Fort Worth Independent School District was one of seven Texas school systems selected for a federal initiative to help transition to electric school buses.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced last week that FWISD would get $6.17 million to add 15 electric school buses to its fleet.
If half the nation’s school buses switched to electric from diesel, around 2.1 million fewer tons of carbon dioxide would be released into the atmosphere in a year, according to a federal government estimate.
“Without receipt of these funds, electric school buses would not be possible for FWISD as an electric school bus is almost four times the cost of a bus fueled by diesel,” said FWISD spokesperson Cesar Padilla, according to the Fort Worth Report.
The grant is part of the EPA’s Clean School Bus Program’s Grants Competition, which Alief, Austin, and San Antonio ISDs will also benefit from.
“Still yellow outside, but green inside. While they will look the same, our new, electric Austin school buses will be healthier for both our students and our planet,” said U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-TX) in a statement.
The initiative was part of the spending of federal taxpayer money outlined in the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law aimed at boosting public transportation nationwide. As recently covered in The Dallas Express, this same bill will see the building of electric vehicle charging stations across the country, including in North Texas, to the tune of $15 million.
As a result, critics of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law have argued that it effectively constitutes a federal handout of taxpayer money to electric vehicle manufacturers.
FWISD had applied to be part of the EPA’s program in 2022 but was not selected in the lottery. Instead, the largest school districts in the state, Houston and Dallas ISDs, were chosen. DISD added 25 electric buses to its fleet at the cost of $7.1 million, as previously covered in The Dallas Express.
The latest round of beneficiaries placed a priority on at-risk, rural, and tribal communities. An estimated 85% of FWISD students are from low-income families. Several of the district’s schools are also at risk of closure due to declining student enrollment figures.
Although the downward trend in families opting for public education has been noticeable across the North Texas region, FWISD has been laboring against lackluster academic results and an influx of charter schools as competition.
For instance, in the 2021-2022 academic year, only 32% of its students scored at grade level on the STAAR exam, according to the Texas Education Agency accountability report. By comparison, neighboring DISD, known to underperform academically, actually fared slightly better, with 41% of its students scoring at grade level on the same test.