3 Lenawee County school districts get funding for electric buses
Three school districts in Lenawee County have been awarded funding as part of a more than $54 million package from the Environmental Protection Agency to equip Michigan schools with electric buses.
The school districts that received funding were:
Britton Deerfield Schools, five buses, $1,975,000.
Onsted Community Schools, three buses, $1,185,000.
Sand Creek Community Schools, two buses, $790,000.
These awards are administered through the EPA’s Clean School Bus Program. This funding comes from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which Sens. Debbie Stabenow and Gary Peters helped pass in November 2021. The funding includes the installation of charging stations.
“Electric school buses will make a big difference for schools across Michigan. This investment will improve air quality while helping our school districts cut their transportation costs and keep more resources in the classroom. It’s a great step to protect the health of our children and save schools money,” Stabenow said in a news release.
Stacy Johnson, superintendent of Britton Deerfield Schools, said her district is doing more research to find out what electric buses would mean for students, staff and administrators and whether the district will be able to fulfill the grant obligations.
There are questions surrounding performance of the buses in rural communities, where there would be additional charging stations and how the buses would perform in the winter, among others.
“Now we are doing our research and our homework on getting information on the grants. We have been also working over the course of the last week in trying to find the details, the specifics if you will, on the buses and the requirements and how they can really be used,” Johnson said. “It becomes a little more difficult in a rural area such as Britton Deerfield transporting students in larger areas. We put up to 100 miles on a bus a day to get kids to and from school. So right now, we’re trying to figure out answers to our questions. For example, how far can the buses go before they need to be charged again? Where are other charging stations? Where can we get electric buses serviced?”
Sand Creek Superintendent Sharon Smith is in a similar holding pattern ensuring that that the school system has a need for and will be able to use electric buses.
“At this point, we will be getting more information, but really the board has yet to make the final decision whether we will actually get them or not,” Smith said. “It would cover all of the standard bus. If you got extra stuff, it wouldn’t cover that, but if it’s a bare-bone bus model, which is what we normally get, then it would cover all of that as well as the infrastructure to charge them.”
Onsted Superintendent Steve Head said his district got the award by mistake. The district had applied for propane buses rather than electric buses.
For her part, Johnson hopes that it does not come down to rejecting the funding for the district.
“I certainly hope that doesn’t happen. I certainly hope that we don’t find out that this is not feasible for us. It’s exciting any time we are provided resources. This is a time when schools need to take advantage of every opportunity they can. So this is certainly our hope. Our hope is that we can take some or all of the five buses and utilize them in the best interests of kids,” Johnson said.
This article originally appeared on The Daily Telegram: Britton Deerfield, Sand Creek, Onsted get aid for electric buses
