By Mahrukh Siddiqui and Amelia Biscardi

California’s 2024-2025 state budget sets aside $500 million to update bust fleets to more environmentally friendly K-12 transportation. 

34 words make up the proposed budget addition of zero-emission school buses from Gov. Gavin Newsom. 

The single use budget item works through Proposition 98. Which helps provide electric and clean energy buses options for California’s school districts, who school over 5 million Kindergarden-12 grade students. 

Lys Mendez, the Communication Director for the California Air Resources Board said in an email, the proposal is the second half of $1.5 billion from the Proposition 98 General Funds for school buses included in the seven-year zero-emission vehicle package.

The funding is not only for electric vehicles but also allows for other eco-friendly alternatives.

“If a local educational agency is able to demonstrate significant barriers to the adoption of zero-emission technology, they may instead be awarded funding for school buses powered by renewable fuel,” Mendez said.

According to Mendez, the proposed $500 million is broken up with $375 million being utilized to fund the zero-emission buses replacing current “internal combustion school buses owned by local education agencies.” The remaining $125 million being used to fund charging and infrastructure. 

Chamberlain Segrest, the Sustainability Manager of Sacramento City Unified School District explains that while six of the 85 buses at her district are now electric, one of the bigger issues is going to be creating the remaining charging stations.

“Infrastructure, specifically electric capacity, is our biggest issue,” Segrest said. (…)“And that will support about 20 of our school buses charging at a time. So we’re going to need to upgrade again. This time when we upgrade, we’re obviously thinking long term.”

While there are options out there to charge the vehicles quicker, they are extremely expensive according to Segrest.

For things like field trips to Disneyland, Segrest believes the district may need to keep some diesel buses on the fleet, or share vehicle charging stations with other districts.

Cristian Lepe, the Director of Transportation at Mt. Diablo Unified School District said rolling blackouts and the electrical grid are not a concern. Lepe explains this is due to their yard lay out and where the chargers are installed. 

“We weren’t able to tap into the power that’s in the front of our yard, so there’s a power grid or line that runs in the back. PG&E put in a new pole, a new service for us,” Lepe said.

According to Lepe, PG&E also put the gears and transformers next to what he calls “Electric Row.” Since the outages usually come from the front and the chargers are in the back on a separate grid, the buses can still charge.

“We also have a backup generator which will start up when it [the complex] loses power,” said Lepe.

Lepe said that three or four years ago they could see themselves going fully electric but now, because the battery technology isn’t there they don’t see that happening just yet. 

“I’m not saying that it’s not going to get there by 2035 but we need buses to be able to run 200 to 300 miles,” Lepe said.

In higher education, the timeline can look a little different as they do not fall under this budget item.

For Jeff Flynn, general manager of UC Davis’ Unitrans bus system, the timeline is a bit longer. They began rolling out zero-emission buses in 2022 and plan to complete in 2033. 

Flynn explained that so far 1/5 of the fleet in Davis has moved over to electric zero-emission buses. In the exploratory process he and his team found that most buses on the market need to be recharged after mile 225 and most buses in Davis only drove 200 miles in a day. 

Flynn said that after the zero-emission buses’ daily routes, they are able to charge overnight before the next day of shuttling students and residents around.

One of the challenges Flynn and others are facing is the need for charging stations.

“Electricity right now for us is about as expensive as compressed natural gas,” Flynn said. “We’re not seeing much of fuel savings. But I think over time we’ll hopefully see maintenance savings because fewer moving parts and hopefully maintenance issues related.”

According to Flynn, if you are using federal grants, you must purchase buses made in the U.S. and the market currently only has three options. With only a handful of options, most electric buses have a range of 150-250 miles before needing to recharge.

While four more buses will be entering into the Unitrans workforce by the end of the year, the current plan is to retire existing diesel buses once they get to their end of useful life.

Mendez explains that for the K-12th school districts, things do work a little differently. 

“Local education agencies will be required to scrap an old school bus within 24 months of delivery of their new school bus,” Mendez said.

For some using the buses, the fact that they’re operated by a rechargeable battery doesn’t matter. Lepe explains that most students don’t have strong feelings about the electric aspect of the buses. 

“When we introduced our three transit a couple weeks ago (…), they walked in and they’re like, hey, this is new, smells new,” Lepe said. “The seats are new and oh man, it’s got air conditioning.”