The funds have been awarded to 27 districts in Michigan and will go toward the purchase of 100 buses as part of a five-year, $5 billion program approved in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law signed in 2021.
The districts receiving the largest awards are Grand Rapids Public Schools and Kent Intermediate School District in west Michigan. They will receive $5.2 million and $3.1 million, respectively.
The EPA's Clean School Bus Program is meant to support the replacement of older, high-emission school buses linked to health issues such as asthma in children. This latest round of funding builds off prior awards in Michigan: The agency awarded about $52.6 million for Michigan schools to replace 136 buses under the program last year and separately announced in January that Detroit, Lansing and Pontiac schools would receive funds $5.6 million apiece.
EPA Administration Michael Regan is set to deliver remarks in Jackson, Mississippi on Wednesday to announce the funding awards.
“With today’s latest round of funding, we are transforming the nation’s school bus fleet to better protect our most precious cargo — our kids — saving school districts money, improving air quality, and bolstering American manufacturing all at the same time," he said in a press release.
A diverse set of Michigan districts will receive money. The list includes Gwinn Area Schools on the Upper Peninsula, which has about 1,000 total students, and Ann Arbor Public Schools, which has over 17,000 students.
Nationwide, the EPA said it has so far awarded almost $3 billion to fund approximately 8,500 school bus replacements at over 1,000 schools.
About 92 percent of the buses in the latest round of awards will be electric, according to the agency. The rest will use propane or compressed natural gas, which are less polluting than diesel.
Funding for the bus replacement program is helping boost a fledgling electric school bus industry in the United States. There were about 450,000 school buses in the U.S. last year and only 1,285 were electric as of June 2023, according to data from the Department of Energy.
There were commitments or orders for an additional 4,697 at the time — which would more than quadruple the number of such buses in operation — but that still leaves a long road ahead to fully convert the fleet across the country.
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