This story was first published by The Texas Tribune.
Keith Kimbrough is the first to admit that electric school buses were not an easy sell in the tiny unincorporated town of Martinsville.
In Martinsville, which sits just outside of Nacogdoches in the Piney Woods region of East Texas, pickup trucks are the vehicle of choice, and oil field jobs are prevalent.
Diesel exhaust is not top of mind.
And yet the modest school district here has become the first in the state to entirely replace its diesel school bus fleet with no-emissions electric buses. Martinsville Independent School District applied for and received a $1.6 million grant last year from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Its Clean School Bus Program — funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law of 2021 — is investing $5 billion to replace existing school buses with zero-emissions and low-emissions models across the country, especially in school districts that serve rural areas or low-income students.
Martinsville ISD began running its morning and afternoon routes with the new buses in late October 2023.
“We are not who you would expect to be the first,” said Kimbrough, the principal at Martinsville ISD, which serves about 340 students, all on one campus. “We had a lot of people telling us it wasn’t going to work, but we decided we were going to go for it.”
Diesel exhausts create greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change. The emissions are also linked to physical health issues such as asthma and heart disease, and children are especially at risk because their airways are not fully developed and have a smaller diameter than those of adults.
According to the EPA, exposure to diesel pollution from transportation contributes to 3,700 heart attacks, 8,800 deaths and $100 billion in health costs each year. Diesel exhaust is a known carcinogen and can even impact students’ academic performance, research has found. Tailpipe exhaust often dirties the air inside buses, and idling buses — especially during loading and unloading — can pollute the air inside schools.
As of November 2023, the Clean School Bus Program had awarded about $8.8 million to some 376 school districts, including 11 in Texas. The application window for another round of funding to be awarded next year is open.
Martinsville, which operates four buses across the whole district, replaced its entire fleet of old diesel buses, whereas other districts only replaced part of their fleets or have not received all of their new buses yet. The Texas Electric School Bus Project, a nonprofit organization that advocates for electric school buses, estimates that somewhere between 13 and 20 electric school buses are on the road in Texas and approximately 170 additional buses have been ordered.
Yamilet Garcia, an eighth grader in Martinsville ISD, rides the bus to and from school every day. She said she’s enjoyed the quieter and cleaner ride on the electric buses.
“When we were waiting to get on the bus, it used to smell weird with the old buses,” Garcia said. “With these buses, it’s been a lot quieter and a lot nicer.”
Kimbrough learned about the federal grant program while shopping for a new school bus last year. He faced some skepticism from residents who questioned whether the grant would fully fund the district, but he managed to get the administration on board by mapping out the possible cost savings of switching to electric buses. Kimbrough calculated that the electricity costs of running the buses would be about 70% less than the diesel fuel costs. He anticipates added savings in maintenance costs.