Beaverton school district receives $20 million grant for new electric school buses
PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — The Beaverton School District (BSD) has received a grant from the Environmental Protection Agency worth tens of millions of dollars for electric school buses, making it the largest in the region this year.
The district’s head of transportation and local representatives for the EPA announced the $20 million grant Wednesday.
The grant will fund the replacement of 50 of the district’s 225 school buses with zero-emission electric school buses.
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“We are thrilled and deeply grateful for the opportunity to partner with the EPA to spearhead this transformation from diesel-powered to electric school buses in the Pacific Northwest,” Craig Beaver, BSD’s administrator for transportation, said in a statement. “It is an honor to be entrusted with an award of this magnitude, and we look forward to working with the EPA, Portland General Electric and our school bus providers to deploy these 50 buses in the service of our students, especially those in historically underserved areas, as well as the broader community who stand to benefit from the reductions in emission and noise pollution.”
In 2021, BSD was the first school district in Oregon to acquire an electric school bus. Since then, the district has added electric buses annually, for a current total of 15 electric buses and 31 charging stations.
The school district expects the new fleet of buses to be delivered by the end of 2025.
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