Macon schools will get 15 climate-friendly electric school buses through grant program

Students across the country are getting a new ride to school — one that’s manufactured right here in Middle Georgia.

This week, the federal Environmental Protection Agency announced $1 billion in new funding for school districts across the country to buy electric and propane school buses. This is the second round of funding through the agency’s Clean School Bus Program. Ultimately $5 billion will be distributed to schools.

Among the largest manufacturers of EV school buses is Fort Valley-based Blue Bird, which has earned some $170 million through the grant program so far.

Through this year’s grants, Bibb County School District will receive $6.275 million to purchase 15 electric school buses and 10 propane school buses. Schools across Georgia will receive $60 million to purchase nearly 200 buses.

Traditional school buses run on diesel fuel, whose exhaust is harmful to children’s health and can cause asthma and other respiratory illnesses. They also contribute to climate change.

Replacing them with electric models brings benefits both for public health and for the environment, since diesel-powered vehicles emit carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and contribute to global warming.

EPA Administrator Michael Regan visited Georgia on Monday to announce the latest round of funding at DeKalb County’s Stone Mountain Middle School alongside elected officials who included U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock, plus Blue Bird CEO Phil Horlock and a member of the Blue Bird union’s bargaining committee.

At a press conference held in the school’s gym, Warnock described himself as a former “Blue Bird kid” who didn’t have any idea that the bus he rode to school every day as a child in Savannah was manufactured in his home state.

Regan later visited Fort Valley to tour the Blue Bird bus plant there and meet with workers.

The scene Monday morning was festive, with several middle school marching bands and a cheer squad kicking things off before the assembled politicians filed into an electric bus for a short ride around Stone Mountain.

“All right, y’all, we’re headed to home room,” Warnock quipped as he boarded the Blue Bird bus.

The electric school bus program is one of the most visible of the federal climate investments implemented in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act.

School buses are the nation’s largest fleet of publicly owned vehicles, with some 500,000 buses in operation transporting 25 million students across the U.S. They have been a major focus of the Biden administration’s efforts to decarbonize public transportation.

In an interview with the Telegraph, Warnock connected the school bus grants to the political tides that brought him into office.

“We are seeing in real time the difference that Georgia made in the last two elections, and appropriately, as we’re seeing these investments come down the pipe, Georgia is at the center of all of it,” Warnock said.

“Here you have a Georgia company, Blue Bird, leading the way with greening yellow school buses all across the country,” he added. “This is the difference that an election makes, and I’m grateful to see Georgia leading in this way.”

Union victory acknowledged

At the press conference, Regan touted the “high-quality union jobs at Blue Bird” that the federal grants were helping to sustain.

When Blue Bird received the first round of EPA funding last year, some observers speculated that labor-friendly provisions in the grant program assisted the company’s workers in their unionization drive.

When the company’s 1,400 workers voted successfully to affiliate with the United Steelworkers union in May, they made national headlines and were congratulated by President Biden.

“Those labor protections were built in for a reason, and as far as we can tell, those labor protections have been respected for all of those who are applying for these grants, so we’re excited about moving forward,” Regan told the Telegraph when asked about the union vote.

“We like the progress that we’re seeing right here at Blue Bird, where we see the labor union and the corporate entity working together to hash out these deals so that we can provide the country with the manufacturing base that we need to be globally competitive.”

The union is currently in contract negotiations with company management.

This story was originally published January 11, 2024 at 11:18 AM with the headline "Macon schools will get 15 climate-friendly electric school buses through grant program."