Operators discuss rolling out electric school buses secured with Clean School Bus Program funds Written by Kari Lydersen


M


ore electric school buses hit the road this winter thanks to the first round of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Clean School Bus Program funding. Districts and bus


providers that filed applications for the 2022 rebates are replacing older diesel buses with mostly electric buses and charging infrastructure, allowing large and small districts to launch their electric fleets. School districts that won last year’s competitive grant


for larger scale deployments are expected to receive their awards this spring with applicants of the second rebate that closed in January to be announced in the next month. In all, the Clean School Bus Program (CSBP) promises


$5 billion between fiscal years 2022 and 2026 to fund ap- proximately 5,000 clean and zero emissions buses across 600 school districts. The 2022 rebate round awarded 368 districts a total of $872 million to replace 2,357 buses, 2,235 of them being electric. Rebates were also offered for propane and CNG buses. Chickasaw County School District in Mississippi re-


ceived $4.345 million in rebates, $220,000 for 11 chargers and the rest for 11 Jouley electric buses from Thomas Built Buses. The district received the buses in January, rolling all of them out on routes by March. Electric buses now make up more than one-third of the district’s total fleet of 28 buses. Superintendent John Ellison said the district wasn’t particularly interested in going electric. It simply needed new school buses. “It didn’t come down to we wanted electric or wanted die-


sel, we just had to have new buses period,” Ellison explained. “When we did a cost analysis and looked at what we have. Every bus we replaced was a 2001 or older. So, we’re talking 20-something-year-old buses, some with over 400,000 miles. We’re just trying to update our whole fleet. We felt we


44 School Transportation News • APRIL 2024


A row of electric school buses owned and operated by Chickasaw County School District in Mississippi, paid for with the initial EPA Clean School Bus Program rebate in 2022.


had an opportunity to do that through the grant.” He added that the new electric buses allowed the dis-


trict to retire several 1999 models. Now, the oldest school bus in operation is a 2018. “For us it just meant we got air-conditioned, quality buses for our kids that we didn’t have before,” he added. The district’s electricity cooperative, Natchez Trace


Electric Power Association, has been helpful in con- necting the chargers to the grid and helping the district figure out how to charge when electricity demand is low. An ethernet cable needs to be run between the chargers to allow programming of charging times. Ellison noted this additional cost is not covered by the CSBP, but the district is applying for another rebate program. “We put them out to routes that come back to our transportation shop every night,” he said. “We have all our charging ports in one location. We’re working out some of those charge times, being able to stay off peak billing times.” Ellison said the electric bus range is not enough for


sports and other activity trips out of town. But he would consider applying for funding for a few more electric buses for regular routes. “We put a lot of time and research into it, from deal-


ing with our bus manufacturer to hiring engineers and architects to do our charging station layout,” Ellison said. “So far, the drivers have liked them. The kids have liked them. It’s been a good experience.” Another small school district, Caney Valley Schools in Kansas, used a $790,000 rebate to purchase two electric buses and a 60-kw dual-port charger that can power both vehicles at once if needed. The buses cost $375,000 each and the charger cost $40,000. The two electric buses now constitute one-third of the district’s fleet of regular route buses.


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