said in February that the district, with a fleet of 57 buses and vans, would need to upgrade its garage before buying any more electric buses.
Some districts across the country that purchased buses in anticipation of receiving EPA grants now face large bills. For example, in Oklahoma, the Shawnee Public Schools, a 3,300-student district near Oklahoma City, spent nearly $1.5 million on four buses that it believed would be reimbursed from an infrastructure law passed by Congress under President Joe Biden.
The district requested the funding in November but was told that it would be delayed due to a technical glitch. It said that, since Trump took office, it has been calling the EPA and emailing regularly without a response.
The money is part of a Clean School Bus Program that was to provide $5 billion over five years. So far, the program has gone through two earlier rounds. Nearly $1 billion was issued in the first round as rebates to 400 schools for 2,500 buses; in the second round, grants totaling nearly $1 billion funded more than 2,700 buses at 275 districts.
The EPA hasn’t explained why the funds are on hold or if they will be released. A spokesperson said the EPA does not comment on pending litigation; multiple lawsuits have been filed over frozen funding, including against the EPA.
More than 25 million students take diesel-fueled buses to school each day in the U.S. — with Black, Latino and lower-income students in urban areas more likely to rely on them. Although two to three times more expensive upfront, electric buses can save districts as much as $100,000 over the life of the bus in fuel and maintenance costs, said Katherine Roboff, a representative of the World Resources Institute’s Electric School Bus Initiative.
The Associated Press contributed reporting.
