PANAMA — Panama Central School is preparing for legislative requirements from the state for zero-emission buses and the potential temperature bill.

The school has been working on doing a feasibility study for the area for the beginning transition to electric buses. New York State requires all school districts to begin purchasing only electric or zero-emission buses by 2027 and to have the entire bus fleet be electric by 2035.

“We have been working on a feasibility study with Cornice Technologies, which is a grant study to determine the feasibility of the transition to zero-emission buses for us,” Superintendent Aaron Wolfe said. “This looks at things like our routes and electric capacity and analyzes what that capacity is because of things like temperature, distance, etc.”

This is a study that is currently underway, and Wolfe said Sherman and Clymer schools were also doing something similar as they prepare for the required transition.

Another potential piece of legislation coming down from the state is the temperature bill, which says that students will be sent home if the temperature in the classroom exceeds 88 degrees. Wolfe said in preparation for this, they have been looking at how hot each classroom in Panama gets.

“We have been discussing the potential temperature bill and how hot each of the rooms get,” Wolfe said. “At the end of the year, especially with those particularly hot days we had, we monitored the temperature in certain rooms in case legislative action was taken.”

Wolfe added that the monitoring of the rooms allowed them to begin to determine which rooms get hotter than others and which ones would be areas of concern. He said that the school is continuing to monitor the rooms to see which ones will be a challenge to keep cool.

The school board also accepted several gifts in kind. Gifts in kind are contributions of goods or services other than cash grants. The gifts in kind Panama accepted at the June board meeting included; from the for the Class of 2024 from the Parents of the Class of 2024, a monetary gift of $2,256.50, for the Class of 2026, a monetary gift of $3,191.00 from the Parents of the Class of 2026 and for the Bright Future Scholarship, $50.00 from the PCS Class of 1966 in Memory of their classmate, Stephen Bascom.

Wolfe said the Panama community is an active and supportive one.

“We have community businesses donated and classes that donate,” Wolfe said. “It truly is a supportive community that helps our students have as many experiences as possible.”

Wolfe said gifts in kind are accepted at almost every meeting, but that there is an increase in them in the spring. Other gifts in kind accepted at the July meeting included: from the Parents for Panama, $500.00 for the fifth and sixth grade Waldameer Trip and from the Parents of Class of 2027, $601.00 for the Class of 2027.