This is Part 1 in a series about the rollout of electric school buses across the county. Read Part 2, about a school district in Montana, here, and Part 3, about a school district in Arizona, here.
Stephen Seelye, superintendent of Pellston Public Schools, a small school district in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, was initially wary of electric school buses. He had his reasons. Mostly, his hesitation was a fear of the unknown, so he dismissed electric buses as a potential risk. It didn’t help that he only knew one acquaintance with an electric vehicle. Would they break down, putting kids’ safety in danger as residents of the freezing “Icebox of the North”?
Kindra Weid, Coalition Coordinator of It’s Electric! and Moms’ Electric School Bus Outreach Coordinator, works with school districts across the country on switching from diesel buses to electric ones. She gets questions like this all the time. “There are challenges; this is a new technology. This is new infrastructure. This is changing the way we move about the planet, and the entire way we move children around the planet,” she says.
Stephen was especially worried about finances. Switching to electric is better for the environment and three times more fuel efficient, but it’s very expensive up front. New electric buses plus their necessary chargers equate to about $400,000 apiece!
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That’s where the Clean School Bus Program, funded by EPA through the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, came in. Through 2025, the program is providing $5 billion to school districts nationwide to replace existing school buses with electric, which have zero emissions and promote clean air.
Pellston Public Schools was encouraged to apply for this funding as it fulfilled three qualifications: it’s a rural district with overall low income status and a high population of Indigenous students.
The lure of funding ultimately won Stephen over. “If you got a grant for five dollars, I’m going to apply for it because it benefits my kids,” he says. So in 2022, he applied.
Making the argument for clean air
The benefits of switching from dirty diesel to electric school buses with zero tailpipe emissions for kids, bus drivers, teachers, and the surrounding communities are massive. When Elizabeth Hauptman, Moms’ Michigan Field Organizer, encourages school districts like Pellston to make the swap, she cites her experience as a mom to a child with asthma. “Michigan is one of the hardest states to live in if you have asthma. It’s an environmental issue,” she says. And yet the majority of Michigan’s school buses remain diesel-powered, creating air pollution linked to health issues like asthma and even cancer.
Elizabeth’s “no-brainer” argument when helping schools to make the switch goes like this: “You can either have this carcinogenic bus that’s going to cause everything from headaches to stomachaches or for the same amount of money or less [have a clean one with zero tailpipe emissions]. Oh, and by the way, your children are developing, so they’re going to be taking in all of these fumes and they stand about tailpipe high.”
Kindra always shares with districts that school buses are quintessential candidates for moving toward clean energy overall because they have shorter bus routes than, say, city buses. And they have long breaks between uses built into the day, which are ideal for charging.
The many rewards of clean energy buses
Stephen was shocked in October 2022 to hear that Pellston “won the lottery” and was awarded everything they had applied for: four electric buses and chargers totaling $1.58 million. The new electric buses had eight-year warranties, 120-mile battery range—nearly three times the distance of the school’s routes.
Electric school buses are built to run in any weather. They work well in snow, for example, though electric batteries can deplete more rapidly in cold weather. Built-in systems maintain their temperature range, enabling batteries to operate safely. Pellston’s buses have heated seating to prevent the battery from draining in cold weather, for example.
In return for the electric school bus award, the district was required to decommission four diesel buses from circulation. Pellston was permitted to sell these diesel vehicles, providing another financial boost that could be redirected to education and other school improvements. Pellston Public Schools experienced two other significant boosts as a result of making the switch to electric school buses: the new buses will save an estimated $60,000 per year in maintenance and fuel costs, and the school district can use stored energy from the bus batteries to cool their buildings during the summer. Win-win.
The following year, Elizabeth and EPA encouraged Pellston to apply again for additional grant funding to replace the final diesel bus in its fleet. Once again, the district’s ask was answered. Pellston was also awarded a $40,000 tax rebate from the Inflation Reduction Act and additional funds from the Michigan Clean Bus Energy Grant, which covers federal program gaps and prioritizes districts with higher environmental exposure levels, subsidized by the Volkswagen emissions fraud ruling.
Preparing kids to be environmental stewards
Now Stephen is an electric school bus convert. He loves to talk about their benefits, like how quiet they are. Stephen says that without a loud diesel engine roaring, his bus drivers have been reporting fewer behavioral issues; kids return to their homes calmer and arrive at school more ready to learn. Diesel exhaust is known to interfere with learning.
This year, for the first time, the school even won a National Blue Ribbon award for academic achievement. “We couldn’t be more proud,” he says.
Stephen is pleased he moved Pellston from diesel to electric school buses. “Our job is to make sure the kids graduate ready for life, but it’s also my job to teach them to be great human beings and good stewards of the environment. So to have them graduate from a school where they rode electric school buses and had a solar array on their roof—when I retire, I’ll look back and feel pretty great that I showed them that that’s possible, even in rural Northern Michigan.”