Chappaqua Reviews Study, to Create Task Force on Electric School Buses

The Chappaqua School District will convene a task force to help phase in electric buses so the district can comply with the state mandate that all school buses be electric in New York by 2035.

A study was recently completed for the district by Transportation Advisory Services of Pittsford, N.Y., a school transportation consulting firm that examined how Chappaqua could accomplish the task of having electric buses transport its students within a decade.

The district contracts its transportation services with Chappaqua Transportation, providing both challenges and advantages to accomplishing that task, said Chris Wojciechowski, a senior consultant for Transportation Advisory Services, who delivered a presentation to the Board of Education at its last meeting on Sept. 25. Roughly half of New York State school districts operate their own fleet while the other half contracts with an outside company, Wojciechowski said.

Superintendent of Schools Dr. Christine Ackerman said the report was to be sent out to the school community by about Sept. 29, and indicated that Assistant Superintendent for Business Joshua Culwell-Block will lead the task force.

“We need to start visiting other places that have these buses in operation and we have to start to gather information, and then we need to…come back together and start to talk about what the process looks like in terms of making a decision and a transition,” Ackerman said.

Under the regulations established by the state, any new buses that a district would buy will have to be electric starting on July 1, 2027. Every district’s entire fleet must be fully electric eight years later.

Wojciechowski said that while there appears to be plenty of time before the mandate must be adhered to, there are many factors for districts to consider, including Chappaqua. Key steps that must be taken are the building and installation of infrastructure to accommodate the electric chargers, acquiring the charging equipment and finding the proper location.

“We’ve known a lot of districts that have started this process back in 2019, but they only have eight or nine buses out of their 100 or so fleet, so it does take a lot of time to build up the infrastructure and to secure vehicles, to secure charging equipment, troubleshoot a lot of issues that can come up along the way,” Wojciechowski said.

Lead time when ordering electric buses right now is about 18 months, he said.

Currently, Chappaqua uses 50 route buses from a fleet of 96 vehicles, which transports students between home and school every day, Wojciechowski said. The daily routes range from 2.2 to 45 miles, a key consideration because the typical 66-passenger bus has a range of about 120 miles when fully charged, he said. However, officials should factor in a worst-case scenario of getting only about 40 percent of distance on the coldest day.

One of the top hurdles for the district is to find a location to charge the buses and installing the infrastructure for those electric chargers.

In Chappaqua’s case, Wojciechowski recommended school officials find space on district property to house the chargers. There would be about a four- to five-hour window most days for the buses to charge between the morning and afternoon runs, he said.

Two other challenges, such as failure to get cooperation from the area’s electric provider, which is Con Edison and has been on top of the electrification transition, and a geographically large district, do not come into play, he explained. The district is about 19 square miles.

“You guys are actually in a really good spot when it comes to that right now, just because the distances your buses are actually traveling,” Wojciechowski said.

“So out of those three hurdles, you guys only have one of those three hurdles, so there is some optimism,” he added.

As a result of the relatively shorter route to take students to and from school, Wojciechowski recommended 50 Level 2 chargers for Chappaqua. Those chargers are 19.2 kilowatts per hour. For a bus that needs to be fully charged, overnight charging would get the bus at or near 100 percent. The district should have four fast chargers for use during the school day.

However, the runs to transport the district’s sports teams to road games will likely be a challenge with distances of as much as 60 miles in each direction.

Wojciechowski said the district should review its daily routes as well as calculating how many full-size buses and smaller vehicles it will need. District officials should also look at “usable capacity,” by providing seats for up to 85 percent of the enrollment, he said. A certain percentage of the oldest high school students drive themselves to school while some young students are driven to school regularly

Phasing in of the fleet should begin in 2028, Wojciechowski said.

As with all districts, Wojciechowski said that cost will be a major factor. A new 66-passenger electric bus with GPS and cameras costs about $505,000 to $515,000 each, as opposed to a little less than half that expense for the current diesel buses. Estimated infrastructure costs are about $50,000 to $60,000 per bus.

Chappaqua also receives little state funding.

“We want to make sure we’re being as diligent as we can with the costs and giving you guys as much funding as we can,” Wojciechowski said.

Board of Education member Hilary Grasso said it would be odd following through on the recommended plan because the district would own the vehicles, facility and infrastructure but not operate them.

“It seems weird, for the lack of a better word, for us to be buying the buses, potentially building a facility to house the buses, own the buses but not be the ones running the buses,” Grasso said.

Wojciechowski said an advantage of the district owning as many of the elements as possible is there suddenly wouldn’t be a low bidder coming in and causing an abrupt change.

Board member Matthew Auerbach said he was skeptical that this effort by the state will be successful.

“This is an extraordinary cost and they are mandating this and it looks like we are not on the top of the list to get aid,” Auerbach said. “Are they trying to bankrupt us? I’m being serious because this is a huge undertaking and I think they’re drawing a lot of assumptions that we’ll be able to do this.”

Ackerman is hoping that with advocacy and raising the issue, there might be more financial help from the state.

“How do you go out to bond for this if the community doesn’t want to pay for this but you’re still required to follow the law?” Ackerman said. “So we’re still waiting for some guidance on that.”