ACTION PLAYBOOK:

Help Your School District
Electrify Buses

Let’s take action.

⚡️ This playbook has two tracks. If you’re ready to Level Up!, follow the lightning bolt.

  • Urge your city officials to take advantage of a federal grant program that enables them to electrify their school bus fleet.

    1. Find your local officials

    2. Send an email

    3. Make a phone call

    4. Tweet at them

    5. Report back

    6. Ask a friend

Step 1: Find contact information and write it down

Localities vary widely with respect to decision-making structure and school governance. A safe bet is sending the email to three people who can make decisions about whether to apply for the grant:

  1. Your school superintendent (this might be city- or county-level depending on your state)

  2. One member of your school board (your own district or at-large)

  3. Your school district’s transportation director, if available

To find your school district’s leaders, you’ll need to search online. You should find some contact information for the school district at the district’s website. You may only be able to find a generic email and phone number for the whole office rather than the individuals.

  • If you have time to do a deeper search for individual contact information within your city’s school system, it can help increase your chances of receiving a response. You might have success with this on LinkedIn, or spending more time finessing your Google search.

    Climate Changemakers collects contact information for state and local officials that our community has found during past actions. Check the Community Contact Database to see if someone from your school district has already been contacted (though this is not an exhaustive list) and consider choosing a different school district if yours has already been covered. Please submit any new contact info to the community by using the link at the top of the spreadsheet.

Step 2: Send an email

  • Use the template below to send an email to the local officials you found above. Be sure to customize for the areas where it feels appropriate and share the link to the application information on the EPA’s website.

  • Save your letter in a separate file so you can use it as your call script and/or repurpose it as a Twitter thread.

  • When you’re ready, hit send using the email address you found in Step 1. Please bcc advocacy@climatechangemakers.org so we can track our collective impact.

⬇️ Customizable email template:

Please bcc advocacy@climatechangemakers.org so we can track our impact.

My name is [NAME] and I live in [CITY/TOWN]. Thank you for everything you do for our community.

I am writing to urge you to take advantage of a new federal grant for electric school buses. After a successful round of rebates in 2022, the EPA is awarding an additional $400 million in grants and rebates this year for qualifying electric bus purchases, with another $4.5 billion available for school bus replacements over the next four years. This program was created by the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021.

School districts need to apply directly with the EPA by August 22, 2023. You can review the requirements and submit an application at the EPA’s website here.

Electric school buses are a win for our children, our communities, and our climate. Diesel buses create tailpipe pollution, which causes a wide range of health issues. Tailpipe pollution from buses is shown to trigger asthma attacks, interfere with lung development, cause cancer—and even reduce children’s ability to learn. Diesel buses even pollute the air our children breathe inside the vehicle. And as emitters of greenhouse gases, diesel buses are completely out of step with our fight against climate change.

Electric school buses also reduce costs for school districts. They cost anywhere between 60-80% less to maintain and operate than diesel buses. This inevitably results in thousands of dollars in savings per day for a fleet. These savings could then in turn support additional sustainability projects and/or increases in bus driver pay, which could significantly boost driver retention.

As a [RESIDENT? PARENT OF SCHOOL-AGE CHILDREN?] of [CITY/COUNTY], I’m excited at the prospect of shifting our bus fleet to a healthy, zero-carbon alternative and wanted to make sure you were aware of this new grant opportunity from the federal government.

If your district needs help putting together an application, consider sending an RFP to companies like Highland, RideZum, and others that can help with the logistics of your bus electrification plan.

Thank you for all the work you do for our community.

Sincerely,

  • Here are the school districts that were awarded rebates in the previous round (note that these districts may not have gotten enough to fully electrify their fleets and are eligible to apply again). This list shows the school districts that applied and did not receive funds in the first round. Tailor your message based on your district’s application history:

    1. If they’ve never applied, you can keep the template as-is.

    2. If they were awarded enough for only a few buses, let them know they can apply again this year.

    3. If they are on the waitlist, let them know they should reapply and that EPA will not be pulling from last year’s waitlist.

    If your district was already awarded significant rebates and you think your time would be better spent contacting a different district, return to the first step and find another superintendent’s contact information. It’s perfectly fine to contact a district that isn’t where you live—you’re just a communicator of important information!

Step 3: Make a phone call

Use your letter as a call script!

You’ll want to identify your constituent status (“Hi, I’m a resident of [city/county/school district] and…”), be concise and specific, and reference the email you just sent with the link to apply. When you’re ready to go, take a deep breath and dial the office number you found in Step 1. If they don’t pick up, leave a voicemail.

Step 4: Tweet at your local officials

Public amplification of your message can grab the attention of local officials and elicit a response. Try to find their Twitter handles by searching their names on Twitter. Turn your personalized message into a succinct Tweet (or small Tweet thread). Make sure you tag their handles and attach the EPA link!

  • Letting others in your network know that you’ve taken action is a great way to scale your impact. Consider using social media, email, texting, etc. to amplify the action you just took and invite others to join you. If you’re in our Slack, share what you did to help motivate others! Below is sample language you can adapt and customize:

    I just contacted school officials in my district about this cool opportunity from EPA to electrify buses. It’s a really empowering and accessible action. Check out the playbook! https://www.climatechangemakers.org/preview-help-your-school-district-electrify-school-buses

Step 5: Report back!

If you receive a response from your school officials, please report back to advocacy@climatechangemakers.org or send a message to a staff member in Slack. You can simply forward email responses or send a screenshot. This enables us to more accurately track our collective impact.

It's useful to learn of any barriers for your school district. Anything you learn from their response is valuable, so please report back! We’re trying to grease the wheels to deploying climate solutions, so the more we know, the more effective we can become as connectors and advocates.

Did you get an enthusiastic response from your school official? Awesome! Consider sharing your response publicly in our Slack #wins-and-shoutouts channel—other changemakers may find it motivating and inspiring. We’re normalizing civic action on climate, and it starts with talking about it.


Step 6: Ask a friend to do it too

Network effects are powerful. Persuading friends and family to take climate action is a crucial step toward changing cultural norms and making real progress. Now that you’ve taken this action, send a note to a friend along with this playbook asking them to send an email or make a call to their school officials. Simplify the process for them by forwarding your own email as a model and the contact information you found if they live in the same city. And if your friend ends up taking action, don’t forget to let us know! (See the previous step).

Thank you for taking action!

Help us improve this playbook: info@climatechangemakers.org

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