ST. LOUIS (KMOX) - The federal freeze leaves a local school district on the hook to an electrical contractor for nearly $1 million and with more than 20 new school buses under contract but unable to be paid for.
Plans to upgrade the school bus fleet in Ritenour School District are stalled by the federal spending freeze.
Ritenour Superintendent Chris Kilbride says they've got 24 new electric buses under contract, and three have been delivered, but the rest can't be paid for because Ritenour is locked out of an account containing $9.45 million from a federal EPA grant.
"Everything was moving along swimmingly," said Kilbride to KMOX News. "We were scheduled to receive the remainder of our buses by this Friday."
"When we saw through the Washington Post, through executive action, that federal grants and loan programs were being frozen, we went to check the portal in advance of receiving the remainder of the buses and we saw our access was frozen."
Kilbride says the remaining 21 buses they are due to receive are sitting in Litchfield, Illinois, and they are ready to receive the buses, but they don't have federal money to pay for them.
Additionally, Ritenour is sitting on an invoice worth $830,000 from an electrical contractor for installing 24 new electric charging stations. That was also supposed to be paid out of the now-frozen federal funds account.
"That was accounted for in the federal funds and all of those funds are frozen, so at this point, the contractor is not being paid," said Kilbride.
Kilbride promises no local taxpayer dollars would be used for the upgrade from a leased diesel fleet to an owned electric fleet.
"We are committed to not using local dollars to cover any of the costs, because this was a federal program," said Kilbride. "If a year down the road, the federal funding is not thawed, one thing we do know is that local dollars would not be spent on this project."
Kilbride says Ritenour is also evaluating other federally-funded programs, like free and reduced lunch and special tutoring resources, to make sure those can continue through at least the end of the school year.