Speaker: Matt DeLaus, Governmental Relations Counsel
Matt DeLaus: And now for a topic that has board members across the state charged up, uh, the electric school bus transition mandate. Uh, all joking aside, and to be clear, NYSSBA has been asking for a full repeal or rollback of the transition deadline, uh, absent the state taking the very basic steps of having a cohesive plan or allocating funding that is more than a drop in a bucket with the bucket then being dropped into a crater. Um. That being said, we were frankly a little taken aback by the governor's executive budget, which proposed no new changes, funding streams, or rollbacks to the mandate in her executive budget. That shock was relayed to the legislature, and each house presented their own funding proposal aimed at addressing some of the concerns, although not most of them, with the zero emission school bus mandate. The Senate proposed two changes. First, they proposed to allocate at least $100 million from the state's Sustainable Futures Program towards supporting infrastructure like chargers. They also proposed a specific change recommended by NYSSBA and introduced as a stand-alone bill by Senate Education Chair Shelly Mayer in Senate Bill 6221, with Assemblywoman Kassay sponsoring in her chamber Assembly Bill 8035. The proposed change would allow for building costs related to the transition necessary for storage, charging, and operation to be eligible for building aid. This includes constructing new facilities that would not have been required to be built but for the transition to zero emission school buses and represents an advocacy point that NYSSBA has relayed from our members for years. The assembly had a pared down proposal compared to the upper chamber. They propose up to $100 million for the purchase of zero emission school buses and supporting infrastructure, also from the state's Sustainable Futures Program. For more in-depth information related to NYSSBA's final state budget priorities, we encourage you to visit nyssba.org/advocacy. There, you will also find NYSSBA's 2026 legislative priorities and information on other important issues we're working on. Further, you can access our grassroots advocacy page. We strongly encourage you to send our state budget take action email to the governor and your state legislators. The letter is customizable, so you can include stories unique to your school, and we urge you to do so. Please feel free to share this take action opportunity with your broader school community. Thank you for your advocacy.
