Rob Petree of WIVBTV says parents in the Lake Shore Central School District are sounding the alarm over a basic winter expectation: that a school bus should be warm enough for kids to ride without shivering the whole way to class.
Petree reports the parents’ claim is blunt and troubling—some drivers are allegedly turning the heat down, or even off, to conserve battery life on the district’s electric buses, and families say they’ve gotten little reassurance that it’s being fixed.
He also frames the tension around a bigger backdrop: a statewide push that would require all new school bus purchases in New York to be electric by 2027, even as districts argue the details of cost, range, and cold-weather performance aren’t as tidy as policy slogans make them sound.
“My Grandson Came Home Cold”
Petree says the outrage he heard from parents didn’t start with politics or abstract debates about clean energy, but with what kids told them when they walked through the door after school…