Money Pain, Mutual Aid and Electric School Buses

I imagine we’ve all been short of money at some point in our personal lives. I certainly have. It’s painful, stressful and demoralizing. It’s exponentially different, though, when your employer, and thousands of their fellow employers, have their budgets slashed. That situation describes many school districts and school bus fleets today, across the nation*, also many nonprofits doing valuable work that millions, collectively, depend on. 

Mutual aid (practicing interdependence and helping each other) has been shoring organizations and their people up, far longer than electric school buses (ESBs) have been around. Mutual aid doesn’t make problems disappear, nor money to suddenly appear. But it strengthens us. I know this from both personal and professional experience.

This newsletter contains opportunities for mutual aid in the electric school bus (ESB) world, news of an initiative for more clean school bus funding, and a plug for public education and democracy.

I’m Alison Wiley here in Oregon, and I founded this Electric School Bus Newsletter in 2019 (archives here). I’ve worked in low-carbon transportation since 2006, and I’ve moderated panels at the School Transportation News (STN) conference and the Green Transportation Summit and Expo. I’ve authored articles for STN, and done contracted work for the World Resources Institute’s Electric School Bus Initiative, Pacific Power, Portland General Electric, Beaverton School District, and more. My former employers include Center for Transportation and the Environment, the Oregon Department of Transportation and Forth Mobility, which is disappearing under that name at the end of this year and merging into Catalyst Mobility, formerly known as CALSTART (more on that below). 

Electric School Bus Info-Sharing meeting
Wed. Oct 14   
10:00-11:00 am Pacific
Join with this link

I co-facilitate, with Brandon Coonrod of Portland Public Schools, this every-other-month gathering that was formerly hosted by the now retired, great (but not late) Craig Beaver of Beaverton School District in Oregon. We have a Region 10 Pacific Northwest focus, but all who are interested are invited. I’m excited to hear this time from a small, overworked rural district that’s operating ESBs successfully, against the odds.

Catalyst Mobility offers free, excellent ESB Forums. I attended one of them three days ago, as did many of my readers. Why did they change their name from CALSTART? Their work on clean transportation is nationwide, not just in California, and they’re not a start-up; they opened their doors in 1992. Register for their series of ESB Network Forums here. Even if you can’t attend one or more events, you can receive the slides. 

Bipartisan Legislation Introduced To Reauthorize EPA’s Clean School Bus Program

Bipartisan is the key word here, in my view. Some things benefit almost everyone and are not a zero-sum game. Here’s the Alliance for Electric School Buses press release on the proposed legislation, which will get voted on at some point in future. “It’s like we’ve put a stake in the ground,” a legal expert told me. Many organizations, including this newsletter, have signed on in support. It would extend the EPA’s Clean School Bus Program to 2031. As WRI states, more than 8,500 electric school buses are now operating in communities across every region of the United States, up from just over 5,100 at the same time last year. “School districts with electric school buses are evenly split between congressional districts represented by Democrats and Republicans, underscoring the bipartisan nature of electric school bus demand.” This supports my article of late 2024 on why ESBs may be inherently purple.