h/t MGUY; Children’s fingers, toes and noses are so overrated…
Parents raise concerns over heat issues in electric school buses in Lake Shore Central School District
Rob Petree
Fri, December 19, 2025 at 8:10 AM GMT+10ERIE COUNTY, N.Y. (WIVB) — On the heels of a statewide mandate requiring all school bus purchases in New York State be electric by 2027, parents in the Lake Shore Central School District are speaking out, claiming some bus drivers are turning the heat down, or off completely, in an attempt to conserve battery life on their electric school buses.
WIVB News 4 has received several calls from concerned parents in the school district, which covers parts of Angola, Brant, and Derby, regarding their child’s bus trips to and from school, claiming they’re coming in freezing when they get home after getting off the bus.
The kids are coming home saying their bus is freezing cold and the parents are giving them hand warmers.
…
“The bus broke down on route,” explained Chris Lampman, another concerned parent whose son allegedly had to stand outside in the freezing cold as a result. “They deployed a substitute bus, and the bus was more than 30 minutes late. My son stood outside for over 35 minutes waiting for a bus that wasn’t coming. Some of those kids are on there for upwards of a half hour or more while the bus makes its route. There’s no reason that the kids should freeze for all that time.”
…
“My grandson came home from school last week when it was 23 degrees,” Urbino stated. “He said they didn’t have heat. He came in cold, and I told him, I said, ‘isn’t the bus warm?’ And he said ‘no, they can’t put the heat on because it drains the battery.’”
…
Read more: https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/parents-raise-concerns-over-heat-221015103.html
The school district claims elsewhere in the quoted article that policy is to keep the buses warm, and that the buses have enough battery capacity to complete all required routes.
If this claim heating is being switched off is true, the risk to the health of kids is unconscionable. Not everyone is wealthy enough to afford all the warm weather clothes their kids might need. Young kids especially can lose gloves and hats, or forget to put them on. A kid who boards the bus with a cold might have pneumonia by the time they get off.
There is also a risk to the health of the drivers. Sitting still in hard frost temperatures while driving a bus is a potential DVT, frostbite, stroke and heart attack risk.
I don’t blame the drivers – they are likely just doing what they have to, to ensure the kids aren’t exposed to cold for an even longer time while waiting for a replacement bus. But if anything bad happens, I’m sure the driver will be blamed for violating policy by switching off the heating.
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I am old enough to remember 2011, when NYSERDA promoted Alternative Fuel Vehicles, including those fueled by CNG (compressed natural gas) and LPG.
Imagine NY resuming natural gas development in the Marcellus and Utica shale formations and promoting CNG-fueled school buses and commercial fleet vehicles. No problem with heat in the winter. This push for battery-only buses is nuts.
https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2014/03/f11/arravt053_ti_bolton_2011_p.pdf
Perhaps Canada could set up drilling ops on the New York border and use Horizontal Drilling to reach Marcellus from their side…I mean New York isn’t going to use it.
The cartoon at the top of the page is inaccurate – there aren’t any White children in New York…
The demographics do seem to be a tad off.
Story tip:
EV Battery-Swapping Startup That Raised $330 Million Files for Bankruptcy
https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/25/12/20/0733202/ev-battery-swapping-startup-that-raised-330-million-files-for-bankruptcy
Don’t remember buses being heated in my youth.
The electric trains were though. bliss.
Fascinating that in this age of run away global warming kids are freezing.
Seems we are about to face the coldest winter in a decade. Where is all that CO2 “trapped heat” when you want it most?
Every time a white coloniser child hides in a heated bus it kills a child in Africa due to global boiling.
Indigenous peoples never heated their school buses.
Two takeaways from this article 1) perhaps the kids won’t be so cold when they are standing upwind of the bus when the batteries inevitably catche fire. 2) the long lasting memories linking cold bus journeys and EVs will stay with them into their adulthood and put them off EV purchases for good. Every cloud and all that…
When I was a kid, the school buses were not heated.
We knew what to expect and prepared.
That aside, EV school buses are a bad idea.
While it is not so bad enduring a 30 minute trip, when the bus fails and the kids get stranded, then there are some real concerns must be addressed in advance.