The Saugerties Central School District (SCSD) has First Student to represent them in participating in the next round of the federal Clean School Bus Rebate Program (CSBRP), giving one of their primary school bus contractors an opportunity to help subsidize the purchase of new electric school buses with the potential to pass on the savings to the district.
Administered by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the CSBRP uses a lottery system to award selected applicants funding to offset the cost of zero-emission or clean school buses, eligible infrastructure, workforce training, and other costs. This is critical in New York State, where electrification mandates require public school districts and their contractors to cease the purchase of new diesel fuel buses by 2027, and to have fully converted their fleets by 2035.
While some districts own and operate their own school bus fleets, others like the SCSD contract with transportation companies. Saugerties-based Lezette Express, Inc. is one of the district’s contractors, and larger Cincinnati, Ohio-based First Student is another.
Kevin King, First Student’s senior EV principal consultant, was on hand at a meeting of the SCSD Board of Education last week to discuss the CSBRP, extol the advantages of electrification, and dispel a few myths about electronic buses.
“(The CSBRP) was $5 billion in funds allocated through the (federal) Environmental Safety Act, and right now we are coming up on the application period for round four,” King said during the meeting held at Cahill Elementary School on Tuesday, December 10. “At the end of that period, the government will have to allocate of about $3.8 billion.”
King said that electric school buses typically cost close to two times as much as their fossil fuel counterparts when purchased new.
“So this grant money is critical for us in achieving our goals in terms of meeting the New York State mandate, as well as our company goal of having 30,000 electric school buses (ESBs) by 2035,” King said.
Currently, First Student has close to 400 ESBs in operation, with delivery of another 2,000 anticipated in the next few months. They currently operate 300 ESBs in Quebec, Canada, where King said the winter weather has helped dispel one of the most common myths about electric buses.
“In Quebec at one of our locations in La Salle, just outside of Montreal, we did a full convergent: 130 buses all electric,” King said. “We don’t have one backup diesel bus, one backup gas bus. Last year temperatures reached 35 below in Montreal. Those buses were warmed up, ready to go and operated to full capacity every single day. We didn’t lose one day of bus operation to the cold weather.”
Beyond the mandate, King shared further information about ESBs he hoped would illustrate their value to communities like Saugerties.
“Students that ride in electric school buses have shown to be demonstrably better in school in terms of performance as they arrive to school better prepared to learn on a quiet electric school bus ride versus over a diesel school bus,” he said. “There’s no diesel particulate in the cabin. Student asthma is perhaps, I believe, the leading health cause of absenteeism in the United States, and studies show that electric school buses reduce the impact of asthma on students who ride electric school buses.”
And while the cost of purchasing new ESBs isn’t cheap, King said they offer savings in other ways, including reductions in maintenance costs upwards of 30 percent because the amount of moving parts in an electric vehicle is significantly lower than those in a fossil fuel vehicle.
“An electric school bus has one moving part, a rear drive motor,” King said. “There’s approximately 30 parts on an electric bus versus 1,000. We don’t have to do oil changes. We don’t have to do tune ups. We don’t have to do any of that stuff. So we’re seeing significant savings. And we’re also seeing these buses may have a longer life than a fossil fuel bus.
Furthermore, ESBs can generate some of their own power.
“The buses deploy what’s called regenerative braking,” King said. “So when a bus is going up a hill, it’s going to use more power. But as it comes down a hill, if the driver comes off of the gas, or the accelerator, there is no gas, the bus will begin to automatically slow. And what happens is the engine is essentially reversed and it feeds kinetic energy back into the batteries extending the range on that single charge there.”
With diesel prices rising at a steeper rate than electric prices, King said, that has the potential for long term savings.
Round four of the CSBRP will allocate at least $965 million for school bus replacement, and with each application is the implicit promise that for each new ESB purchased, a district or contractor will pull one fossil fuel-run bus out of commission.
“And we cannot deploy those buses to another location,” King said. “They have to be rendered inoperable to be in compliance with the grant protocol.”
First Student has already secured over $440 million through the first three rounds of the CSBRP, and hopes to add to their tally with the SCSD. Of the nearly $1 billion available in the fourth round, roughly 40 percent will go to non-priority districts like Saugerties, their status due to a lower poverty level, rural designation, tribal designation and other factors. Plus, the SCSD is in a state with stackable funding programs, like the New York State Bus Incentive Program (NYSBIP.)
“We can get additional funds through the NYSBIP and stack them on top of the EPA funds,” King said.
As a non-priority district, the SCSD could be eligible for $170,000 in federal funding, and between $75,000-90,000 in state funding.
The buses purchased through the program would belong to First Student, but would only be used to transport SCSD students for as long as the contractor works with the district. Currently, the parties have four years remaining on their contract.
“If four years from now you decide to operate your own fleet or you decide to go with another vendor, we can take those buses and move them to another customer of ours to meet the EPA reporting criteria and then the grant fund criteria,” King said.
Each application requires approval from a district superintendent, a district school board and a relevant utility, in this case Central Hudson. The deadline for submitting the application is January 9, but First Student is hoping to turn in their Saugerties-specific paperwork by Friday, January 3.
“We anticipate in May (2025), there will be a notice of selection if we are successful on your behalf,” King said. “And then between June and November, we would have to submit payment request forms with the purchase orders. And we would have to take delivery and implement those buses within the two-year period, approximately May of 2027.
Festival of Trees winners
The Friends of the Saugerties Public Library have announced the winners of the Festival of Trees contest. Kids/teens category — first place, Eliot Lirtsman, second place, Karl Miyazawa; adults/organizations category — first place, Marissa Doring, second place, Saugerties Society of Little Gardens; chairman’s award — Edna Meiswinkel. The winners receive gift certificates from Hudson Valley Dessert Company.
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