A Planned Parenthood clinic in Salt Lake City, Utah, is pictured on Wednesday, July 31, 2024. (Photo by McKenzie Romero/Utah News Dispatch)
WASHINGTON — The federal government cannot withhold Medicaid funding from Planned Parenthood for at least the next two weeks, after a district court judge issued a temporary restraining order the same day the organization filed a lawsuit.
Republicans included language in their “big, beautiful bill” that would block Medicaid payments from going to Planned Parenthood for the next year, a move that would effectively prevent enrollees in the state-federal health program for lower income people from visiting any of its clinics for routine health care.
The ban began when President Donald Trump signed the bill into law on Friday.
Congress already bars federal funding from going to abortion services with limited exceptions.
The suit alleges Planned Parenthood was singled out “in order to punish them for lawful activity, namely advocating for and providing legal abortion access wholly outside the Medicaid program and without using any federal funds.”
The filing also says more than 1 million Medicaid enrollees go to Planned Parenthood in a given year and that the organization received more than one-third of its total aggregate revenue from Medicaid reimbursement during fiscal year 2023.
District Court Judge Indira Talwani’s brief two-page temporary restraining order called on the Trump administration to file a status update later this week. And she set an in-person hearing later this month to hear from Planned Parenthood and the Trump administration.
Talwani was nominated to the bench by former President Barack Obama.
The Trump administration has yet to file any documents in the case and the Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to a request for comment from States Newsroom about the judge’s temporary restraining order.
Attorney General Pam Bondi indicated during a Cabinet meeting Tuesday afternoon that the Department of Justice plans to challenge the temporary restraining order.
“Absolutely, yes. We’re on it,” Bondi said.
Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts and Planned Parenthood Association of Utah — the three groups that filed the lawsuit — wrote in a statement they were “grateful that the court acted swiftly to block this unconstitutional law attacking Planned Parenthood providers and patients.
“Already, in states across the country, providers and health center staff have been forced to turn away patients who use Medicaid to get basic sexual and reproductive health care because President Trump and his backers in Congress passed a law to block them from going to Planned Parenthood. There are no other providers who can fill the gap if the ‘defunding’ of Planned Parenthood is allowed to stand. The fight is just beginning, and we look forward to our day in court.”
Representatives from top school bus and powertrain manufacturers will provide insights into the complex landscape of school bus emissions and regulatory challenges facing the industry over the next couple of years during STN EXPO West in Reno, Nevada.
Scheduled for July 13, the panel session will feature representatives from Blue Bird, Cummins, IC Bus, RIDE and Thomas Built Buses.
The panel will explore several pressing topics, including impacts of the Congressional Review Act signed by President Trump early this month, EPA Clean School Bus funding developments, the impact of an ongoing federal review of the EPA Phase 3 Greenhouse Gas regulations, supply chain considerations, workforce development for electric school buses, and more.
With ongoing legal challenges and shifting regulatory environments amid rising tariffs, school districts and transportation professionals need clarity to navigate the uncertain emissions landscape. OEMs face similar challenges. The panelists will offer as many strategic insights as they can, keeping in mind that more changes could still occur, focusing on broader industry trends and challenges.
The discussion promises to be a must-attend event for anyone involved in school transportation, offering an opportunity to hear directly from industry experts about the future of clean transportation.
Don’t miss this session and the entire STN EXPO West experience! Register now for the conference, which starts July 11 and runs through July 16 at the Peppermill Resort in Reno, Nevada.
The Senate confirmed Olivia Trusty to fill out the remaining 13 days of former Federal Communications Commission chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel’s term and join the board for a full five-year term starting July 1.
Rosenworcel resigned from the board and as FCC’s first female chair in January. She served on the board from 2012 to 2017 when she was re-confirmed for another term and then was named chairwoman.
A Democrat, Rosenworcel was a leading proponent of school bus Wi-Fi and advocated for its inclusion in E-Rate funding. Her two fellow Democrats on the board at the time cast the deciding votes in 2023 over the objection of their two Republican counterparts to extend E-Rate discounts on internet equipment, installation and service to school bus Wi-Fi.
While Wi-Fi continues to be an approved use, a case before the U.S. Supreme Court on the applicability of the Universal Service Fund could determine its future. Congressional Republicans have also signaled their intent to introduce legislation that would revisit the issue.
Meanwhile, Trusty was nominated by President Trump in January, and the Senate confirmed her by a vote of 53-45 on May 18. Trusty’s five-year term begins July 1.
Trusty joins FCC after serving as policy director for the Senate commerce, science and transportation committee. She is also a telecommunications policy analyst.
Prior to Trusty’s confirmation, the FCC was down to two commissioners. Republican Chair Brendan Carr, an FCC commissioner since 2017 and prior to that FCC’s general counsel, was confirmed as chairman in January. Carr was joined by Democrat Anna Gomez, who joined the FCC in September 2023.
Democrat Geoffrey Starks announced in January he was also resigning. His last day was June 6, the same day Republican Nathan Simington abruptly resigned. Trusty shifts the FCC to a 2-1 Republican majority.
Rosenworcel also officially retired in January, around the same time Trump tapped Trusty to replace her.
Workers moving equipment and road signs on a highway. (Getty Images)
A Rhode Island federal judge seemed likely Wednesday to block the U.S. Department of Transportation’s move to yank billions in congressional funding for bridges, roads and airport projects if Democrat-led states do not partake in federal immigration enforcement.
U.S. District Judge John James McConnell Jr. during a hearing pressed acting U.S. Attorney Sara Miron Bloom on how the Transportation Department could have power over funding that was approved by Congress, saying federal agencies “only have appropriations power given by Congress.”
“That’s how the Constitution works,” he said. “Where does the secretary get the power and authority to impose immigration conditions on transportation funding?”
The suit brought by 20 Democratic state attorneys general challenges an April directive from Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, a former House member from Wisconsin, that requires states to cooperate in federal immigration enforcement in order to receive federal grants already approved by Congress.
“Defendents seek to hold hostage tens of billions of dollars of critical transportation funding in order to force the plaintiff states to become mere arms of the federal government’s immigration enforcement policies,” Delbert Tran of the California Department of Justice, who argued on behalf of the states, said.
Arguing on behalf of the Trump administration, Bloom said that Duffy’s letter simply directs the states to follow federal immigration law.
McConnell, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama in 2011, said that while the states could interpret it that way, the Trump administration has gone after so-called sanctuary cities and targeted them for not taking the same aggressive immigration enforcement as the administration.
The judge said Bloom’s argument expressed a “very different” interpretation of the directive than how the administration has described it publicly. He also noted President Donald Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem have “railed on … the issues that arise from sanctuary cities.”
Trump this week directed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to target Chicago, Los Angeles and New York — three major Democrat-led cities that have policies to not aid in immigration enforcement.
McConnell said he would make a decision whether to issue a preliminary injunction before Friday. The preliminary injunction would be tailored to the states that brought the suit and would not have a nationwide effect.
The states that brought the suit are California, Illinois, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Maryland, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin.
Undermines Congress
Tran said the Department of Transportation’s directive is not only arbitrary and capricious, but undermines congressional authority because Congress appropriated more than $100 billion for transportation projects to the states.
Cutting off funding would have disastrous consequences, the states have argued.
“More cars, planes, and trains will crash, and more people will die as a result, if Defendants cut off federal funding to Plaintiff States,” according to the brief from the states.
Transportation security and immigration
Bloom defended Duffy’s letter, saying it listed actions that would impede federal law enforcement and justified withholding of funds because “such actions compromise the safety and security of the transportation systems supported by DOT financial assistance.”
McConnell said that didn’t answer his question about the secretary’s authority to withhold congressionally appropriated funding.
“It seems to me that the secretary is saying that a failure to comply with immigration conditions is relevant to the safety and security of the transportation system,” Bloom said.
McConnell seemed skeptical of that argument.
“Under that rationale, does the secretary of the Department of Transportation have the authority to impose a condition on federal highway funds that prohibit a state that has legalized abortion from seeking a federal grant?” he asked.
Bloom said that question was beyond her directive from the Department of Transportation to address in her arguments to the court.
“I understand your question,” she said. “All I think I can say is that here the secretary has, in his statement, set out a rationale for why this is relevant to DOT funding.”
Tran said that the “crux of this case is” that the Trump administration is trying “to enforce other laws that do not apply to these grants,” by requiring states to partake in immigration enforcement.
“It’s beyond their statutory authority,” he argued.
CUMBERLAND, R.I. – Blackstone Valley Prep (BVP) recently celebrated an electrifying milestone – its fleet of electric school buses surpassed 100,000 miles traveled since hitting the roads last winter. Since its introduction to the community, the new fleet of 24 electric vehicles (EV) has been met with revere and praise for their quiet nature and most importantly, the beneficial impact on the futures of their students and community.
In this major milestone for sustainable student transportation, the 100,000 miles Blackstone Valley Prep’s EV fleet has traveled is a distance that marks more than just mileage. The electric buses have prevented approximately 157,198 kgs of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere thus far, which is equivalent to taking around 33 passenger vehicles off the road for an entire year, based on conversion factors from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). As illustrated by the statistics above, it is clear that these EV school buses are creating a healthier and more sustainable future where every mile driven helps reduce harmful emissions and promotes cleaner air in their communities.
Beth Dowd, Director of Operations at Blackstone Valley Prep shared, “We’re so proud to have surpassed 100,000 miles already in the handful of months we’ve been running our electric fleet! We are deeply committed to the well-being of all of our scholars and our entire community, and these numbers are showing us that this effort will make a significant impact over time.”
“Congratulations to BVP for reaching this incredibly impactful milestone. This 100K mile achievement is a testament to the real-world impact electric school buses are having on the environment and the communities they serve,” said Wayne Skinner, Senior Vice President of Fleet & Procurement, Durham School Services. “It is crucial that we recognize these EV milestones and share progress updates and data, which can then be used to support and advocate for state and federal EV funding assistance programs. BVP’s milestone is just one of many more to come, and we hope you’ll join and support us as we continue to advocate for healthier, greener futures for our students and communities.”
About Durham School Services: As an industry-leading student transportation provider, Durham School Services is dedicated to the safety of our students and People. For more than 100 years, we have been committed to Excellence and upholding our mission of getting students to school safely, on time, and ready to learn. Through this mission and a grassroots approach to our operations, Durham School Services has earned recognition as a trusted transportation provider among our Customers and the Communities we serve.
Joint Finance Co-Chair Rep. Mark Born (R-Beaver Dam) said at a press conference ahead of the meeting that he would tell advocates who wanted the 60% rate that the state budget has to be “right-sized” and “affordable.” (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)
After many delays, the Wisconsin Joint Finance Committee met Thursday evening to approve its plan for K-12 education spending that included a 5% increase to special education funding for schools and its $1.3 billion tax plan that targets retirees and middle-income earners.
Lawmakers on the powerful budget-writing committee went back and forth for nearly three hours about the plans with Republicans saying they made significant investments in education and would help Wisconsinites while Democrats argued the state should do more for schools.
Over $220 million for special education, no additional general aid for schools
The committee approved a total of about $336 million total in new general purpose revenue for Wisconsin’s K-12 schools — only about 10% of Gov. Tony Evers’ proposed $3.1 billion in new spending.
Special education costs will receive the majority of the allocation with an additional $220 million that will be split between the general special education reimbursement and a subset of high-cost special education services.
The special education reimbursement funding includes $77.2 million in the first year of the budget, which will bring the rate at which the state reimburses school districts to an estimated 35%, and $151 million in the second year bringing the rate to an estimated 37.5%. It’s well below the $1.13 billion or 60% reimbursement for special education that Evers had proposed and that advocates had said was essential to place school districts back on a sustainable funding path.
Education advocates spent the last week lobbying for the additional funding — and warning lawmakers about the financial strain on districts and the resources the students could lose. Ahead of the meeting Thursday, Democrats and a coalition of Wisconsin parents of students with disabilities spoke to the urgent need for additional investment in the state’s general special education reimbursement rate.
“Everywhere we’ve gone in the state of Wisconsin, whether it’s rural school districts, urban school districts, whether it’s school districts that have passed referendums and those that haven’t, they all say the same thing — 60% primary special education funding is absolutely necessary for our schools to succeed,” Rep. Tip McGuire (D-Kenosha) said at the press conference. “You can see that we have had a cycle of referendum throughout Wisconsin, and that cycle has to end.”
Ahead of the meeting Thursday, Democrats and a coalition of Wisconsin parents of students with disabilities spoke to the urgent need for additional investment in the state’s general special education reimbursement rate. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)
The special education reimbursement peaked at 70% in 1973, according to the Wisconsin Policy Forum. After falling to a low of 24.9% in 2015-16, the state’s share of special education costs has been incrementally increasing with some fluctuations.
The Republican proposal represents, at maximum, about a 5% increase to the current rate by the second year. According to budget papers prepared by the Legislative Fiscal Bureau, the investment lawmakers made last session was meant to bring the rate to 33.3%, but because it is a sum certain rate — meaning there was only a set amount of money set aside, regardless of expanding costs — the actual rates have been 32.4% in 2023-24 and an estimated 32.1% for 2024-25.
Joint Finance Co-Chair Rep. Mark Born (R-Beaver Dam) said at a press conference ahead of the meeting that he would tell advocates who wanted the 60% rate that the state budget has to be “right-sized” and “affordable.”
“The governor’s budget has always [had] reckless spending that the state can’t afford, and so we’re choosing to make key investments and priorities, and these investments today will be some of … the largest investments you’ll see in the budget,” Born said.
The committee also added $54.5 million to bring the additional reimbursement rate for a small number of high-cost special education services to 50% in the first year of the budget and 90% in the second year. The high-cost special education program provides additional aid when costs exceed $30,000 for a single student in one year. According to DPI, in 2025 only 3% of students with disabilities fell in the high-cost special education category.
In 2024-25, the program only received $14.5 million from the state. Evers had proposed the state invest an additional $18.5 million.
Republicans on the committee insisted that they were trying to compromise and making a significant investment in schools — noting that education likely will continue being the state’s top expenditure in the budget. Meanwhile, Democrats spoke extensively about the need for higher rates of investment, read messages from superintendents and students in their districts and said Republicans were not doing what people asked for.
“High needs special education funding only reaches about 3% of Wisconsin’s special education students,” Rep. Deb Andraca said. “You’re getting a couple good talking points, but you’re not going to get the kinds of public schools that Wisconsin kids deserve.”
During the committee meeting, Sen. Julian Bradley (R-New Berlin) criticized Democrats for saying they would vote against the proposals. He said Democrats would vote against any proposal if it isn’t what they want.
“If we all voted no, we would return to base funding, which was good enough by the way for the governor last budget because he signed it,” Bradley said. “There would be no increases, but instead we’ve introduced a motion which will increase funding.”
McGuire responded by saying he wouldn’t vote for a proposal that is “condemning the state to continuing the cycle of referendum,” which he said Republicans are doing by minimally increasing the special education reimbursement rate and not investing any additional money in general aid.
“Wisconsinites across the state are having to choose between raising their own property taxes” and the schools, McGuire said.
The Kenosha School District, which is in McGuire’s legislative district, recently failed to pass referendum to help reduce a budget deficit. School leaders had said a significant increase in the special education reimbursement would prevent the district from having to seek a referendum again.
“They had a $19 million budget gap, and if this state went to 60% special education funding, you know roughly where we promised we would be, that would’ve gone down to $6 million,” McGuire said, “…$13 million of those dollars are our responsibility. That’s been our failing, and we should live up to that.”
“What are we arguing about? We’re putting more money in,” Sen. Patrick Testin (R-Stevens Point) said.“I would think that when this gets to his desk, Evers would sign this because it is a bigger increase than any of what he proposed while he was state superintendent.”
McGuire said the investment in the high-cost special education is also good, but only applies to a small number of schools and students.
“You know, what would benefit all school districts in the state and will benefit all students who need special education? The primary special education reimbursement rate, which you put at 37.5[%], but everyone says should be at 60[%].” McGuire said. “I don’t think this is your intention, but I don’t believe that we should be exchanging children who need our assistance for other children who need our assistance. Why can’t we just help all of the kids who need our help?”
Rep. Tony Kurtz (R-Wonewoc) said that the increase for high-cost special education will have a significant impact on some schools, especially smaller ones, and students, even if it’s not many of them.
“To get 90% for them is huge for any of our rural districts. One child, which deserves an education, can break the bank for our small districts,” Kurtz said. “Is it perfect? No, it’s not perfect, but we have to stay within our means.”
Committee co-chair Sen. Howard Marklein (R-Spring Green) echoed Kurtz’s comments saying that there will be “a lot of districts that are going to be awful happy about that.”
“They’ve been worried about sometimes, a student moves into the district, and it’s of incredibly high, high needs,” Marklein said.
The committee also declined to include additional general aid for school districts. Republicans on the committee said there was already a $325 per pupil increase to districts’ revenue limits built into the budget from last session due to Evers’ partial veto. The increase gives districts the option to raise property taxes, though it doesn’t require them to, and does not include state funding for the increase.
Sen. Romaine Quinn (R-Birchwood) told lawmakers not to forget about the increase, saying the “insulting part about that is that everyone gets it.
There are schools that don’t need that,” Quinn said. “72% of my districts spend less than [the schools of] my Democratic colleagues on this panel.”
School Administrators Alliance Executive Director Dee Pettack, Wisconsin Association of School Boards Executive Director Dan Rossmiller, Southeast Wisconsin School Alliance Executive Director Cathy Olig and Wisconsin Rural Schools Alliance Executive Director Jeff Eide said in a joint letter reacting to the proposal that lawmakers failed to hear the voices school leaders, parents and community and business leaders.
“While the $325 revenue limit authority exists, it is not funded by the state. Instead, it is entirely borne by local property taxpayers. In addition, school districts will not see the requested support in special education,” the leaders stated. “Because of the lack of state support in these two critical areas, school districts will be left with no choice but to ask their local taxpayers to step up and shoulder the costs locally, regardless of their ability to pay.”
The leaders said the state was investing minimally and school districts will continue to struggle to fund mandated primary special education programs.
State Superintendent Jill Underly called the Republicans’ proposal “irresponsible” in a statement Friday and said it “puts politics ahead of kids and disregards educators and public schools when they need support the most.”
“Our public schools desperately need and deserve funding that is flexible, spendable and predictable,” Underly said. “This budget fails to deliver on all three. Once again, those in power had an opportunity to do right by Wisconsin’s children — and once again, they turned their backs on them.”
The committee also approved $30 million for the state’s choice school programs, $20 million for mental health services in school, $250,000 for robotics league grants, $750,000 for a single school, the Lakeland STAR Academy (a provision that Evers vetoed last session), $100,000 for Special Olympics Wisconsin, $3 million for public library system aid, $500,000 for recovery high schools and $500,000 for Wisconsin Reading Corps.
Over $1 billion in tax cuts
Republican lawmakers also approved tax cuts of about $1.3 billion for the budget Thursday evening after 8 p.m., including changes to the income tax brackets and a cut for retirees in Wisconsin.
Born and Marklein said the cuts would help retirees and other Wisconsinites afford to stay in the state.
“These are average, hard-working people in our state that will benefit from our tax cut,” Marklein said.
The income tax change will allow more people to qualify for the second tax bracket with a rate of 4.4% by raising the qualifying maximum income to $50,480 for single filers, $67,300 for joint filers and $33,650 for married-separate filers. This will reduce the state’s revenues by $323 million in 2025-26 and $320 million in 2026-27.
People currently eligible for the second tax bracket include: single filers making between $14,680 and $29,370, joint filers making between $19,580 and $39,150 and married separate filers making between $9,790 and $19,580.
Wisconsin Republicans have been seeking another significant tax cut since the last budget cycle when Evers vetoed their proposals. After the rejection, Republicans started to narrow their tax cuts proposals to focus on retirees and a couple of other groups with the hope of getting Evers’ approval. When negotiations on this year’s budget reached an impasse, Evers had said he was willing to support Republicans’ tax goals, but he wanted agreements from them, too.
The proposal also includes an exclusion from income taxes for retirees that would reduce the state’s revenues by $395 million in 2025-26 and $300 million in 2026-27.
“This isn’t a high-income oriented kind of thing,” Marklein said during the meeting. “It just helps a lot of average people in the state of Wisconsin, so it’s very good tax policy.”
Democrats appeared unimpressed with the tax proposal.
The Legislative Fiscal Bureau told lawmakers that the income tax change would lead to about a maximum impact of $253 annually for married joint filers, $190 annually for single filers and $127 for married separate filers.
“So roughly $5 a week for a married couple,” McGuire said.
McGuire said that Democrats just have the perspective that Wisconsin could invest more in the priorities that residents have been expressing.
“We heard from a lot of people about what they need,” McGuire said in reference to school districts. “We also know that as they’ve been attempting to get those funds they’ve had to go to referendums across the state, and… we think that’s harming communities and making it more difficult for people. As a perspective, we believe that that’s a good place to invest in dollars.”
Tech colleges
The committee also voted to provide additional funding for the Wisconsin technical colleges, though it is, again, significantly less than what was requested by Evers and by the system.
The proposal will provide an additional $13 million to the system. This includes $7 million in general aid for the system of 16 technical colleges, $2 million in aid meant for grants for artificial intelligence, $3 million for grants for textbooks and nearly $30,000 to support the operations of the system.
Evers had proposed the state provide the system with $45 million in general aid
Sen. LaTonya Johnson (D-Milwaukee) said the differences between Evers’ proposals and what Republicans offered were stark.
“We hear my GOP colleagues talk about worker training all the time and this is their opportunity to make sure that our technical colleges have the resources that they need to make sure that we are training an adequate workforce,” Johnson said, noting that the state could be short by 1,000 nurses (many of whom start their education in technical colleges) by 2030. “I’ve never had an employer complain about having an educated workforce, not once, but I have heard employers say that Wisconsin lacks the skill sets and educational skills they need. It seems my Republican colleagues are more concerned with starving our institutions of higher education, rather than making sure they have the resources they need.”
Testin said the proposal was not a cut and that Republicans were investing in technical colleges.
“We see there’s value in our technical colleges because they are working with the business community … getting students through the door quicker with less debt,” Testin said. “Any conversations that this is a cut is just unrealistic. These are critical investments in the technical system.”
Thousands of Chicago Public Schools (CPS) students could soon be left without a safe or consistent way to get to class as both the city’s transit systems and school transportation network confront structural instability, rising costs and limited resources.
At the center of this crisis is a $771 million funding shortfall projected to hit the Regional Transportation Authority (RTA)—which oversees CTA, Metra, and Pace—by fiscal year 2026. At the same time, CPS continues to restrict access to yellow school bus services, offering it primarily to students with disabilities or those experiencing housing instability.
The result: A looming transportation cliff for tens of thousands of students who rely on a fragile mix of public buses, trains and limited school transport options.
CPS Acknowledges Strain, Defends Strategy
In a statement to School Transportation News, CPS emphasized its commitment to student transportation.
“Chicago Public Schools (CPS) remains committed to working in partnership with vendors, city agencies, and families to provide yellow bus transportation to eligible students,” the district said. “The district is in the process of developing the FY 2026 budget, which must be presented to the Chicago Board of Education by the end of August.”
As of June 2, CPS reported that 14,135 students (approximately 82 percent of the 17,130 eligible for transportation service out of a total enrollment of 325,000) had been assigned a school bus route during the 2024-2025 school year, which ended Thursday. The majority – 11,894 – were students with disabilities, with 2,073 being general education students and 168 served under the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act.
CPS emphasized that its transportation system is outsourced and must cover more than 200 square miles of city territory. The routing process is “ongoing,” the district noted, and subject to constant change due to shifting student addresses and school enrollments.
City Transit Cuts Threaten the Backup Plan
For students who do not qualify for yellow school bus service—particularly high schoolers attending selective enrollment, charter or magnet schools—Chicago’s public transit has long served as the fallback.
But that fallback may soon collapse.
The RTA warned of devastating service reductions beginning in 2026, when pandemic-era federal aid dries up. Without new revenue from the state or local governments, CTA could lose up to 60 percent of its bus routes and half its rail service, impacting more than 500,000 daily riders.
The consequences for students could be severe. CPS has not released updated transit ridership data, but a 2020 report estimated that over 70 percent of CPS high schoolers relied on public transit to reach school. That reliance is unlikely to have changed significantly, especially as CPS continues to limit yellow bus eligibility.
CPS Measures to Mitigate the Impact
To address existing transportation challenges, CPS said it increased wages for yellow bus drivers—twice in the past three years – and adjusted school bell times at selected campuses to maximize routing efficiency. CPS also expanded its school bus driver recruitment through job fairs and citywide media campaigns. And it sought an extension of the federal “under-the-hood” waiver that bypasses a need for school bus driver applicants to take the engine compartment pre-trip inspection portion of the commercial driver’s license exam.
CPS and the Illinois Secretary of State offered CDL testing and study materials in both English and Spanish languages.
As of June 2, the district had 901 school bus drivers available to service CPS routes.
CPS also continues its partnership with the CTA to provide free Ventra cards to eligible general education students who qualify for transportation but do not have access to a school bus. These cards have been distributed since the beginning of the school year and remain a stopgap solution.
Still, transportation advocates argue these efforts, while important, fall short of meeting the broader need—particularly for families who live far from their assigned or chosen schools.
In 2023, CPS launched a “hub stop” pilot program to address ongoing bus driver shortages. Instead of home-based pick-ups, students are directed to centralized stops—often located miles away. CPS officials said the program has helped streamline operations and is expected to serve about 1,000 students by the end of this school year.
But the hub model has raised concerns about accessibility, especially for students in neighborhoods with high crime rates, inadequate sidewalks, or limited parental availability due to work schedules.
Advocates have also questioned whether the program adheres to federal transportation mandates under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), particularly for students with IEPs who require specialized transport accommodations.
Chicago By the Numbers
• 325,000+ — Total CPS student enrollment
• 17,130 — Students eligible for yellow bus transportation
• 14,135 — Students routed as of June 2, 2025
• 901 — Bus drivers assigned to CPS routes
• $770 million — RTA’s projected 2026 funding gap
• 70%+ — CPS high schoolers estimated to rely on public transit
• 2031 — Year seatbelt requirement would take effect (if signed)
What’s at Stake? Access and Equity
For years, CPS transportation decisions have sparked debate about educational equity—especially for students on the city’s South and West Sides, who often must travel long distances to access high-performing schools.
Without reliable transit or door-to-door busing, some families report chronic absenteeism, tardiness and even school withdrawal. The collapse of public transit service—combined with limitations in school busing—could compound the accessibility crisis.
As CPS finalizes its FY 2026 budget and state lawmakers continue negotiating over transit funding, advocates are urging both city and state leaders to prioritize a student-centered transportation strategy that addresses the unique logistical demands of urban education.
Without coordinated action, thousands of Chicago students could be left behind—literally.
A new requirement for selling electric school buses in New York has school bus dealers there worried about vehicle availability and even higher prices one year before a mandate goes into effect requiring all purchases be zero emissions.
The $254-billion budget for the 2025-2026 fiscal year signed into law May 9 includes a much-needed extension to 2029 for school districts demonstrating their hardships with implementing ESBs to begin purchasing only electric school buses. But provision Article 11-C, while good in theory for its intent to provide better range estimates, is short on detail that the dealers association said could lead to unintended consequences.
The three paragraphs call for independent third-party, real-world ESB range testing to be performed starting Jan. 1, 2026, before the zero-emissions vehicles could be sold to in-state school districts and bus companies. Data must be obtained over 10,000 miles operated in extreme weather conditions and over different terrains to gauge battery degradation and resulting range. The law also wants the testing to account for parking ESBs outside versus inside. It does not specify how the types of chargers used could affect the battery lifecycle.
The New York School Bus Distributors Association (NYSBDA) opposes the provision.
“New York’s school bus dealers are transparent with their customers about the impact extreme weather conditions, terrain, driver operation, and many other factors have on the range of all-electric school buses,” said Peter Tunny, the organization’s executive director. “School districts rely on school bus dealers to partner with them to ensure more than 2.3 million children safely get to school and back home each day and part of that responsibility is to provide the most accurate data available regarding the capabilities of electric school buses.”
The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), which oversees the state’s zero emission school bus initiative, told School Transportation News last month it is aware such testing exists, available from unnamed firms or testing facilities nationwide. Aside from specific testing centers or procedures, the question that remains to be answered is how, especially with just over six months before the law goes into effect.
One student transporter familiar with the legislative negotiations told STN legislators may have added the range testing requirement to counterbalance the additional year extension granted to school districts.
“If you want that, you are going to have to do this,” the source added.
The intent of the range estimates is to bridge the gap between best-case-scenario figures marketed by OEMs and what student transporters are reporting from their operations. The theory is good, added NYSBDA’s Tunny, but school bus dealers are unaware of any such procedures or facilities to perform such tests.
More questions center on a $1,000 fine, ostensibly on school bus dealers, if the real-world estimates are not provided. No mention is made of how this money will be collected or what it would be used for, such as existing funds for school districts to electrify their fleets. The New York State Attorney General’s office oversees the penalties for violations. A spokesperson had not responded to a request for comment at this writing.
There was also no clarity on if the fine would be tantamount to purchasing a carbon credit. Would it be cheaper for a dealer or OEM to take the $1,000 fine and then proceed with the sale? Would that even be allowed? A source familiar with the legislation but who asked to remain anonymous noted the fine would be “a drop in the bucket” for a $450,000 electric school bus.
NYSBDA is seeking clarification.
“With little information regarding entities which provide independent rate estimates for electric school buses, it is impossible to know if it will make more sense to pay for the testing or the $1,000 fine,” said Tunny, a retired director of transportation for South Colonie Central Schools near Albany. “Unfortunately, at the end of the day, any increasing costs by the state will ultimately be passed on to the school district. It might make more sense with the state to conduct the independent testing by working with New York school transportation stakeholders, and utilizing a state entity, like [NYSERDA] in conjunction with the state education department.
He added that NYSBDA continues to analyze the language of the budget to determine if it would be feasible for OEMs to provide the testing or ship the buses from the factory to a testing site.
“The law should be repealed immediately so the school transportation stakeholders can sit down with Gov. [Kathy] Hochul and the legislature to help craft a law that will actually accomplish their goals without creating another obstacle to selling electric school buses in New York State,” he said.
School bus OEMs are also finally attuned to the matter, albeit they had no answers to the issue yet, either. A Blue Bird spokesman told STN the OEM and its dealers are “monitoring related developments and evaluating appropriate steps.” Meanwhile, a representative of Thomas Built Buses said its dealers were meeting with their lobbyists. At this report, no dealers had asked their OEM partners that more accurate range testing be performed before the school buses ship from the factories.
There are options for collecting the required data, but they could take time. One scenario could utilize telematics data from ESBs and create statistical models for different road conditions, weather and geography through in-use operations. The EV Watts program provides reliable estimates for over 950 electric passenger vehicles based on kilowatt-hours consumed. It is one the largest public datasets available. A source familiar with the program told STN that a school bus version EV Watts had been planned but its funding was cut.
Still, there are far fewer electric school buses in operation to run similar models. And aside from running models in all different temperatures and road conditions, additional challenges arise in more technology and operational variances such as battery capacity and programming, the impact of different wheelbases and tires on fuel economy, and the effect of using electrical heating compared to fuel-fired heaters, to name a few.
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory works with a half-dozen school districts nationwide to provide data for its FleetREDI analyzer. But none of the school districts operate in New York, though NREL is actively looking to recruit additional electric bus fleets, a representative told a panel audience at the ACT Expo in April.
Other nonprofit clean energy consultants could potentially perform or facilitate testing. But first, NYSERDA would need to provide guidance.
“Even so, the timeline could be hard to meet,” another EV consultant added.
Children at the Growing Tree child care in New Glarus. Wisconsin is one of only six states that doesn't put any money into early childhood education. (Photo by Kate Rindy)
Children are born into this world innocent. They did not choose their parents. They did not choose to be born into poverty. They do not get to choose if a parent is addicted to drugs or alcohol. Children do not get a choice to be born into an environment of neglect. Children do not choose to grow up in a home with violence. Children do not get a choice to be abused or assaulted. Children do not choose to be born with a disability. Children do not get to choose if they can access medical care. Children do not get a choice on whether they are even wanted or loved.
Adults do have choices. In Wisconsin, we have chosen to have a state where children are the largest demographic living in poverty. We have chosen to allow some children to live with constant hunger. We have chosen not to support children with disabilities. We are still choosing not to create systems to support children who have experienced adversity like abuse and neglect. We made the choice to create an education system based on the income of the people living in the community. We choose to allow children to be uncared for. We as a community have made these choices deliberately and without shame.
Consequently, we have chosen for those children to be less likely to graduate from high school, more likely to fail at a job, have poor health (which is connected to stress in the early years) and to be statistically more likely to be placed in the prison system.
We, as a state, have chosen to prioritize funding for prisons and spend nothing on early care and education, one of only six states that don’t invest a penny in early childhood programs, even though we know that when children have access to quality early education that they are more likely to graduate high school, have higher incomes, be healthier, and are less likely to enter the prison system. We have chosen to remove health care options for children by not expanding Badgercare. We are soon to be the only state that does not provide postpartum Medicaid, risking the lives of new mothers and increasing the likelihood that children will have to grow up without them. We have decided that children with disabilities will receive services not based on their actual needs, but based on the budget for special education, which our state keeps at the barest minimum.
We have chosen to make the word “welfare” into a bad word. Welfare by definition is the health,happiness and fortunes of a person or group. And we have chosen to deny the health,happiness and fortune of children in our state. Referring to a bipartisan push for Medicaid expansion to cover postpartum care, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos has said he “cannot imagine supporting an expansion of welfare.” Why is providing welfareto support the health and wellbeing of children or anyone for that matter a negative concept?Why are we so afraid that if we support people in need that it somehow takes awayfrom us? For example, why would providing children with free lunches at school be a bad thing to do? Why would ensuring that children have access to medical care regardless of whethertheir parents can afford it or not be bad to do? Why would ensuring that children have access toquality care and education in their early years, regardless of their parents’ income, be a badthing? Why would ensuring that children with disabilities have access to the services they needbe bad? Why is it wrong to have systems in our state that ensure we aredoing everything we can to give all children the best opportunities to grow, thrive and becomeproductive members of our communities?
Rep. Vos and Joint Finance Committee co-chairs Sen.Howard Marklein (R-Spring Green), and Rep. Mark Born (R-Beaver Dam) all disagree with creating andfunding policies that support our children. Time and time again, they have voted down policiesthat would have provided support to children. They have continued to forgo our futureby not investing in our children. Instead, they invest in the wealthiest in our state and invest inour punitive prison systems. They invest in large businesses with expensive lobbyists who demand tax breaks and deregulation. They invest in those most likely to donate to their campaigns. Thesegrown-up white men cannot stand the idea of anyone, even a child, getting help from the state. If they had to pay for school lunch, they figure, so should everyone else. If theyhad to pay for their child’s medical visit, then so should everyone else. If they had to pay forchild care, then so should everyone else. They are incapable of seeing past their privileges.They cannot appreciate what it is like to be a child born into an environment that causes harm and the trajectory that puts the child on. However, they will certainly be therewhen that child becomes an adult and enters the prison system. They are more than willing topay for incarceration and punishment.
That’s not just financially irresponsible — we spend about four times as much to keep someone in prison as we spend on education — it’s inhumane, and it impoverishes our state and condemns children to unnecessary suffering and a bleak future.
Children at Mariposa Learning Center in Fitchburg. (2023 file photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)
While providers, their supporters and Democratic lawmakers are pressing for a substantial continuing direct state investment in Wisconsin’s child care sector, Republicans in the Legislature are pursuing another route: expanding a child care tax credit for employers.
So far, child care providers and some small business owners aren’t interested.
The legislation circulated in draft form in early May. On Friday, May 30, it was formally introduced in the Assembly (AB 283) and the state Senate (SB 291).
“We really think it’s an important opportunity to reward employers for getting involved in child care,” Neil Kline, who says he encouraged GOP lawmakers to draft the tax credit legislation, told the Examiner.
Kline is executive director of Family Friendly Workplaces, a nonprofit based in Woodville that works with businesses in Burnett, Pierce, Polk and St. Croix counties. The organization certifies employers as family-friendly “to support their recruitment and retention efforts,” Kline said. To that end, one of its missions is focusing on workforce-related problems such as housing and child care access.
In early May Sen. Howard Marklein (R-Spring Green) and Rep. Karen Hurd (R-Withee) circulated the proposed bill seeking cosponsors.
The legislation was written “to encourage more businesses to invest in child care in their communities,” Marklein and Hurd wrote in their May 12 cosponsor memo. “These changes will increase the number of available child care slots and provide more options for families.”
Demanding direct support
The legislation has been introduced while child care providers and Democrats are continuing their campaigns to revive direct support for the child care sector.
During the COVID-19 pandemic the Evers administration used federal pandemic relief funds to pay child care providers monthly stipends through the Child Care Counts program. The $20 million a month that the state doled out helped providers stabilize child care, increasing workers’ pay while keeping care more affordable for families.
When Evers tried to use $360 million from the 2023-25 budget to continue Child Care Counts with state money, none of the Legislature’s Republican majority got behind the measure. The governor was later able toreallocate other federal dollars to fund Child Care Counts through June 2025, but at half the original amount: $10 million a month.
State Sen. Sarah Keyeski speaks at a press conference held by Democrats in the Legislature on May 22, 2025. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)
With lawmakers now writing the 2025-27 budget, Evers, child care providers and their advocates have beencampaigning for $480 million to continue the program for the next two years. A survey commissioned by the state and conducted by the University of Wisconsin Institute for Research on Povertyforecast closures and tuition hikes if the state payments end.
At their very first budget vote, however, Republicans on the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee removed the proposal along with more than 600 other items Evers had included in his budget draft. The GOP outnumbers the Democrats 3 to 1 on the committee.
Democratic lawmakers responded by circulating a draftstand-alone bill to reinstate the Evers proposal.
“Child care providers are facing increasing cost to operate while still making poverty-level wages,” said Sen. Sarah Keyeski (D-Lodi) at a May 22 press conference to announce the Democrats’ bill. “This has made it extremely difficult to hire and retain quality staff. [Meanwhile] providers desperately want to avoid rising costs and rates on families already struggling to afford child care.”
Child care as business investment
As yet no Republican lawmakers have gotten behind the Child Care Counts proposal.
Instead, the bills that Marklein and Hurd have introduced would make changes to the Business Development Tax Credit, which is provided through the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC).
That tax credit is granted to reward a variety of business investments and reduces the state income tax that a business pays by the amount of the credit.
Currently, a business that spends money on starting a child care program for its employees can get up to 15% of that cost taken off its tax bill. The credit applies only to capital investments, however — building or remodeling the child care facility.
Sen. Howard Marklein speaks to reporters at a press conference in May 2025. (File photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)
“Unfortunately, we have heard that the current program parameters limit the incentive for businesses to invest in child care programs,” Marklein and Hurd wrote in their co-sponsor memo. “While many businesses may want to provide child care as a benefit to employees, the current credit limitations reduce the incentive for this investment.”
In addition to capital expenditures, the draft bill would extend the tax credit to cover 15% of several other costs:
An employer’s spending on child care program operations;
Spending to reimburse employees for their child care expenses;
Spending to buy or reserve openings for its employees at a child care center;
Contributions an employer makes to an employee’s flexible spending account for dependent care.
The draft bill also allows the tax credit for “any other cost or expense incurred due to a benefit provided by an employer to facilitate the provision or utilization by employees of child care services.”
The tax credit would be refundable: Even if the credit totals more than the employer pays in taxes, the company would get its full value back from the Wisconsin Department of Revenue.
It also would give a refund to nonprofit employers, which don’t pay taxes.
“While not a silver bullet, these changes are another step in the right direction to address the child care issue in Wisconsin,” Marklein and Hurd wrote in their memo.
Neil Kline (Family Friendly Workplaces photo)
Kline, the Family Friendly Workplaces director, said the proposal would help engage employers more directly in addressing child care shortages.
“We really think it lays the groundwork for ongoing, self-sustaining support of child care in Wisconsin,” he said. “The primary goal is to help introduce new money into the child care — really, the child care ecosystem — by rewarding employers to support the ongoing expenses of child care, because the reality is that the sector needs additional money in it.”
Kline said he understands that “the ongoing operational economics” is a central problem for the child care sector. “That’s why we are so focused on helping employers find avenues and be rewarded for helping defray the expenses that are related to child care and helping support that ongoing operational side of child care.”
Chilly reception
To date the existing child care employer tax credit hasn’t had any takers, according to the WEDC. In January, as part of an overall evaluation of the state’s business development tax credit, an outside consultant told WEDC that “due to the high operational costs of childcare centers, affordability would likely be better achieved through subsidy as opposed to a tax incentive.”
The proposal to expand the tax credit isn’t gaining traction with providers or small business owners.
Main Street Alliance, which organizes small business owners to advocate for state and national legislation, has already announced objections to the bill.
Shawn Phetteplace, Main Street Alliance
“These kinds of programs and tax credits are often advantageous for employers who can afford compliance and the procedural costs and have economies of scale,” said Shawn Phetteplace, MSA’s national campaign director. That leaves out the typical small business, said Phetteplace, who sent lawmakers a memo calling the proposal “deeply unserious.”
Evan Dannells, a chef and owner of two Madison restaurants, questioned how a relatively small business like his would benefit from the tax credit.
Of his eight full-time employees, one has two children. Most of the others are graduate students. Directly paying for the one employee’s child care, even if receiving a tax credit, doesn’t feel fair to the others who don’t have that expense, Dannells said.
“If you put the onus of taking care of child care on the employer, the employer won’t hire people with children,” he said.
Dannells considers the cost of child care a legitimate use of his tax dollars. “This is why government should be doing this,” he said. He observed that children are required to go to school when they reach the age of first grade. “Why can’t we take care of them from age 1 to 5?”
While the tax credit may make it easier for a particular company’s employees to afford child care thanks to the employer’s support, skeptics of the proposal say that assistance only helps some people — not the system as a whole.
“That doesn’t help keep the doors open,” said Heather Murray, who operates a child care center in Waunakee. “We’re hitting crisis mode and centers are shutting down now, and a quarter of them will be gone if [Child Care Counts] isn’t renewed. We need the investment to go directly to providers to make sure that the doors stay open.”
Child care as a public good
National child care analyst Eliot Haspel is also skeptical. Haspel is a fellow atCapita, a think tank that works in the area of family policy. In February 2024, the think tank New Americapublished his report raising questions about the impact of various employer-sponsored child care benefits.
Eliot Haspel (Capita.org photo)
Haspel views child care as a public good that benefits society broadly. For that reason, he contends, it should serve families regardless of whether they work for an employer able to fund a child care benefit.
“Small business will never be able to offer a really robust child care workplace benefit,” Haspel says. That puts small businesses and small business employees at a disadvantage if supporting child care is primarily an employer’s responsibility, he argues.
The large number of low-wage workers and “gig workers” “also raises the specter of increasing inequalities,” he writes in the New America report.
Haspel says that tying child care to a job also locks people into a job — or strands them from needed care if they lose their job. It also disrupts children’s early education at a time when they need consistent and reliable connections with their caregivers, advocates say.
“It’s really bad for workers and it’s really bad for kids for your child care to be tied to your employment,” Sen. Kelda Roys said at the Democrats’ May 22 press conference.
Tying health insurance to employment has been “a disaster,” Roys said. Health care is “rationed based on the job that you have or the wealth that you have,” she added, “and we do not want to exacerbate the current problems in our child care system by tying it to people’s employment.”
In his New America report and in an interview, Haspel says the problem isn’t providing child care at the workplace.
“I’m not against the idea of onsite child care — that can make all the sense in the world,” he says. “You can have an onsite center as part of a publicly funded system” — one to which employers contribute as taxpayers.
Focusing on the employer, however, carries with it “an opportunity cost,” Haspel says. “The more we say child care should be solved primarily through employers, the harder it is to say we need a fully public system that is universal and reaches everyone.”
Robert Kraig of Citizen Action at the podium in the Senate parlor in the Wisconsin State Capitol on Tuesday, May 27 , surrounded by representatives of other grassroots groups | Ruth Conniff/Wisconsin Examiner
More than 100 citizens from an array of grassroots groups packed the Wisconsin state Senate parlor and marched on Gov. Tony Evers’ office Tuesday, their chants bouncing off the marble walls inside the Capitol. They were there to deliver a letter — which they urged others to sign online — demanding that Evers veto the state budget if it doesn’t include key elements of the governor’s own budget proposal.
“The whole Democratic grassroots is now demanding that national leaders stand and fight,” said Robert Kraig, executive director of Citizen Action of Wisconsin, who helped organize the effort, “and I think that spirit is now being translated down to the state level.”
Public school advocates, child care providers, teachers’ unions and advocates for criminal justice reform and health care access came to demand that Evers take a stronger stand and threaten to use his significant veto power in negotiations with Republicans.
“There has been a lot of talk over the last year about whether or not we can get this done as adults, or whether we have to be impolite,” Michael Jones, president of Madison Teachers, Inc., said of state budget negotiations. “Too much gets conceded about being polite,” he added. “Politeness without reciprocal respect is just being a sucker.”
In their letter, the advocates assured Evers that Wisconsinites were behind his original budget proposal — the one Republican legislative leaders threw in the trash. The advocates urged him to “hold the line” and reject any budget that doesn’t accept federal Medicaid expansion money, provide a 60% state reimbursement to schools for special education costs, close the Green Bay Correctional Institution, restore his proposed $480 million for child care and reject the snowballing growth of school vouchers.
Brooke Legler, a child care provider and co-founder of Wisconsin Early Childhood Action Needed (W.E.C.A.N.), has been leading a recent high-profile effort to sound the alarm about the loss of child care funds. “So many of us are going to be closing our doors because we cannot keep going and parents can’t afford to pay what they are paying,” she said during a press conference in the Senate parlor. Treating child care like any other business doesn’t work, she added. Instead, it needs to be seen as a public good. “Gov. Evers declared this the year of the kid,” Legler said, but “it’s not going to be” if Evers signs a budget that leaves out crucial funding for child care.
Tanya Atkinson of Planned Parenthood Wisconsin spoke at the press conference about congressional Republicans’ effort to cancel Medicaid funding for patient care at Planned Parenthood.
In Wisconsin, 60% of Planned Parenthood’s patients have Medicaid as their form of insurance, she said. Most of them live in rural areas, are low-income, or are women of color who “continue to be further pushed out of our health care system,” Atkinson said. “And it doesn’t have to be that way. It is time for us to take the politics out of sexual reproductive health altogether.”
Atkinson and the other assembled advocates praised Evers’ budget proposal, including the part that would finally allow Wisconsin to join the 40 other states that have accepted the federal Medicaid expansion, making 90,000 more Wisconsinites eligible for Medicaid coverage and bringing about $1.5 billion into the state in the next budget cycle.
Shaniya Cooper, a college student from Milwaukee and a BadgerCare recipient who lives with lupus, talked about how scary it was to realize she could lose her Medicaid coverage under congressional Republicans’ budget plan. “To me, this is life or death,” she said. When she first learned about proposed Medicaid cuts, “I cried,” she said. “I felt fear and dread.”
She described having a flare-up of her lupus, with swelling and fluid around her heart, and then finding out she had to fill out paperwork to reapply for Medicaid, since it was unclear if her treatment would still be covered.
“It isn’t just about the paperwork. It’s about waking up each day with the fear that the care I might need might be gone tomorrow,” she said, “It’s about knowing that people are quietly suffering mentally and emotionally from the stress and the anxiety that these policies are creating.” Her voice broke and people around her yelled encouragement. “You got this!” someone shouted. “What’s at stake here is humanity,” she continued, “and if we do nothing, we allow these cuts to happen, we are silently endorsing the neglect and slow death of those who cannot afford prime insurance. That is not a civil society. That is not justice.”
“We are here because we will not be pitted against each other to fight for crumbs in a time of plenty,” said Heather DuBois Bourenane of the Wisconsin Public Education Network. “We will not be divided on the issues that matter most where we live, because some people refuse to listen to us.”
DuBois Bourenane derided what she called a “cycle of disinvestment, first of all, but it’s also a cycle of disrespect,” by Republicans who dismissed Evers’ budget proposals despite overwhelming public support. Increasing funding for schools, expanding Medicaid coverage and reforming the criminal justice system by closing prisons and reducing incarceration are popular measures. “Gov. Evers has the power, with his veto pen, to break [the cycle],” she said, “and we’re calling on him to use the full force, the full power of that pen, to say, enough is enough. It stops with me.”
“There’s a tremendous amount of Democratic leverage in this budget, if you consider both the number of Democratic members in the Senate and the veto,” Kraig said.
“These are groups with large memberships calling on the governor to stand and fight,” he added.
Evers did not make an appearance or respond to the rowdy group at the Capitol. But it was clear they have no intention of going away quietly,
The government giveth, and the government taketh away? That may be the case for the future of school-bus Wi-Fi, which currently is eligible for E-Rate discount under the Federal Communication Commission’s Universal Services Fund.
Whether that will continue is now uncertain due to court cases challenging the validity of the USF funding model. In late March, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments on an appeal of a 5th Circuit decision that the Universal Service Fund’s revenue mechanism represents an unconstitutional delegation of legislative authority.
The nation’s highest court is expected to rule by next month on whether that decision should be upheld. If the circuit court ruling is upheld, it would be a blow not only to school bus based Wi-Fi but also to other services supported by USF, especially E-Rate. The program provides discounts of 20 to 90 percent on the costs of internet connectivity for schools and libraries, low-income consumers and those in rural areas needing online access to health care providers. The FCC, which oversees USF, added school bus Wi-Fi to E-Rate in late 2023, with discounts awarded for the current school year.
Recent Movement
Looking specifically at school bus Wi-Fi, the opportunity to obtain federal support has been a relatively recent prospect. During the pandemic, the FCC’s $7.171 billion Emergency Connectivity Fund (ECF) program, authorized by Congress in the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, provided support for schools and libraries that included funds for equipping school buses with Wi-Fi connections.
After the public health emergency expired, the Democractic-majority FCC board approved the use of E-Rate funds to equip school buses for online access.That represented an expansion of boundaries for the long-standing E-Rate program, which was authorized by Congress as part of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and created by the FCC in 1997.
The more recent expansion has opened new avenues of support for school districts across the country. In the 2024 fiscal year, the FCC received 405 requests for school bus Wi-Fi equipment and services totaling more than $19 million, according to figures reported by the Universal Service Administrative Company, the entity created by FCC to administer the USF and at the heart of the current legal case in front of the Supreme Court.
Awards come in the form of discounts rather than grants. For school districts, this can mean discounts of 20 to 90 percent on the costs of equipment and required fees, with the greater percentages targeted to districts serving economically disadvantaged areas.
While funding for Wi-Fi on buses represents only a small portion of overall USF funds, it has provided welcome support for a practice that some feel can be a boon to student success.
“Wi-Fi-equipped buses turn travel time into productive learning time, helping students complete homework and extend learning beyond school walls,” said Keith Krueger, CEO of CoSN, short for the Consortium for School Networking. “Our members have witnessed the benefits of mobile broadband access during bus rides in diverse communities across the country, from California to Alabama.”
He pointed out that in a digital society, ensuring universal internet access is vital. “Wi-Fi on school buses is one important tool to help close the digital divide,” added Krueger, who addressed STN EXPO West attendees on the topic last summer.
That has been the case for Farmington Municipal Schools in New Mexico, where several different funding sources have been supplemented by the federal funds. The school district first deployed wireless routers in nine buses and then, with satisfactory results, expanded
to its entire 90-bus fleet. The district used Title 1 funds, then federal Elementary and Secondary Schools Emergency Relief funds, and most recently E-Rate funds to fund the expansion.
“We’ve received a lot of compliments from parents who tell us they’re happy when their children are home and have already completed their homework,” said Billy Huish, transportation supervisor.
Farmington covers 808 square miles and services 20 campuses. More than 6,500 of the district’s 11,000 students use school bus transportation every day. Some students face a 30- to 45-minute drive to and from their schools, while others live as far as two hours away. For after-school sports, it sometimes takes three hours to get to games. Given all that time in transit, it makes good sense to provide online access to middle and high school students with MacBooks and elementary students with iPads.
“We consider it critical to provide students wireless internet access on school buses,” Huish said. “Our students are not getting out of school and just riding home. They’re getting on the bus and continuing to learn and get their work done.”
At Henrico County Public Schools in the Richmond, Virginia area, 50 of the district’s 606 buses are equipped to provide Wi-Fi. Director of Pupil Transportation Jim Ellis said that initially, obtaining the equipment was not a priority from his viewpoint, with the impetus coming from district IT staff, which wanted to take advantage of E-Rate funds. But Ellis has been pleased by the results.
“It’s turned out better than I expected,” he said. “I’ve been surprised to see the number of logins.” Ellis added that when it comes to his fleet’s overall needs, an investment in Wi-Fi only makes sense for a limited number of buses.
“We have it on our buses that are having the longest runs,” Ellis noted. “That involves transporting kids to and from specialty centers, so they’re on the bus a little longer than everybody else.”
Complex Issue
Although advocates of funding bus-based Wi-Fi may feel its value is a no-brainer, others have voiced serious concerns. Rather than viewing online access for students through an educational lens, opponents, including prominent Republican politicians, see it as a threat. They argue not only that they believe this an unconstitutional use of federal funds, but access to online content raises red flags. Opponents claim that, at best, internet access will simply allow students to waste time rather than to complete school assignments. What’s even more problematic, they say, is the likelihood that children will gain access to all the unhealthy content the internet has to offer, from inappropriate web content to an avenue
for bullying.
To address such concerns, providers of broadband service offer filters that limit access to restricted content in conjunction with the school district network. This solution hasn’t gained acceptance with opponents, however, who believe children are adept at getting around such barriers.
In addition to the battle in the courts, a separate concern is that the FCC may remove school-bus-based Wi-Fi from the E-rate Eligible Services List. That’s a definite possibility given previous opposition voiced by new Republican FCC commissioners who now make up the board majority and could attempt to reverse the approval under the Learning WIthout Limits initiative.
“We anticipate that as soon as the FCC has five commissioners, the chairman will move to eliminate this flexibility,” said Noelle Ellerson Ng, associate executive director, advocacy and governance for AASA, the School Superintendents Association. This doesn’t mean Wi-Fi would be prohibited on school buses, but an important funding stream could disappear.
“If you pay for it, you’ll be able to have Wi-Fi,” Ellerson Ng explained. “But you’ll need to use all local dollars without any federal support.”
CoSN’s Krueger agreed that removing school bus Wi-Fi and mobile hotspots as eligible services would hamper a useful tool that’s a key part of some districts’ connectivity efforts for students. If that happens, he said his organization urges school transportation leaders to file comments with the FCC opposing the change and highlighting the educational and behavioral benefits of Wi-Fi on school buses.
Krueger said he also feels that if the U.S. Supreme Court rules against the current system, the E-rate program is unlikely to be eliminated outright.
“Instead, Congress will most likely step in to modernize the funding structure through new legislation,” he noted. “Members of both parties strongly support the Universal Service Fund, which not only helps schools and libraries through E-Rate but also homes and businesses in sparsely populated rural areas, rural health clinics and very low-income households.”
He added that such a decision would require a significant policy debate that could directly affect funding for E-Rate-eligible services, including Wi-Fi on school buses.
“School transportation leaders should consider adding their voice to the debate if the Supreme Court upholds the 5th Circuit’s decision undermining the program,” Krueger said.
Moving Ahead
Given the uncertainty of future funding, transportation leaders face options going forward. For those who see value in the potential offered by school bus Wi-Fi, one strategy might be to move as quickly as possible to qualify while funds are still available.
Ellerson Ng at AASA pointed out that even if Wi-Fi is ruled ineligible for future support, it’s possible funds would still be in the pipeline for the coming school year before a full cutoff could be implemented, potentially for the 2026-2027 school year.
Another approach would be to proceed entirely with local funding. That of course could make Wi-Fi on school buses a harder sell when competing with the many budget demands faced by every school district. Should funding be possible, though, the benefits seem obvious.
“If funding is available, school districts should apply for it to enhance student learning by making school buses an extension of the classroom,” Huish advised.
Editor’s Note: As reprinted in the May 2025 issue of School Transportation News.
ANAHEIM, Calif. — What was considered “plug and play” solution years ago, that being fleet electrification, is far more complicated. OEMs, vendors and transportation leaders are highlighting the continued challenges but also the benefits of electric school buses while also promoting collaboration as the industry enters uncharted territory. But continued funding is necessary.
Brad Beauchamp, EV product segment leader for Blue Bird, moderated a related session, “School Bus Sector: Rolling out the New Generation of School Buses,” on April 30 at the Advanced Clean Transportation (ACT) Expo that provided the perspectives of two student transporters, a leader of electrification at the nation’s largest school bus contractor, a mechanical engineer, and a smart charging technology provider.
Mike Bullman, director of transportation for the South Carolina Department of Education. described the uniqueness of The Palmetto State, as the DOE owns and maintains all 5,600-plus school buses. Bullman noted the fleet fuel makeup is currently 88 percent diesel, 10 percent propane, and three-and-a-half percent electric. He noted that his operation has taken a multi-pronged approach to alternative fuels with a focus on advancing technology.
He added that the South Carolina state specifications committee will be convening in the this summer, and gasoline will be on the agenda as well. “We feel that fleet diversity is very important as we certainly move into the future,” he said.
The South Carolina fleet travels 78 million miles a year and supports 77 public school districts. Those 78 million miles serve 365,000 students a day using about nine or 10 million gallons of diesel fuel annually and 1.2 million gallons of propane. There are 42 statewide school bus maintenance facilities and a staff of about 375 employees, with an annual budget of $170 million.
“It’s quite a large endeavor,” Bullman shared.
In addition to fuels, Bullman is focused on technology adoption. “We take a safety-first approach, but we want to make sure that technology is in there,” he said, adding that buses have tire pressure monitoring systems, stability control, camera systems, stop arm cameras, student management, GPS tracking. “All of that is part of this comprehensive multi-prong approach,” he added.
He noted that preventative and predictive maintenance are also important. Bullman and his team in South Carolina lead the inspection program offered at STN EXPO conferences.
Bullman’s department also has a statewide routing program and a comprehensive driver training program. “Additional investments in charging and fueling infrastructure is on our list and important to us, long cycle cost analysis for vehicle procurement, and staff training,” he said.
He added that South Carolina will continue to seek additional funding sources, noting that was the main driver for purchasing electric vehicles. In 2021, the state received $1.3 million in grant money to purchase four electric school busses and in 2022 received $6.6 million to purchase 16 EVs and then in 2024 they got another $6.9 million to purchase another 20.
He added that with the EVs, they are seeing cost savings with maintenance and operating costs, it’s the initial cost gap that needs to be bridged. “I personally and professionally believe that the school bus space is an ideal space for an electric vehicle,” he said. “It just fits. You’ve got long dwell times. You’ve got repeatable routes. Certainly, 80 to 90 percent of the routes in South Carolina can be covered quite comfortably with an EV bus.”
Bullman cited the current challenge is uncertainty surrounding federal funding for ESBs — which many in the industry would agree with. He noted that without grants, South Carolina would not have been able to purchase electric, citing the cost gap with diesel. He noted that data collecting will be key and help to convince naysayers that this is the right technology moving forward.
Sam Hill-Cristol, director of strategy and business development for The Mobility House, noted that V2G technology is a way to offset some of those costs. “We’re optimistic about the contributions that V2G revenues can make in the total cost of ownership calculation,” he said.
He noted that while there are ongoing V2G projects across the U.S., it is currently not scalable. He expects V2G to gain more popularity in the years to come.
Meanwhile, Lauren Lynch, senior mechanical engineer with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), noted that the agency focuses on energy systems research and development with an eye on data collection. She said NREL provides data to fleets of school buses to enable fleet managers who are adopting the technologies to better understand their use and performance.
She said the fully funded program is a free service to fleets right now. Going forward, she explained that NREL will provide buses with a data logger that works in conjunction with telematics systems, so it won’t interfere with other data logging taking place on the bus. The data is transferred to NREL, who stores the data and conducts an analysis. Currently, they are working with seven different fleets and aim to collect data for at least 30 days. NREL is also hoping to capture a year after year performance and is coming up on year two working with Beaverton School District near Portland, Oregon.
“It’s been exciting, and we’re expanding our analysis to include a maintenance and cost study,” she shared. “We want to ensure that we provide a value back to the fleets. So, as part of our overall objective, we not only want to provide this analysis to the fleets, where we highlight key insights or maybe identify some areas of opportunity, but we also hope to utilize the data as an aggregated study for the vocation, utilize the data and other tools and models to inform driver developments or address any barriers within the industry.”
She explained that the data shows electric buses are more efficient than other powertrains. They do, she confirmed, have higher capital costs but have resulted in an overall lower dollar-per-mile cost when operating the same routes.
“We’re looking at all powertrains within the fleet to understand the performance of each and identifying areas of opportunity and what’s going well,” she explained, adding that the end-goal is to make the electric school bus data publicly available via the online tool FleetREDI. Currently, the website has data on heavy- and medium-duty findings.
San Marcos Unified School District in California also received about $30 million in grant funds for infrastructure and school buses. “It was very overwhelming,” Executive Director of Transportation Mike Sawyer said.
He noted that the district had 84 old diesel buses, so he started applying for grants — one of them being the Carl Moyer Memorial Air Quality Standards Attainment Program grant in California and the Zero Emission School Bus and Infrastructure Program — and the money kept flowing.
To help him navigate all the funding, he said he reached out to partners, including Engie, which helped San Marcos find inefficiencies in charging infrastructure. Engie helped San Marcos create “one of the biggest” charging infrastructure bus yards. Phase one was completed with 40 EV chargers, six of which are 120 kW, the remainder being 30 kW chargers. Phase two, which is about to break ground, will bring the district to a total of 75 chargers.
The location holds about one megawatt of solar and 1.5 megawatts of battery storage, and it includes a 60kW diesel generator to serve as backup if the power goes out. Sawyer noted SMUSD currently has 33 electric buses on the road.
Providing a Service
Meanwhile, First Student operates over 45,000 school buses across 43 states and eight Canadian provinces. Of those, 450 are electric vehicles.
“EVs, they are providing not only cleaner and quieter rides to school, but these kids are arriving to school calmer,” said Jennifer Harp, the contractor’s vice president of the electric vehicles program, discussing a recent project in rural Westville, Illinois that electrified its entire fleet of 17 school buses with help from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Clean School Bus Program, IRA tax credits, and the Illinois Volkswagen Environmental Mitigation Trust program.
“They had some limited resources,” she said, adding that they were on a lease property and needed an infrastructure solution that would avoid high costs.
She added the company integrated its First Charge, a trenchless, flexible and quick-to-deploy. purpose-built charging hub with that removes the barrier of having to trench locations.
Harp also noted First Student currently deploys 14 First Charge units. It took about nine months to deploy the one operating in Westville.
“If we want to follow Westville’s playbook for electrification success, we really need to remember that continued success in this space requires continued funding incentives from all of our government sectors,” she said. “It also requires that we minimize costly infrastructure as much as possible. Requires partnerships and a willingness to share those learnings. …With the right strategy and infrastructure, school bus electrification is not only possible, it is absolutely practical.”
She noted the conversations on battery-electric adoption at ACT Expo have evolved from the initial belief that it could be a plug-and-play option. “If you’ve been here long enough, you know that it’s not that simple,” she shared. “Fleet electrification takes partnerships, very strong partnerships, high increased project coordination, industry standardization, and, above all else, patience.”
Meanwhile, The Mobility House provides smart charging to fleets to over 2,500 sites globally, 100 of which are location in North America. Hill-Cristol shared that the grand vision is to achieve “zero emission transportation at zero cost,” he said. “We think we can get there in some cases, through the technology that we provide.”
He explained that vehicle grid integration is an umbrella term The Mobility House uses to talk about a suite of use cases that are becoming more common with the next-generation electric school bus projects.
“The days of going to the utility, getting a totally new service, 100 percent paid for, putting in enough capacity for every charger to be on at once, and then just turning it on and not worrying, I think those days are pretty much behind us,” he said, adding that now customers are looking for ways to solve challenges, like vehicle-to-grid, charging off peak and backup power integration.
Hill-Cristol also mentioned off-grid supplemental solutions, which consists of using solar storage or a backup generator to help with capacity challenges and the delay in receiving chargers. All of this is also provided by The Mobility House.
He elaborated that the off-grid solutions can be either a long-term or temporary solution. For instance, some districts are using it as a bridge as they wait for their infrastructure, whereas some districts can solely use it as a charge management system. Other use cases include a micro-gird if districts need additional power on site.
“Depending on where you fall on that spectrum, and the investment that you’re making, I think that would lead you to the conclusion of whether this is a two-to-five-year solution or whether this is going to be something that sticks around,” he said. “Because with the right combination of technologies, you’re also going to get operational cost saving.”
State Sen. Kelda Roys, holding her toddler, speaks about legislation Democrats are proposing to provide ongoing funding for child care providers. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)
Democratic lawmakers are circulating a draft bill to extend the soon-to-end state child care support program and fund it with $480 million that was stripped from the 2025-27 state budget.
The proposed legislation follows action earlier this month by Republican lawmakers to remove child care support and more than 600 other items that Gov. Tony Evers included in his draft budget.
Both Evers’ proposal and the Democrats’ bill aim to continue support that child care providers have been receiving since 2020 as part of federal pandemic relief.
“This funding has been essential in continuing successful programs that support our early educators, child care providers, parents, and most importantly, our kids,” said state Rep. Alex Joers (D-Middleton) at a Capitol news conference Thursday announcing the legislation.
The $20 million that Wisconsin paid out each month to providers through mid-2023 “kept our early educators in the workforce, held tuition down for parents and provided a direct investment in our children during the most crucial years of their childhood development,” Joers said.
Payments were cut to $10 million a month in June 2023, and the last of those funds will be paid out by early July.
“But with this impending deadline, child care providers and early educators are faced with the impossible decision to either raise rates or have to close altogether,” Joers said. “Without assurance of this funding lifeline, many have already made that decision and have devastatingly shut their doors forever.”
Citing recent reports, Joers said that there are 48,000 children on waiting lists for child care in Wisconsin. In a survey of providers, 78% said they would have to raise fees for infant care — the most expensive age group in most child care programs.
“Altogether, if nothing changes, parents are looking at having to find an additional up to $2,600 in their yearly budget,” Joers said.
First-term Sen. Sarah Keyeski (D-Lodi), the lead state Senate author on the legislation, said that when she was running for office last year, voters repeatedly shared their concerns about the cost and scarcity of child care.
“We have historically undervalued and underpaid child care and early education professionals,” Keyeski said. “This is no longer tenable.”
She described the plight of one constituent who had to change providers three times after the first and then the second provider went out of business because of financial difficulties or other constraints. The mother told her that her current provider — the third — had rates that are “at the top” of what the family could afford.
Keyeski said the provider has told the woman that unless the state can continue with its support, the center’s rates will go up $40 a week, or $160 a month. For the couple, “this increase is unsustainable,” she said. “Her family is left wondering, what to do next?”
Wisconsin’s rural communities have been especially hard hit, she added: In 70% of them, there are three or more children for every child care opening.
“In my district alone, over 34,000 children need care, but there are only about 26,000 available slots,” Keyeski said.
Child care should be viewed as essential infrastructure, said state Rep. Renuka Mayadev (D-Madison).
“And as a state, we support infrastructure. We maintain roads, we maintain bridges. Why is funding childcare such a fight?” Mayadev said.
Wages of less than $14 an hour are driving child care workers out of the field, she added. “There is no other industry where such high value work is being done at such dismal low wages.”
Sen. Kelda Roys (D-Madison) — accompanied by her toddler son before she took him to his child care provider near the Capitol — said the legislation calls for $480 million in state funds over the next two years.
“But I think the real question is what it will cost the state if we don’t do it,” Roys said. She forecast “continued massive closures” of child care centers.
“Already over 60% of child care providers have classrooms sitting empty or slots that can’t be filled because they don’t have the teachers to fill them,” she added.
Roys said child care was a critical need in order for the state to address persistent shortages of people to fill jobs.
“In critical areas like public safety, in K-12 education, in health care — what is it going to mean if the parents of even more kids can’t get child care?” Roys said. “We can’t afford that. We have to make this investment.”
Gov. Tony Evers celebrates "historic" tax cuts in the last state budget. Schools are still facing austerity. Photo via Gov. Evers' Facebook page
As Republicans in Congress struggle to deliver President Donald Trump’s massive cuts to Medicaid, food assistance, education, health research and just about every other social good you can think of, in order to clear the way for trillions of dollars in tax cuts to the richest people in the U.S., here in Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers and state lawmakers are working on the next state budget.
The one thing our Democratic governor and Republican legislative leaders seem to agree on is that we need a tax cut.
After throwing away more than 600 items in Evers’ budget proposal, GOP leggies now say they can’t move forward with their own budget plan until Evers makes good on his promise to meet with them and negotiate the terms for the tax-cutting that both sides agree they want to do. Evers has expressed optimism that the budget will be done on time this summer, and said the tax cuts need to be part of the budget, not a separate, stand-alone bill. Evers wants a more progressive tax system, with cuts targeted to lower-income people. In the last budget, he opposed expanding the second-lowest tax bracket, which would have offered the same benefits to higher earners as the lower middle class.
But what if we don’t need a tax cut at all?
It has long been an article of faith in the Republican Party that tax cuts are a miracle cure for everything. Trickle-down economics is a proven failure: The wealthy and corporations tend to bank their tax cuts rather than injecting the extra money into the economy, as tax-cutters say they will. The benefits of the 2017 tax cuts that Congress is struggling to extend went exclusively to corporations and the very wealthy and failed to trickle down on the rest of us.
In the second Trump administration, we are in new territory when it comes to tax cutting. The administration and its enablers are hell-bent on destroying everything from the Department of Education to critical health research to food stamps and Medicaid in order to finance massive tax breaks for the very rich.
If ever there were a good time to reexamine the tax-cutting reflex, it’s now.
Evers has said he is not willing to consider the Republicans’ stand-alone tax-cut legislation, and that, instead, tax cuts should be part of the state budget. That makes sense, since new projections show lower-than-expected tax revenue even without a cut, and state budget-writers have a lot to consider as we brace for the dire effects of federal budget cuts. The least our leaders can do is not blindly give away cash without even assessing future liabilities.
But beyond that, we need to reconsider the knee-jerk idea that we are burdened with excessive taxes and regulations, that our state would be better off if we cut investments in our schools and universities, our roads and bridges, our clean environment, museums, libraries and other shared spaces and stopped keeping a floor under poor kids by providing basic food and health care assistance.
Wisconsin Republicans like to tout the list of states produced annually by the Tax Foundation promoting “business friendly” environments that reduce corporate taxes, including Wyoming, South Dakota, Alaska and Florida. They also like to bring up ALEC’s “Rich States, Poor States” report that gave top billing last year to Utah, Idaho and Arizona for low taxes and deregulation.
What they don’t track when they lift up those states are pollution, low wages and bankrupt public school systems.
I’m old enough to remember when it was headline news that whole families in the U.S. were living in their cars, when homelessness was a new term, coined during the administration of Ronald Reagan, the father of bogus trickle-down economics and massive cuts to services for the poor.
Somehow, we got used to the idea that urban parts of the richest nation on Earth resemble the poorest developing countries, with human misery and massive wealth existing side by side in our live-and-let-die economy.
Wisconsin, thanks to its progressive history, managed to remain a less unequal state, with top public schools and a great university system, as well as a clean, beautiful environment and well-maintained infrastructure. But here, too, we have been getting used to our slide to the bottom of the list of states, thanks in large part to the damage done by former Republican Gov. Scott Walker.
We now rank 44th in the nation for investment in our once-great universities, and the austerity that’s been imposed on higher education is taking a toll across the state. Our consistently highly rated public schools have suffered from a decade and a half of budget cuts that don’t allow districts to keep pace with inflation, and recent state budgets have not made up the gap.
Now threats to Medicaid, Head Start, AmeriCorps, our excellent library system, UW-Madison research and environmental protections do not bode well for Wisconsin’s future.
In the face of brutal federal cuts, we need to recommit to our shared interest in investing in a decent society, and figure out how to preserve what’s great about our state.
Tax cuts do not make the top of the list of priorities.
The death of Alfred Hale sparked a debate in the community on the lack of safety around downtown transit hubs.
The 18-year-old student of Dunbar High School in Dayton, Ohio was shot and killed in April while waiting for a transit bus to take him to school. For decades, many school districts across the U.S. have relied on public transportation to transport high school students. The practice has only increased especially after COVID-19 due to financial and staff shortages.
Ohio House Bill 96 introduces a budget plan that will allocate more funding to all public schools in FY 2026 and 2027.
“The bill increases overall state support for public schools by $81 million in FY26 and $145 million in FY27 over the executive proposal, for a total of $226 million,” a press release on the bill states. “Additionally, per-pupil funding was increased for every student across Ohio.”
Additionally, the bill would require school districts that provide or arrange for transportation of eligible students in the ninth through twelfth grades to ensure that students are assigned to routes that do not require more than one transfer. Mass transit systems located in one of Ohio’s eight most populous counties would need to ensure that transfers don’t occur at a central hub, like the one where Hale was shot.
HB96 passed the House April 9 and was introduced in the Senate.
Dayton Board of Education President Chrisondra Goodwine disagrees with the bill. She released a statement on the tragedy, stating that the ban on student transfers, “is a reactionary move that fails to address the underlying problems. It restricts student access to education and imposes further barriers on already vulnerable youth—without offering any alternative solutions.”
Goodwine added Hale’s death is not a school issue but a citywide crisis.
“The burden of safety cannot fall on schools alone,” she wrote. “Every sector— education, local government, law enforcement, transportation, and commerce—has a shared responsibility in ensuring that our city is not only livable but truly thriving for everyone.”
She noted recent statements from city elected officials that place blame for the systemic challenges on Dayton Public Schools.
“That narrative is not only misleading—it is harmful,” she stated. “It oversimplifies the issue and ignores the very real legal and financial constraints placed on public school districts across Ohio.”
Instead, Goodwine outlined limitations codified in state law that require transportation is provided not only to Dayton students but also to charter and private school students within district boundaries. Dayton Public Schools lacks the legal authority to prioritize only its students, she continued, as well as adequate staffing and funding to place every child on a yellow school bus.
“Because of these limitations, some students must use public transportation,” Goodwine states. “The Greater Dayton RTA is not an educational partner—it is a public transit system governed by federal rules that ensure equitable access to all. While we do engage where possible to improve safety, DPS has no control over how RTA routes passengers or determines transfer points. These decisions are made solely by RTA based on their operational model and obligations to the general public.”
A citywide commitment to youth by opening recreational facilities, expanding mentorship opportunities, and centering teen-focused investments.
She said if city leaders want to be solution-oriented, they can start by opening doors to recreational centers and buildings that are underutilized or vacant but otherwise available to the district or afterschool partners to serve as “safe, structured environments tailored to teenagers— especially in a city where youth have limited access to activities that are engaging, safe, and empowering.”
“Changing the trajectory for young people requires more than statements—it requires investment in their future,” she added. “At the same time, we call on the State of Ohio to change the laws that continue to create barriers to a better reality for our students. Allow public districts to serve their students first. Fund transportation adequately. And stop penalizing urban districts trying to meet modern-day challenges with outdated policies.”
She is also calling for adequate state funding to support driver recruitment, fleet expansion, and improved routing systems.
The Ohio Association for Pupil Transportation issued a formal statement in support of Dayton Public Schools, Goodwine and the broader transportation crisis in Ohio.
“If Ohio’s elected officials are serious about creating lasting change and protecting our children, they must stop blaming overburdened school districts and start providing the legal authority, funding, and infrastructure necessary to meet today’s realities,” OPTA states. “The Ohio Association for Pupil Transportation stands ready to work with lawmakers, school, leaders, and community partners to bring about these much-needed reforms.”
OPTA notes that Hale’s death in Dayon highlights the need for systemic change and multiagency collaboration to ensure student safety.
“It is unacceptable that a student’s route to school becomes a place of violence,” OPTA states. “And it is equally unacceptable to assign blame to school districts without acknowledging the legal and financial realities they face.”
OPTA notes that the law requiring public school districts to transport students not only to and from their assigned schools but also students attending charter and private school extends service up to 30 minutes outside those boundaries.
“This requirement, imposed without proportional funding or flexibility, has pushed many districts to the brink,” OPTA states.
As of last August, Ohio had 18,817 active school bus drivers, a decrease of nearly 7,000 from 2019, OAPT said. Meanwhile. The demand for transportation services continues to rise due to expanding private and charter school mandates, and lawmakers have failed to address any of the root causes..
“Dayton Public Schools is being asked to do more with less, navigating rigid laws and an acute driver shortage while trying to ensure safe passage for students to over 90 locations,” added OAPT. “These proposals are not only short-sighted, they exacerbate the problem by restricting access to education for some of our most vulnerable students.”
OPTA joined Dayton in calling for: Legislative reform that allows public school districts to prioritize transportation for their own students before allocating resources to nonpublic schools; adequate and equitable funding for public school transportation, including driver recruitment incentives, modernized fleets, and safety upgrades; a re-commitment to public education over expanding voucher systems that divert public funds to private interests, undermining Article VI, Section 2 of the Ohio Constitution; and, a clear focus on student safety, including reinstating the yellow school bus as the “gold standard” for student transportation and rejecting lower safety alternatives like vans and car services for daily transport.
Brynne Schieffer is a child care provider in Cameron, Wisconsin. She addressed a gathering outside the state Capitol on Friday, May 16, 2025. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)
After a week at the state Capitol to draw attention to their demand for a robust state fund for child care providers, advocates will spend the next couple of weeks back home to amplify their message.
Child care centers will reopen this week after closing their doors for all or part of the past week as providers sought to underscore the urgency of additional support for child care.
Providers will focus on raising more awareness in their local communities, said Corrine Hendrickson, co-founder of Wisconsin Early Childhood Action Needed (WECAN), a coalition of providers and parents. Federal pandemic relief money that has bolstered providers since 2021 will run out completely by early July.
Corrine Hendrickson addresses a gathering of parents and child care providers outside the state Capitol on Friday, May 16, 2025. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)
This week, WECAN is encouraging providers to do “larger [local] community actions to help inform the community,” Hendrickson told the Wisconsin Examiner. “We’re also going to be calling other child care programs, making sure they even know this funding’s ending.”
WECAN organized the week of action in Madison, calling it “State Without Child Care.”
A small group of providers shut down for the week to dramatize the loss of child care that they contend will be inevitable without strong state support. Others closed for a day or two, and still others opted to stay open while also endorsing the funding demand.
Earlier this month leaders of the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee removed a $480 million child care funding provision from Gov. Tony Evers’ proposed 2025-27 state budget, along with more than 600 other items.
On Friday, Hendrickson and WECAN cofounder Brooke Legler were joined by parents and other providers in front of the Capitol to reiterate their case for restoring the funds.
Katy Dicks has two children who use after-school child care. Dicks is the Wisconsin lead for Mother Forward, an advocacy group for policies to support families. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)
“My family still currently pays 25% of our monthly income towards child care, and honestly that’s just after-school care and then summer camps,” said Katy Dicks of Sun Prairie, who has a 10-year-old daughter and a 6-year-old son. When the children were younger, child care accounted for a third of the family’s income, she said — while “it has been suggested that 7% of a family’s income is what is affordable.”
Dicks leads the Wisconsin chapter of Mother Forward, a national advocacy group for child care, paid family leave and other policies to support families.
“We need policy that works for all families,” she said. “The quality of care for children approximately 3 months to 5 years should not be based on a child’s parents’ income.”
Also at the Capitol were Rochelle Navin and her husband. They have a 2-year-old daughter, and Navin is expecting twins. Their daughter is usually at Legler’s New Glarus child care center, The Growing Tree, while her parents work, but they juggled home care arrangements to support Legler’s decision to close the center for the week.
Navin told the Wisconsin Examiner it was disruptive to their routine, but the couple understood why Legler took that step.
Rochelle Navin speaks at a gathering of parents and child care providers on the steps outside the Wisconsin State Capitol on Friday, May 16, 2025. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)
“There’s two sides of it, right?” Navin said. “You fully understand why it’s gotten to this point, and why the extreme [response] needed to be taken, while at the same time being scared about what the future looks like.”
Evers’ proposal was to extend the Child Care Counts program, originally funded by federal pandemic relief money. The subsidy — originally $20 million a month, then cut back to $10 million a month in mid-2023 — enabled providers to raise wages without having to increase the fees parents pay for care.
Astatewide survey conducted by the University of Wisconsin-Madison Institute for Research on Poverty found that 25% of providers said they might close if the revenue isn’t replaced.
Hendrickson said in the coming weeks she and other providers who have been active in campaigning for the support will reach out to operators with messaging guidance for talking to parents as well as to their local lawmakers.
“This week was definitely about coming together as a group in solidarity and really standing up for ourselves and for our children and our families and our communities,” Hendrickson said Friday.
Over the course of the week at the Capitol, “we visited almost every single office, dropped off information, talked to staffers and really helped them see who it is that they’re hurting,” she said.
The providers who engaged in those conversations also aimed to show legislators “that their constituents actually know what they’re talking about — we know what we’re talking about with our businesses, we can speak to it and the reason why we need the funding, and it’s not a handout,” Hendrickson added.
In the Institute for Research on Poverty study, up to 40% of rural providers said they might close if the additional funding stops. That’s nearly twice the projected closure rate of urban providers.
Brynne Schieffer operates a child care program in the community of Cameron, near Rice Lake in Northwestern Wisconsin.
“I have spent the entirety of my adult life caring for not only my own children, but other people’s children, raising them, raising them to be kind human beings that will hopefully one day go out and be carers themselves,” Schieffer told the group gathered on the Capitol steps Friday.
“The funding runs out in July, and to avoid closure we have to raise our rates between $35 and $50 per child per week. Whose pocketbook can handle that?”
Hendrickson told the Wisconsin Examiner that if rural providers have to raise their rates, they’re more likely to lose families who can’t afford the increase, with no one to replace them. In cities, she said, moderate- and low-income families will be hurt by the loss of child care, but there are likely to be more high-income families able to keep up with rising costs, so fewer providers would have to close.
All but one of the providers who made the trip to Madison last week were from rural communities around the state, Hendrickson said.
“People drove four or five hours to get here,” she said. “It’s because they don’t feel listened to [back in their districts]. And that’s what they said — ‘I’ve had to come all the way down here to get them to listen to me.’”
Des Moines Public Schools in Iowa may need to reconsider a new school bus Wi-Fi program that relies on federal E-Rate discounts amid recent congressional resolutions and a pending case before the U.S. Supreme Court.
It is a conundrum facing hundreds of school districts across the U.S. that rely on the funding to help their students with internet connectivity issues so they can finish their homework.
Phil Roeder, the school district’s director of communications and public affairs, said E-Rate is crucial to the success of the “DPMS On the Go” service that launched earlier this school year. In January, the district announced Wi-Fi hotspots on 126 school buses and additional mobile units on passenger vans.
E-Rate covered 90 percent of the approximate $600,000 cost for the equipment, installation, wireless data service and “other,” which the Universal Service Administrative Company that manages E-Rate defines as hardware licensing. With an estimated cost of $500,000 in subsequent years for maintenance and new systems, Roeder explained that DPMS may need to reconsider the investment.
“If these funds are removed, the district will need to consider alternatives at a time when there is already a lot of uncertainty related to education funding,” he commented in an email. “At best, we may have to consider maintaining limited connectivity in a more targeted fashion, such as our IT and transportation departments identifying routes that have the greatest need and usage in order to focus resources. At worse, of course, school bus Wi-Fi could come to an end.”
Nationwide, over $63.6 million in E-Rate discounts have funded over 2,900 school bus Wi-Fi applications across 36 states and Puerto Rico. School districts may receive numerous discounts for each school bus they are equipping based on the hardware, installation and data costs. Des Moines is one of a dozen districts in Iowa that received E-Rate discounts for this school year.
Earlier this year, Samantha Sonnichsen, director of transportation for DPMS, noted many students spend hours riding to and from class on school buses. “Now, students will have the opportunity to access Wi-Fi and complete homework for the next day,” she added.
But for how much longer? At least through next school year, as a recent Senate resolution and a companion House resolution only target external hotspot connectivity devices that some students take home with them so they and their families can access Broadband internet. But school bus Wi-Fi is expected to be targeted during the next congressional session.
The primary goal of the Des Moines program is expanding internet access for students without reliable home connectivity, either because they live in underserved rural areas or their families can’t afford it. The benefits of Wi-Fi extend beyond academics. While not eligible for E-Rate funding, Des Moines is also using Wi-Fi for like real-time GPS, live camera access for emergency monitoring and driver tools to reroute buses quickly during traffic delays or severe weather. These features create a more secure and connected commute for both students and drivers, the district said in a statement.
“We live in a time where Wi-Fi is no longer a luxury but a necessity,” Matt Smith, associate superintendent of school support services for DMPS, said in January. “By equipping our buses, we’re ensuring that students, especially those without home internet, can keep up with their studies.”
The program was developed with support from the district’s IT team and Kajeet, a leading provider of filtered educational Wi-Fi. Students are limited to safe, education-only browsing and access is tied to their student login credentials, syncing activity with the school network to prevent misuse.
However, a looming legal challenge could upend the program’s future faster than the legislative ones. A case currently before the U.S. Supreme Court questions the constitutionality of the Universal Service Fund (USF) that finances the E-Rate program. Critics, including several federal lawmakers, argue the FCC has overstepped its original charter by using the USF to subsidize off-campus internet infrastructure like school bus Wi-Fi.
As noted in a recent STN podcast episode featuring AASA’s Noelle Ellerson Ng, this case could have ripple effects nationwide, especially for districts like Des Moines that are already relying on E-Rate to support long-term implementation.
“This is about more than hardware on buses,” Ellerson Ng said during the podcast. “It’s about whether digital equity continues to be prioritized at the federal level—because without E-Rate, many of these programs become unsustainable.”
Dr. Ian Roberts, superintendent for Des Moines Public Schools, waves to children on a departing school bus. The district said Wi-Fi hotspots are a necessity for students who don’t have internet access at home to complete their coursework.
While navigating funding and economic uncertainties, transportation leaders may find value in creating opportunities through strategic collaboration.
If transportation projects on their own are not likely to win support in your upcoming budget cycle, they may have a path forward when aligned with other district objectives in comprehensive facility modernization programs. Such programs can bundle multiple projects into one initiative — addressing aging systems and facilities, reducing costs, and making other improvements that matter to superintendents, chief business officers, and facilities directors alike.
In this webinar, you will learn how districtwide, multi-measured facility improvement programs can capture incentive funding while generating energy and operational cost savings. These incentives and savings can help fund transportation upgrades like EV charging, school bus Wi-Fi, and other fleet improvements. Innovative programs can also create STEM engagement opportunities for students and teachers.
In this webinar, you will learn about:
Updates on school transportation funding
Strategies for aligning goals across departments and leadership roles from a superintendent’s perspective
Case studies featuring districts that developed comprehensive modernization programs to enhance learning environments, generate cost savings, and fund transportation upgrades
Brought to you by ENGIE North America
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Presenters:
Marcus Gilmore
Senior Advisor, Clean Mobility Strategy
ENGIE North America
Marcus Gilmore has over a decade of experience in the clean energy sector, leading impactful sustainability initiatives for corporations, cities, and governments. At ENGIE, he works with organizations to develop and implement strategies for transitioning to zero-emission vehicle fleets and other clean energy solutions. Previously, Gilmore led multiple state and utility market transformation programs accelerating electric vehicle adoption, charging infrastructure deployment, and medium/heavy-duty vehicle fleet electrification. He holds an MS in PR and Corporate Communications from NYU and an MSc in Major Program Management from the University of Oxford.
Michael Decker
Senior Business Development Manager
ENGIE North America
Michael Decker has nearly 30 years of experience as an administrator in Michigan public schools, culminating in his 9-year term as Superintendent of St. Charles Community Schools. He brings this wealth of practical insight to ENGIE, as he helps both schools and local government agencies find more efficient ways to meet their infrastructure needs. He holds an MA in Secondary Education from Central Michigan University and a BA in Business Administration in Marketing and Management from Northwood University.
In addition to the state’s Clean Truck and Bus Voucher Incentive Project (HVIP), California has also awarded school districts $500 million to purchase zero-emission school buses and chargers.
The Zero-Emissions School Bus and Infrastructure (ZESBI) project selected 133 educational agencies to receive 1,000 zero-emission school buses and related charging infrastructure to school districts and other local educational entities. Statewide grants are expected to be finalized by the end of the year.
ZESBI is a program in collaboration between the California Air Resources Board (CARB) and the California Energy Commission (CEC), and is administered by CALSTART, a nonprofit clean transportation organization.
“Cleaning up the state’s school bus fleet is central to California’s efforts to provide clean transportation in priority communities that are disproportionately hurt by air pollution,” stated CARB Chair Liane Randolph. “The vast majority of these grants will go to local educational agencies that serve these communities.”
Meanwhile, HVIP is surging with voucher redemptions skyrocking by 177 percent from 2023 to 2024, with early 2025 data showing continued momentum. A press release states that in February alone, more than 200 HVIP-funded, zero-emission trucks and buses were deployed with $31 million in incentives.
“Over 15 years, HVIP invested $754 million, helping 2,000 fleets deploy 10,000 clean trucks and buses,” the release states, adding that the vehicles have logged more than 340 million miles.
The sale of new zero-emission trucks, buses and vans doubled in 2023, over the previous year, “representing one out of every six new vehicles sold for services including last-mile delivery, freight transportation, and school buses,” the release adds.
Several funding categories within HVIP have reached capacity, though funding remains through the transit set-aside and Innovative Small e-Fleets (ISEF) project. HVIP is also administered by CALSTART on behalf of the California Air Resources Board.
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