001I'd like to call the Lancaster Central School District Board of Education meeting to order. In the unlikely event of an emergency, if we have to evacuate the room, please note the locations of the address. At this time, I ask you to silence your cell phones and rise for the pledge of allegiance. Please remain standing for a moment of silent [Music] stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Tonight, we remain standing for a moment of silence for John Tulin, director of secondary education and assistant superintendent for instruction from 1970 through 1988, who passed away on July 15th, 2025. and for Gloria Chavez, an elementary teacher from 1991 through 2004, who passed away on July 27th, 2025. Thank you. Okay, 4.0 presentations. Um, we have a few presentations tonight. 4.1 is going
002to be our presentation on the zero emission vehicle transition plan. Um, for that I will turn it over to Miss Amy Coats and the Wendle team. >> Um, good evening. Tonight, um we are here to have Wendell and friends um present our zero emission school bus transition study as part of the 2022 um state budget legislation was passed that was requiring districts to convert to zero emission school buses. And for the purpose of the legislation, zero emission means propelled by an electric motor, drawing electricity from a hydrogen fuel cell or battery, and operating without emission without direct emission of atmospheric pollutants. So the legislation states that beginning in July 1st, 2027, school districts may only purchase zero emission school buses. And then by July 1st of 2035, a school district's entire fleet must consist of
003zero emissions school buses and nothing else. Um we also must require um any transportation contractors that we contract with for transportation services to also only have zero emission school buses by 2035. Districts may be eligible for uh two-year waiver. There's actually two two-year waivers, so a total of four years. We don't know what the circumstances are yet um in which we would be able to be granted the waivers. Um so we could delay until 2031 potentially if we need the waivers and apply for them. Um however, we at this point you would still need to be fully implemented by July 1st of 2035. So even if you have the waiverss, it doesn't delay the you know end date of the full implementation of 20 uh 2035. So of course isn't as isn't as simple as
004just buying electric vehicles instead of buying uh gas or diesel powered vehicles. Um we have 90 buses uh currently in our fleet. Um we have to consider the uh infrastructure capabilities and upgrades that are necessary. our bus capacities compared to our routes. Um site and utility limitations, route logistics, um evolving electric vehicle technology, and then also sort through a mixed bag of grants, rebates, and state aid funding um in order to minimize the taxpayer impact of this uh requirement. So over the past year, um, we have been working with Mendele on a transition plan to get a full picture of what all of those things we would need to do would be and, you know, some estimates on what those things would cost and the steps we would need to take. Um, through area one,
005we collaborated with several Western New York uh, school districts on a grant through NAERTA to pay for our trans transition studies. Um, Wendell was selected to be the firm to provide us with those services. So, over the past year, Judy Falner, the transportation supervisor, Mike Ringarski, the director of facilities, and I have worked with Wendle to provide them with a lot of data. Um, a lot of information about our district and our bus routes and our bus fleet. Um, a lot of information about our site, our bus garage and utility information. Um, so I do thank both them. Um, I want to thank both Judy and Mike for the extra work that they put in to give um, Wendle all the information they needed to perform the study. So that really just leads us to
006today. Our transition plan is compete complete. Um, it has been reviewed and approved by NAERTA. And so now we're ready to present it to you. So, I will with that we'll turn it over to John, Katie, and Dante to introduce themselves um and their firm and to present the highlights of our transition plan to you. Thank you. >> Appreciate the opportunity to present the plan to you today. My name is John Heal. I'm the uh principal in charge and director of alternative fuels for Wendle. Uh what that means is any vehicle uh projects that deal with anything other than gasoline or diesel fall into my area of responsibility. That includes compressed natural gas, propane, hydrogen, and battery electric. Uh my role is to was to make sure that the Wendle team had everything they needed
007to provide you with a quality pro project. And I'll turn it over to Kate. Hello, Katie Ekham. Um, I was the project manager and main point of contact throughout this project. I've been at Wendell as an energy engineer for about eight years now. And I'll hand it over to Dante. Do a quick introduction. >> Sure. Thank you, Katie. Uh, thanks for having me here today. Uh, my name is Dante Buchcci. I'm the technical lead on this project. So, doing a lot of the background work with the data and basically creating this report for you guys. really excited to be here and thanks for having me. >> Uh just real briefly about Wendell, uh for those of you not familiar, uh we are celebrating our 85th year this year. Uh the shed in the middle on
008the bottom is where this business started in Lockport, New York at Leon Lendel's house. And uh we now have 300 employees, 16 offices across the country. And uh we're an architecture, engineering, construction management, and energy efficiency company. One point to note is we've been doing uh transportation studies and transportation work uh since the mid 1990s. Uh doing compressed natural gas. We've done work for Tri and Tops and Lightnings and delay all across the country. Uh we've been doing battery electric work for transit uh industry since 2010. So, we've got a lot of experience in battery electric vehicles and how they perform. >> Um, so I'm just going to start us off by going over what the scope of work of our study entailed. As Jamie has said, this was a transition plan through NICERTA, um,
009which required the following task to be considered a fleet electrification plan. It included a project kickoff status meetings throughout data collection. So again, we got all of the information from the district in terms of what your routes look like, the mileages that they go on um for each of those routes, what time they get back to the bus garage, how long they're there for, what time did they leave, and um shout out and thank you again to Jamie, Judy, and Mike. And they were extremely helpful in this whole process. We also did a route analysis and charging strategy which I'll be going over in more detail. But basically this was kind of the feasibility assessment portion of it where we looked at the actual routes, what their usages were, what would be the requirements for
010the buses and the chargers. And then we went into the utility analysis where we looked at if all of those buses were being charged then what would be the load required from the utility? Can your system currently handle that load? Can the utility handle that projected load? So, the utility at this point was brought into this project and was included and correspondences have had with them to determine what their assessment was of that as well. On our end, we then went to a concept development and phasing plan where we looked at what are the infrastructure upgrades needed. Um what kind of upgrades to your bus garage if any, where is the equipment going to go? what is the phasing going to look like? And task seven, what is it going to cost? And then finally,
011we that brings us to the final report and final presentations. So starting off with that first one, the route analysis and charging strategy. So we analyze the current route bus information to determine what the energy requirements are for every single route. Based on those energy requirements, what would be the battery size necessary to perform those routes? What is the feasibility of using electric buses on those routes based on what technology exists today? What are the charging requirements based on the energy usage based on how long those buses have to charge midday and what size charger will be required for those buses and then what would be the energy usage impact. So in order to be as conservative as possible, these are all of our assumptions that we make when looking at the energy usage and
012thus what is the bus size necessary. First we assume a full bus. So every student on the bus maximum weight capacity basically extreme cold. So Western New York based off of historic data we use January temperatures for worst case scenario. Basically, as you can see in the image on the bottom left, the lower line or the x- axis is your temperature and the the y-axis is your driving range. So, as temperatures drop below 20°, basically between -20 and 20 is when the buses are going to be working at their worst efficiency. They are going to be getting the lowest driving range. And so this is this negative -20 to 20 degree range is what all of our uh recommendations and findings are based off because we don't really care about that average day or the
013spring day. We care about the middle of winter day. So this also because of the extreme cold includes HVAC usage as well. So the heater running the whole time. We also assume that there's 15 minutes of preheating before the bus even leaves for its route to warm it up for the students. There's also a piece of degradation that's assumed. So just like with an iPhone or a smartphone battery, it doesn't hold its charge as well once you've had it for a couple of years. The same as with the battery on a bus. So we do assume a degradation of down to 90%. We also assume that the battery would never go below 10% or have to be charged above. These are best uses for batteries to extend the life of them. So that 10% would
014basically be a reserve always left in the battery that is never touched and we would never be charged over 90. And then finally we added an additional safety factor onto efficiency. As John had said we have been working in the transit industry with battery electric vehicles since 2010. So we have our own data that we were able to compare what is the real world data that we're seeing versus what the manufacturer is reading. And because of that, we add an additional 11% safety factor to make up for that. So with all of that in mind, all of those worst case scenarios, these are our findings for those about 90 buses. You can see that we had 82 route buses and that does include 15 out of 20 of the contracted buses in case those are
015ever brought back in house just to be conservative. And we found that about 79% of the current routes can be completed with current technology. So you can see IC that was used as the manufacturer for this instance. Other manufacturers can be used. This is just an example of what your fleet may look like. And then no current replacement of 17 buses. And we will be going into more detail on those 17 in just a minute. And we can also see for the chargers. It's cut off a little bit at the bottom, but we have four different charger sizes. These are all the minimum charger size needed based off of those worst case scenarios. This is not a recommendation that you would have four different charger sizes in your fleet. Obviously, operationally, that would not be
016the best. In our final report, we go into recommendations, and that includes limiting the unique sizes or number of sizes of chargers that you have, which may mean going up in size. And that goes for the buses as well. So, maybe instead of 210 and 315, going with all the larger sizes. But in order to comply with my certain scope of work, these are the minimum sizes that will be required based off of the technology today. And then looking at those 17 buses or bus routes that cannot currently be performed. So you can see that the ranges are in the third column. really once we're seeing about 65 m for the larger type-C buses that is when those buses are going to have issues being converted to better electric. Now this is again worst case
017scenario day after 90% degraded on an average day. Many of these probably could be performed by battery electric buses, but for the sake of this study and what we're looking at, we're stating this is a constraint or a red flag for the district for converting as these if they were replaced today could not be could not complete the routes that they have. We do notice that with the minimum bus size required, they are all battery sizes that we anticipate will exist before the 2035 mandate. Basically, that means um the bus size largest today is 315 kwatt hours battery size. So, as you can see, the bus sizes up here range between about 300 and 600. Those are all battery sizes that we already are seeing in the transit industry and anticipate that they may be
018available by the 2035 date. For that reason, we do carry these 17 buses in our next task. Meaning, we're still looking at what the load usage would be of these. We're still looking at the utility impact, the infrastructure upgrades needed, the chargers needed for them, and the cost of including them. And then we take all of the proposals to bus sizes and charger sizes and plug them into a hourby- hour model in the worst case month of January. And we model what those buses would look like in terms of their energy usage as well as when they're coming back to the bus depot and charging, what the energy pull is from the utility itself. So we're able to mimic all I89 buses going out on their routes or 82 route buses going out on their
019routes coming back and needing to charge in a day which is where you're going to see the highest demand or the highest requirements for load. So the image that you see the daily demand profile on the left hand side is that worst case and the worst case month of January of what your demand will look like. So there's two options without which is the blue. This is basically charging the bus to their maximum amount of that 90% that we charge up to. While the red line or the shorter line is with demand reduction in place, which is a charge management system option that you can have added, where basically it's instead charging the battery to only what it needs to be to be able to perform its next route or its PM route. So, it
020may only charge at 70% or 75. We're not recommending one or the other. It's simply just two different options and what charge management may be able to get you. One other thing I'd like to point out is, you know, we're talking in terms of kilowatts and kilowatt hours. Just as a reference point, your existing demand on Lancaster's bus garage is currently 40 kilowatts per month. So in comparison um with charge management in place demand reduction we are looking at about a 40 time increase or 40 times what the current demand is. So obviously that shows the importance of looking at this and looking at your current technology and bringing this to the utility as well. And then terms of utility I'll hand it off to John. >> Thank you. So when you look at the
021load that we're looking at for these chargers, the connected load, which is just the name plates on the chargers, would be about 6.2 MVA or 6 6,000 200 6,200 KVA. It's pretty substantial load, but as Katie indicated, we look to use charge management. Charge management is a software system that controls the chargers and it enables the chargers to in when you plug a charger in without charge management, it'll ramp up to 100%. What a charge management system does is it looks at the bus and it says, "All right, here's the state of charge, here's how much time I have to get it to where it needs to be. And so, instead of ramping it up, I'm going to charge it slowly and I'm going to not exceed a peak that we set." So under charge
022management, we're able to sit there and say, "Okay, instead of 6,181, we're going to do 2736, which is be very realistic." And that enables us to keep peak demand charges down as well as your infrastructure costs down. So those are the main main benefits here. So we're looking at, you know, that as the anticipated load. Uh on the district side, I'm going to get into this a little bit more detail on the next slide because it's a little bit complicated. On the utility side, NISA is going to be able to provide you with a 1200 amp disconnect, single tap on their distribution system, but it's going to be at a much higher voltage. Typically uh when you look at how you take power, if you look at the top right, the utility has a utility
023pole comes to a transformer. That transformer converts whatever voltage it is on the distribution circuit to 480 volts and you usually take it at 480 or lower voltage. You then internally have some switch gear and then we would connect chargers to it to go to the bus at the size that you're at. at 2.6 MVA. Most utilities will require you to go to what's called medium voltage at 2.5 MVA or 2500 KVA. You're right on that bubble. So, for the purposes of this study, since it's over, we're saying you need to go to medium voltage. Uh once you get into detailed engineering, you may be able to keep it under medium voltage, but for the purposes of this study, you're so much on the bubble and a little bit over that we think it's more
024conservative to do it this way. What medium voltage means is the utility now does not own any transformers. You're taking power directly from the pole. And in a lot of cases, that's 13,800 volts. So you're not taking it at 480 volts anymore. You're taking that 13,800. You now have 13.8 KV switch gear, which is medium voltage switch gear. Then from there, you go to transformers, which you will own. So you'll own the 138 gear. The transformers, this is equipment you don't own or maintain today, but you probably would after the conversion. Then you go into the 480 volt distribution and uh the chargers. So it's a it's a major step in the distribution on the campus. Any questions on that? >> We can do it either way. >> Yeah, it's due to the fleet set.
025>> Yeah. Is that is that due to the fleet size? It's due to the number of chargers in the fleet size. Yes. Uh once you hit 2500 KVA, that's the limit that most utilities. Some are 2,000 KVA, some are 2500. Once you hit that threshold, they're going to say we're not providing you at 480 volt. We're not going to provide it to you at at a higher uh midle voltage. >> No, no. Whatever happens after that, you're you're a long ways away from anything above that. >> Sorry. The question was if if we have to replace the 17 routes with even larger buses, is there a chance we would go over uh the medium voltage? And the answer to that is no. >> Is there something Okay, so the question is is is there a
026way to handle or take into account human error? For example, forgetting to plug in a bus. Uh those types of things with the charge management system. The charge management system knows when a bus gets plugged in. It knows when a bus needs to go back out and what level of charge it needs to be. If a driver or whoever is responsible for plugging the bus in forgets to plug it in, the charge management system will alert uh whoever needs to be alerted that that bus has not been plugged in. Uh it will also alert if there's uh a failure of a charger if there's a failure on the bus. Uh any errors at all in that whole process that can be done through texts, cell phones, uh any number of ways to receive that information
027and can be directed to certain individuals. from home. >> So the question is with the charge management system say on a snow day uh could somebody look at what the charge levels are on the buses and and gain information from that? Yes. Uh these systems are web based. Whoever has the authority to log in can log in. Uh you can actually override the system if you want and and accelerate charging on a particular bus. You can look at the status of the battery. You can look at all types of information. One of the benefits of battery electric buses is you do have a lot of data. current day. So there currently right now is not handative day could not go. >> Correct. Right. Yeah, that is just >> Yes. So to restate that 111 miles
028is just for one route. So whether it's AM or PM and just to add on to what John was saying about the medium voltage, that is not unique to Lancaster. Once you start going over about, I would say 80 buses and going into that larger fleet size, everyone is going to be running into those same issues. It's dependent on the utility, what their requirements are, but we're seeing it's typically around 2,2500 KVA, which is around after about 80 buses, you'll start seeing that. Well, we're thinking that by the time we hopefully have some technology that will allow. >> So the question is um we anticipate by 2035 the technology will be there that we can handle these longer trips. Couple of things we are already seeing a 770 kilowatt hour battery on the transit site.
029So we can handle any one of those with today's technology in a different vehicle. Uh bus man school bus manufacturers haven't provided a wide range of options yet. Most of them are either manufacturing one or maybe two bus types. That will change. The other piece that could happen here is we're looking at new battery technologies coming out. And we believe that uh and we've seen it you know battery densities and uh the weight of the battery and the charge capacity of batteries have been almost doubling every 3 years. So we do believe the technology will be there. Now we do have some cut offs uh I think it's 400 kW kilowatt hours for a type A bus. We don't think it'll ever get to that. So there are some routes where we have for school
030district said you'll never get there. management system. I kind of understand Okay, let's see. The the question was why are we limiting it to 90 and in some cases why are we going only to 70 or 75 if that's all that's needed for the route if we have the time to do it. two parts 90. There's in in each of these batteries, there is what's called a battery management system. It's an onboard computer in the battery pack itself. It will dictate whether you can go over 90 or under 10. And in fact, the the battery management system will start shutting down some systems on the bus uh if it is 10%. So those are set within the battery manufacturer's limits, not open to us. Okay? So you can almost look at 90% of the battery
031capacity as 100% usable capacity. If you have time to charge it to that 90% you would and the charge management system would. Uh it's only when you get to a point where you have um restricted time frames that you may look to do that. So the question is is if the bus gets back at 3:00 or 4:00 p.m. and there's a better rate later in the day, could you wait until later in the day to do that? Uh that can all be programmed into the charge management system. You can actually put the rate structures of the utility into the charge management system and provide rules and it will as long as it can can charge within that period it will do that. So the question is, uh, buses come back from the morning route, go
032to the route to garage, charge, then go back out. What happens if there's inclement weather that delays something? Uh, can the buses still fully charge? The answer, the short answer to that is it depends. Uh it depends on the delay. If you shorten that window too much, you may not be able to get enough charge for the bus to go back out. So, one of the things that we have looked at in those particular scenarios is what would it take to uh what size battery, what size charger would you have to use to not do any midday charging? And that drastically increases the size of the battery. and the charger and as a result probably would increase the number of buckets that hit this list. >> Yeah. So the question was regarding extracurricular trips. So
033outside of your typical routes, what about field trips, course trips, after school routes, etc. So we did do a separate analysis, the results of which are in the final report, which basically shows you for those extracurriculars and sports trips, what is the distance that these buses can actually travel. So it looks at the round trip of your vehicle. It does assume that your bus is fully charged, meaning that up to that 90% what is the range that they can go? It is about 60 miles that it can go round trip. But any travel any travel farther than that we're saying is in feasible by a battery electric bus to be able to perform. We will uh obviously for a lot of those trips be going to other schools that have the same requirement. Um so
034I'm sure with all of the districts we'll be working to figure out how to charge buses at their locations and they'll be potentially needing to do the same thing here. Um and then also a lot of the other places we go to are public places um that also have chargers available in you know various places. So, it will maybe not just us from still doing those things. Um, but it'll just take a lot more planning and logistics for before we send those buses out. And >> I will tell you that a lot of the Boseies are looking at putting chargers at the Boseies as well for for just those activities. And we're also dealing with schools that are saying, "All right, I need opportunity charging at the at the track and various sports complexes for
035visiting buses." So, you know, that is occurring. Um, so we, you know, the the other thing I want to emphasize is is we have taken a very conservative approach to these for one reason. We want to make sure that on the coldest day, we're not going to strain kids on the road somewhere. So, these buses will perform very well in the spring and the fall. That's not what we're worried about. I'm sure it's not what you're worried about. >> I apologize for that. >> Yes. So, so what we did is we took uh and and developed a plan of how you may procure buses between now in 2035. And we just did this and got input on this. You're not required to meet this schedule, but we needed something to come up with how we
036could phase this in. So this was our best approach as to how these buses would be procured uh starting in 2027 through uh 2035. And so this we developed three phases coming out of this. Phase one uh basically we're going to do we're recommending 60k 2160 KW chargers and six 120 KW chargers. One of those chargers having two ports. So a 120 KW charger can have one port or two. So it can charge two buses at 60 or one bus at 120. And to Katie's earlier point, you know, we're recommending the minimum charger sizes. You could buy uh 120 KWS instead of the 60s. If you wanted to to make logistics easier, operations easier. In phase one, charger quantity is 27. Uh, total quantity after phase 1, 27. Total charging positions 29. Drawing is a
037little hard to see, but you can see where we're going up and and picking up parking spots in in the diagram. Battery electric bus tires. Um, battery electric buses do not catch fire at any greater frequency than a diesel bus. In fact, they're less. The problem with a battery electric plus fire is it's extremely difficult to put out. They create their own oxygen and therefore are very difficult to extinguish and have been known to recatch fire hours or even days later once they've been put out. Uh the good news on better electric buses, you've got a lot of early warning systems, they don't just go up in flames like a diesel can. Uh they usually crack, snap, crack or pop is before they do it. Uh there's warnings. Uh the current codes do not require
038fire protection. We believe that's wrong. Uh the industry believes that's wrong and a lot of standards are being developed. They just haven't been passed yet. So code doesn't require you to do any of the fire protection, but we are strongly recommending that you add fire hydrants near where the buses are with the main reason being is to give the fire department, first responders adequate water supply to put down a battery fire before it can spread to other buses or the building itself. We're also recommending um enhanced fire protection within the bus maintenance facility in case a fire a bus were to catch fire within the garage. Uh this fire protection scheme that we've developed, it's uh on our website. We've shared it with everybody. We've had approval from various insurance agencies, state fire marshals, uh
039first responders, uh as a a viable recognized system uh uh method and actually is being looked at by the NFPA as a way to adopt a fire protection scheme. This would require a fire pump here. So to boost the pressure and volume would require a pump house fire pump and a diesel generator to back up that fire pump. Phase two, uh, more chargers, uh, 25 additional chargers total. After phase 2, 52 chargers and 54 positions. Phase three, you can see we're adding again to get updated. So, segregated, I suggested phasing and estimated costs. Uh phase one is looking at about 11.6 million, but you'll see that has a new service, the new utility service, power distribution equipment. You're now at medium voltage, fire protection upgrades, and we've separate they separated that out in the report
040so you can make a decision as to whether or not you want to pursue that or not. The charging equipment uh and that's the total cost there. The phase two and phase three are basically just charging equipment. You're not doing anything that you've already done in phase one. Um, one of the reasons they're as high as they are is we are carrying escalation throughout all of this. So, there's a lot of escalation in those later numbers. Total cost, we're looking at about 26 million. Thank you. And just going back to this cost for a second, um, a couple of items not included in this is going to be the cost of the buses themselves that we'll be going over in the next slide. Um, also not included are any type of utility fees. So any
041type of upgrades on the utility side, which if you're doing medium voltage is very minimal, actually is also not included. um that is unknown until the utility actually does their full design and gives you that estimate. But included are all of the like John said escalation per year, saw cost, labor, installation cost, equipment, the cost of the chargers themselves, etc. So looking at the cost of the buses themselves, what we have here is just kind of um a look at each of the bus types that we are proposing as well as the no current replacement. Obviously, we can't have a cost for the no current replacement. So we use kind of just an estimate based off of the IC's. The costs that you see there are from the OS state contract pricing. So they are
042estimates. um they do not include any type of add-ons or warranties, but they're kind of a a best guess based off of that state contract. So, you can see the total cost of the battery electric buses themselves. What we did was we compared that to the current cost of diesel buses for Lancaster. And you can see the cost difference of the total fleet conversion of 89 buses would be an additional $27 million for all 89 buses. So looking at bringing those faucets in and kind of what the total phasing would look like, phase one would be 9.9 with the addition of 1.7. So that would be 11.6 for phase 1. So you can see how that fire protection was as shown aside separated out phase 2 and phase three. And then the additional cost of
043the battery electric which we did use the difference of the additional cost versus um your diesel cost for a total cost of about 53 million. Now looking at grants and incentives and how that may affect that cost. Um the New York State School bus incentive program or NISB offers school bus vouchers. You can see for the type C, for example, there is a B base voucher amount of about 147,000. If you select to scrap any of your existing fossil fuel buses, meaning bring it down to its frame, destroy the engine, you would receive an additional scrapage bonus for each bus that is scrapped. And there's also a wheelchair add-on. You'll notice in the bottom, um, there is some caps for that. So districts are limited to six of these vouchers total. And for school districts
044that complete a fleet electrification plan, which is this plan here, um you do receive an additional four. So that is a total of 10 vouchers. that as of today um New York State or NIRA has stated that they are seeing additional funds being put into the NISB program but there's no guarantee that that number will increase or that more vouchers will be available. So, looking at if you have a grant or incentive available for those 10 buses, um you can just see the comparison of the battery electric bus or be minus the vouchers minus the scrapage bonus for those two last um columns there, which is the cost of a diesel versus the cost of a battery electric bus with the vouchers. These numbers are very important we believe to show in the report to
045show how great these vouchers are and that we want more of them. And on the charger size side um we have the same program the nice bet program through New York State which allows you to have ch charging vouchers of 25,000 and then again since you've completed this study you will actually get 55,000 instead for each of those vouchers. you are capped to $2 million in charging vouchers, which is equivalent to about 36 chargers. So about half of the chargers that you require would you would receive charging vouchers for for a total of 2 million. And then looking at the current cost of what the chargers are, um these are estimated costs based off of our experience in the industry. 24K KW60s and 120s ranging from 18,000 to 68500 um vouchers available the 55,000 that
046you would receive versus the total cost of the charger. You'll notice that there are some negatives in there. The great thing with this program is you receive the 55,000 whether it costs 55,000 or not. So, for example, if you did get a 24 charger, 24K PW, you would still receive that full amount. you would just have to use that remaining 37,000 on something with this fleet electrification whether it be infrastructure your buses etc. And then finally on the charging infrastructure side currently the only state program available for the charging infrastructure which is the majority of your costs other than the buses is going to be the New York make ready program through the utilities. So with that it would be up to 90% of the utility side infrastructure costs. If you do have go with
047medium voltage or required to go to medium voltage um the utility side would really just be bringing in the power from the pole to your system. So it would be pretty minimal but 90% of that cost would be covered by their program. And those are all the grants and incentives. Currently there are not any customer side charging infrastructure costs um grants or incentives unless you are in a disadvantaged community your bus garage itself. So that is a pretty big hole that we are also showing as a constraint and trying to you know push that to the state and I start to turn it as an issue and something to look for in future grants and incentives and programs. looking at a conceptual schedule. Um here you can see that it starts with the utility service.
048So this would start with a work request to the utility stating here we're ready to get started. We're starting phase one design. They would then do their design and get you that full work request and the cost estimate. And then at the same time you would start phase one detailed design and your SED review. Um, you can see the pretty late long lead times come from the delivery of equipment. We've been seeing squish gear delivery be upwards of 20 months in lead time. That is something we're seeing nationwide. Um, we are engineering construction management company. So, we're we're in it and we're seeing those lead times for the past couple of years. Um thankfully in the past couple of months actually we have seen that come down to about 15 months and it is holding
049steady at that. So that's great news but with all the school districts across the state doing this same program and having to have the same equipment we are not really expecting it to get much better possibly even worse. So schedule is something that is extremely important when it comes to meeting those deadline dates and a big constraint. Speaking of constraints, um I'm not sure what happened on this slide, but for the first constraint, it's obviously those 17 buses that have routes that cannot be performed by battery electric buses. Um, again, we believe that they will become available before the end of the mandate period, but a big point of this study is determining constraints and red flags, and that is obviously a large one when trying to meet those initial dates. Next will be the
050utility requirements, which will likely push Lancaster into a medium voltage service, which we discussed. these this service obviously is a lot greater in cost than just your typical getting a new service a new util a new transformer. So that's a very large constraint in terms of costs and funding. Um also operationally having to maintain that it's a completely different system than what you currently have. lead times of swish gear which we just went over is obviously a large constraint when it comes to timing clarifications on New York State mandate. So, as even Jamie pointed out at the beginning with the waiverss, um even the specifics of that have not come out yet in terms of how to apply, how to be eligible. And so, part of a constraint with this is that as mandate upgrade
051updates come out that may affect your decision-m, your timing, um how to apply for things, etc. So, as a trusted adviser of Lancaster, we will be updating the district as we receive updates and trying to keep you in the loop, but we do have it as a constraint, as well as timelines for vouchers and incentives. There's a lot of moving pieces to these electrification plans and actually getting it moving in the construction. Um, there are specific requirements for vouchers and incentives. The timelines of them, for example, before you can even try to apply for a charging voucher, a school bus either has to be purchased or you have to have an application for a school bus voucher um, submitted and approved. So, there's a couple of different things that may trip you up when you
052begin actually converting and trying to get into these vouchers and programs. And then project next steps. Um, one option that we suggest is a pilot. Basically, what this would be would be rather than jumping right into your utility design, your medium voltage switch gear, and um all of your buses, you look at what your capacity is at your current bus garage and see if you can install just a few chargers, one or two or even three on your existing service without any major upgrades. And then that way you can also get some buses in, put them on your worst routes that are feasible based off of the study, test them in the winter months. Um, have the public take a look at them and actually watch them in the process. Get your drivers acquainted with
053them. See if there's any big issues that you're seeing. Um, we found that this helps with many things. One, it helps you show that you are trying to meet these mandates. You are putting in the effort. It's good for the public to get a look at it and educating the public, the school, and again, it's kind of dipping your toe in without having to do major upgrades. Um, obviously, we would also need voter approval followed by phase one design as well as that work request to my site to jumpstart the utility process. And on district's next steps, I'll let Jamie speak to that. Well, as we can see from tonight, obviously there's a lot of questions just as you're reading through the report, as you're just hearing the presentation, there are a lot of questions
054that there's not answers to yet either. So, um, and even the transition plan, this isn't our plan that we're going to follow step by step. It's a conceptual plan of everything that we need to think of and how um, Wendell sees it best fit that we logically carry it out. Um but what we need to do is come up with what our plan is particularly with what the timeline is going to be that we want to start um start period start um trying to meet this requirement um but also um what we want you know if we need voter approval for construction which you know we need that those requirements haven't gone away. We still need voter approval for purchasing the buses and we need voter approval to the to do the infrastructure work. Um
055we cannot do infrastructure work over $10,000 without voter approval. Right? So there's a lot of different things that we're going to need to think through. Do we want to buy 24 kilowatt chargers or do we want to buy all 60s or do we all want to buy 120s or do we want to go with 70 315 kilowatt buses? And I I feel like I'm making up numbers, but I think they might be right. Uh do we want to, you know, do we what are we doing if we're waiting for the longer route? Uh that, you know, the bigger buses and we want more of those. So there's a lot of whatifs still. There's a lot of unanswered questions still. Um, so all of that is basically saying that today's not the day we're asking for
056any decisions. I am not in a headsp space to make any decisions on it yet. I think we're going to need to have some f uh you know some further board discussions as you absorb the information more as more information comes out from NAERTA or New York State maybe as some of the requirements may get tweaked in the you know in the future. Um, so further board discussions to come up with really what we want our plan for proceeding is going to be. And then from there, we're going to need to go full force on, you know, what we need from the voters, uh, grant applications, looking how state aid uh, plays out in all of these different scenarios, um, and really just figuring out the actual impact of this and how we're going to
057make it work. So now is the official time for questions and comments. Please use the microphone. >> All right. Um so you mentioned you did some you know conservative analysis. You also mentioned you know some macrolevel problems with the the entire state needing to do this within the next 10 years. So in your opinion, in your expertise in this industry, is this feasible in 10 years for the entire state to convert? >> My personal opinion, no. I just when you look at the logistics of getting switch gear, getting it designed and getting it built, uh 10 years seems awful tight to me. Uh can we start? Yes. Um, you know, we're doing pilots right now. We've got buses on the road. There's actually a surprising number of electric school buses on the road. Um, they're
058having great success with them in a lot of areas, but there are issues. And, you know, to to have everybody by 2027 start buying electric buses. There's a lot of switch gear transformers and infrastructure needs to be put in. And, you know, we're in the middle of 2025. And when you look at 15 months to get switch gear, you know, I I think we're going to be needing those two-year extensions, and that puts even further pressure on that 2035 date. So, my my opinion is I think we're too tight. >> Um, can I ask the the group here, how often do we or how many buses do we replace typically per year? How many new ones? >> Two to five. Okay. So, So the number of projections showed we purchased we've replaced the whole fleet
059in roughly an 8year span. So we wouldn't typically replace our whole fleet over an 8year span. Correct. Okay. So that's why I was just curious as to the numbers. you you show the difference between hey we're going to buy all 89 of these buses but it's only I think a $27 million difference between diesel but in theory we wouldn't buy 89 diesel buses over that time frame correct so is that going off of if we were to buy 89 diesel buses or what we would typically buy in diesel versus what our expenditure is going to be for 89 buses this is buying starting in 2027 electric buses such that your entire fleet of 89 buses is electric by 2035 to meet the mandate. >> Correct. So the so the difference is the total estimated diesel
060fleet cost but we wouldn't >> million time right that's what that's so that's that's kind of what I'm getting is gets higher, >> right? Because over that time frame, we wouldn't spend 15 million to to buy all the buses, but we're going to spend 42 million to replace all of them. So, that's where I was just a little thrown off by because then you use that in your total cost calculation. We use the 27 million number, but that's not necessarily what that Okay, so that was question number one. Question number two was you mentioned that utility costs aren't included because we don't know what those are. you guys know or can you speak to what like the maintenance costs are? Are they similar to a diesel bus? Like just ongoing maintenance of a of an
061electric bus versus a diesel bus. If you if you look at the diesel bus versus electric bus, there's no diesel engine, there's no transmission, there's no drivetrain. You basically have electric motors on the wheels, uh some onboard computer systems, and a battery pack. They are significantly easier to maintain and cheaper to maintain. However, uh they're a different skill set. You need to train your people and high voltage DC systems. You also have now introduced new equipment, chargers that need to be maintained. So the bus itself may be easier and cheaper to maintain, but when you start looking at all the other pieces that you now have to maintain, I would say it's about a wash. >> Um, so I guess the other question is, so right now we replace our buses every like a 12
062year cycle, right Jamie? >> 10. Every 10 to 12 years we replace a bus once it gets past its useful life. Um what do you think the replacement timeline for the electric buses is? Or is it just as simple as you have to swap the battery out after 8 n years because they get bad? Sed just came out with a new revised life cycle for a battery electric bus and said it's 8 years. Now, you can get an extended warranty from your dealer, and we would recommend that you look and investigate an extended warranty on the bus, which could replace that battery in 7 to 9 years, whenever it's needed, and still get 10 to 12 years out of that bus. The bus itself isn't going to change. We typically have warranties on all of
063our buses. So, usually when we're looking to trade them in is when that warranty is no longer um and all of the maintenance costs and you know parts repairs and everything like that starts to be on our dime. Um so we would try to do something similar. They initially SED indicated that the aid they would pay us on the bus purchases would be amortized over 12 years. And we said, everyone said, "Let's be on the useful life of the bus." So, we're going to buy a bus. You're going to pay us back over a, you know, equal payments over 12 years per bus, but the we won't even have that bus anymore when you're still paying us back for it. So, you all know like if that was your own car, that would not be
064the way you would want to operate. So, they did recently change it to 8 years. Currently, we had a bus purchases over 5 years. obviously gets way shorter than the useful life of those buses, but they they went from a fiveyear payback period to a 12-year payback period. Obviously, wanting to stretch out the financial impact of the requirement. Um, but now have come back to 8 years so it at least matches the useful life of the bus. So, I'll follow up the question to the battery. So let let's say in a world where you have to replace the battery and everyone within that time frame has to get electrical buses and from my opinion if there's a battery issue might be pretty common. A lot of people are dealing with the same issues at the
065same time and we talked about the delays and getting things. Is there a world where the battery you can't you have to wait 8 to months to a year to get a replacement battery because they're backed up or I don't know if you can provide any insight on that. Again, this is there's we have experience on the transit side. We don't have experience yet on the school bus side because there's not that many deployed. But the battery components are fairly common and have been around for a long time. What really determines the life of a battery is the number of cycles that you put that battery through, how deeply you discharge it, how um fast you recharge it, you know, this the cycles that you go through. So, one school district may have completely different
066experience with the same battery that you might have. Uh, so it's really kind of hard to say. I doubt that you're going to wind up with a situation where all the school districts are winding up with a specific battery pack that has an issue. We're just not seeing that. Okay. Does anybody from the board have any more questions? >> Okay. I I would um if there's anybody here from the community who would like to ask a question. Okay. The only other thing I would add is is that uh we've been doing this a long time and you know we're here to help you. If you have questions, concerns, run them by us. We'll be more than happy to help you in any way we can. Thank you. >> Thank you. [Applause] [Music] Thank you. All
067right. So, obviously, uh quite uh quite a presentation there and more information will be coming as as we get more information, but that was just kind of the initial findings that were um that were that were done in the report that we had commissioned uh what about a year ago I believe year and a half ago. So, they've been working on that and as we get more information, we will continue to roll it out to the community. All right. Well, on to 4.2. Um, we have a public hearing for the district-wide safety plan, which is posted um on the Lancaster Schools website. So, I'm going to turn it over to Miss Phillips to discuss the districtwide safety plan. >> Okay. We can come back to it. >> Okay, no problem. All right. So, as we
068get kind of um as we get set up for the uh districtwide safety plan, I just wanted to quickly review. Um so, a draft of the 2025 2026 districtwide safety plan was posted to the district website on July 9th, 2025 for a 30-day public comment period. And tonight is the annual public hearing fulfilling the public participation requirements for this plan. The draft is available on the board of education tab of the website under districtwide safety plan 2025 2026 draft and can be found under updates. The districtwide school safety plan is in accordance with education law 2801- commissioners regulation 155.17 and is designed to prevent or minimize the effects of violent incidents and emergencies and to facilitate the coordination of schools and school districts with local and county resources in the event of such incidents or
069emergencies. The plan was reviewed thoroughly by the chief emergency officer, Miss Jamie Phillips, and also by the districtwide health and safety committee on 52825. Comments on the safety plan will be accepted through tonight's hearing or through contact with the chief emergency officer through 8:1525. The building level plans are also being updated with the assistance of Alterara safety consultants and the building level safety teams. We now open the public hearing and invite comments from the public on the draft 202526 districtwide safety plan for the school. After tonight's hearing, any uh after tonight's hearing, any comments received during the public comment period, the plan will be updated as necessary and submitted to the board for approval on a future agenda. The plan will then be dispersed to local law enforcement and emergency response agencies and uploaded to
070NISA. Uh, at this time, is there anybody who would like to speak or ask questions on the district safety plan? Okay, moving on to uh 4.3. We have a public hearing on the code of conduct and athletic code of conduct. So, I will turn this over to Mr. Andrew Krisman. >> Thank you, Mr. Terico. Um, two points here tonight. First, the district code of conduct. Um, there really is only uh one major uh significant change to the district code of conduct. uh that comes from the new legislation from New York State uh on internet enabled devices. Uh so as a result of that new legislation, we've had to make some adjustments to the code of conduct modifying some of the language around the use of personal devices uh during the instructional day. Students will be
071instructed to keep their personal devices off and away during the school day and any instruction that requires the use of internet enabled devices will be delivered to students via their district issued device. Um so that's really the main change that you're um talking about with the code of conduct. Uh and then in regards to the athletic code of conduct uh this was updated this past year by committee of stakeholders under the guidance of Mr. Rup our athletic director. some notable highlights and changes for the athletic code of conduct for the upcoming school year. Um, student athletes that do not maintain academic eligibility, uh, which is defined as having an overall grade point average of 72% or higher. Uh, those students may continue to practice and work out with their respective teams, uh, but will not
072be able to compete in competitions. uh where before essentially you were excluded from practices and workouts, now you may still practice and work out with the team. Um you'll be uh excluded from competitions. Um there's been some updates um in regards to student conduct on social media. Uh the use of personal cellular devices and vaping that were not previously addressed in the previous code of conduct. Um and then there was also a new section added around setting spectator expectations. um as we've seen an increase in behaviors not just in Lancaster but uh across the region. Um so those are the notable highlights that come out of the athletic code of conduct um for the 2526 upcoming school year. Any questions from anyone on those two items? Thank you, Mr. Crazer. 5.0 correspondence. We had none.
0736.0 Approval of minutes. 6.1 Could I have a motion for approval of the organizational meeting from July 14, 2025? >> Any comments or questions? All those in favor? >> Any opposed? Motion carries. 7.0 items from staff organizations. Do we have anybody from the Lancaster Administrative and Supervisory Association? Anybody from the Lancaster Central Teachers Association? Thank you, Miss Fur. From the Lancaster Association of Service Personnel, anyone from the Lancaster Association of Substitute Teachers. 8.0 board reports. Do any board members have anything to report? Okay. 9.0 know superintendent's administrative report. I will turn it over to Dr. Kufel. >> Thank you, Mr. President. I have a few quick ones. Um just the zero mission vehicle transition plan. Just a thank you to Miss Jamie Phillips, Mike Barkski, Judy Feldmeer. Um the amount of of time, effort, and
074uh coordination that's gone into the presentation and the report that that you've just seen um has been quite a bit. so uh to give the comprehensive uh report. So thank you to them. Thank you obviously to John Katie Dante with Lendle um for the report uh conducting the study and then also for answering the questions and and helping us along our journey. I say the music department obviously continues to shine as the summer um carnival kids steel orchestra CKSO has been uh on tour all over Western New York led by Ariana Gioana. Um the annual summer concert at the Lancaster band show which is adjacent to the Lancaster Youth Bureau of the Senior Center um recently occurred with our talented band and orchestra orchestra students. Um the music department continues throughout the summer which provides
075opportunities for the entire community and fun for the whole family. Uh you know you'll hear some recognizable songs throughout the course of the summer. Over the rainbow from Wizard of Oz, Bang on the Drum All Day and Maniac from Flash Dance. And then um I think this was touched on a little bit in the code of conduct, Governor Hokllo's personal internet enabled device ban, quote unquote mobile device or cell phone ban. Um we will continue to provide communication to help our families, our students, our faculty, staff, and others transition. Um certainly especially here at the high school is probably the greatest navigate the changes based on Governor Hokll's ban um that goes into effect upcoming school year. Over the course of the year, we have gathered feedback from a variety of stakeholders um including our
076students uh and faculty at various buildings. Um last week, I think last month actually a few weeks ago, we had district level communication. This week, we have additional communication going out along with our timeline to help provide some answers to some frequently asked questions that we've received um through surveys and and other areas of feedback. And then there's going to be more communication regarding specific building level information coming in the very near future future. Uh important to note that we'll continue to collect information throughout the course of the year to make sure uh that we can best inform the decisions that are made and procedures that are in place to uh support this transition. Uh and we understand from other districts around uh New York State quite frankly who have gone this path um in
077the last several years that uh it's important to be able to be flexible and open to communication uh so that we're able to respond with the needs as they arise. Turn back. Thank you, Dr. Cooper. 10.0 old business. Does anybody have any old business to discuss? 11.0 I know new business. Uh 11.1 Personnel items. 11.1.1 Personnel Changes. Can I have a motion to accept personnel changes? Any comments or questions? All those in favor? >> Any opposed? Motion carries. 11.2 Education Items. 11.2.1. Can I have a motion to accept the committee on special education? Second. >> Any comments or questions? All those in favor? >> Any opposed? Motion carries. 11.2.2. Can I have a motion to accept the committee on preschool special education? >> Any comments or questions? All those in favor? >> Any opposed? Motion
078carries. 12.0 Business and Financial Items 12.1. May I have a motion to accept the financial reports? >> Any comments or questions? All those in favor? >> Any opposed? Motion carries. 12.2. Can I have Oh, I'm sorry. 12.2 is a policy second reading. district technology device student agreement policy. This is for information only. We will vote on that on the at the next meeting. Without objection, I would like to group together 12.3 to 12.7. That would be 12.3 contract with Aspire of Western New York. 12.4 Contract with Western New York Dyslexia Specialist LLC. 12.5 Contract with the Town of Lancaster Family Support Center Coordinator. 12.6 6 contract with the town of Lancaster School and Community Support Center and 12.7 contract with the Carousel Nursery School. Can I have a motion to accept those contracts? >> Any
079comments or questions? All those in favor? Any opposed? Motion carries. 12.8. Can I have a motion to accept the surplus equipment? Any comments or questions? All those in favor? Anyone against? Motion carries. 12.9. Can I have a motion on the surplus books? Any comments or questions? All those in favor? Anyone against? Motion carries. 12.10. Can I have a motion on the food service operating reports? Any comments or questions? All those in favor? Anyone against? Motion carries. 12.11 is a bid award transportation parts and supplies. Can I have a motion? All those in favor? I apologize. Comments or questions? All those in favor? >> Anyone guess? Motion carries. 1212 is another bid award for the athletic equipment and supplies. Can I have a motion? >> Any comments or questions? All those in favor? >> Anyone opposed?
080Motion carries. 12.13. Can I have a motion on the construction change orders? >> Any comments or questions? All those in favor? >> Any opposed? Motion carries. Uh without objection, I'd like to group together 12.14 to 12.17. 12.14 is a contract with Stark Techch Operating uh company LLC. 12.15 is a contract with All State Fire and Security. 12.16 is a contract with US Omni. 12.17 is a contract with Bison Elevator Services, Inc. Can I have a motion to accept the contracts? Any comments or questions? All those in favor? >> Any opposed? Motion carries. 12.18. Can I have a motion on the universal prek program? Second. Any comments or questions? All those in favor? Anyone against? Motion carries. 12.19. Can I have a motion on the AIA contract with Weatherproofing Technologies, Inc.? >> Any comments or questions?
081All those in favor? >> Anyone opposed? Motion carries. 12.20. Can I have a motion on the contract with Shaes O'Connell Preservation Guild Ltd, DBA, Shaes Performing Arts Center, and Shaes Buffalo Theater? >> Comments or questions? All those in favor? >> Anyone opposed? Motion carries. 12.21 Parent Transportation Contract. Can I have a motion? Any comments or questions? All those in favor? >> Anyone against? Motion carries. 12.22. Can I have a motion on the 2025 2026 tax levy? Any comments or questions? All those in favor? >> Anyone against? Motion carries. 13.0 is our public hearing. We do not have anyone signed up to speak this evening. 14.0. Um, can I have a motion to go into executive session to discuss the employment of a particular person? Any comments or questions? All those in favor? >> Anyone against?
082Motion carries. Okay, that uh will effectively end tonight's uh public portion of the meeting. Um I would like to remind everybody that our next regular session is August 25th. It will be held at the Lancaster Middle School auditorium. Want to thank everybody for tonight. Um, and thank you very