The Fayetteville-Manlius School District will host an Electric Bus Town Hall on Wednesday, Oct. 18 at 6 p.m. at the district’s Transportation Center: 222 W. Franklin St., Fayetteville.
The town hall will be open to the public with the goal of providing information regarding the purchase of electric school buses. The town hall comes following a New York State mandate that prohibits school districts from purchasing additional buses that burn diesel starting in 2027, and requires all school buses on the road to be zero-emission by 2035.
During the Oct. 18 town hall, there will be at least one electric bus on display, and community members will hear from a New York Bus Sales representative. That representative will share related electric bus information such as: cost, range and performance, maintenance and training, vehicle availability, power supply, space, potential grant funding, and overall “facility needs” footprint of electric buses. The F-M School District has purchased buses from New York Bus Sales for nearly a decade, and the company sells diesel, gas, propane, as well as electric buses.
The district is currently working with a third-party to conduct a feasibility study that will examine all aspects of purchasing electric buses. The district is scheduled to receive that study before the Oct. 18 town hall, and will report the findings of the feasibility study if it is available in time.
A Q&A will take place at the end of the town hall, where community members can ask any lingering questions that may not have been answered during the presentation. Leading up to the event, community members may submit questions, comments, concerns, or what they hope to learn at the town hall on Let’s Talk.
The district will be providing its transportation center as a location for this upcoming town hall meeting, but the vast majority of the information will be presented by New York Bus Sales, who can provide the most current and up-to-date electric bus information. In addition, electric bus information from the Town Hall meeting will be shared and discussed at the Nov. 6 F-M Board of Education meeting.