‘Cleaning up our air:’ Funds help Ventura County school districts invest in electric buses

School districts in Ventura, Simi Valley and Oxnard will receive millions in state and federal funding to replace diesel-engine school buses with less polluting electric vehicles and pay for the needed infrastructure.

The awards aim to help the Ventura County districts comply with the state’s mandate for transitioning public fleets to zero emission vehicles by 2030 for buses and all-terrain vehicles, 2035 for light-duty vehicles and 2040 for medium- and heavy-duty vehicles.

A large part of the funds are rebates granted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean School Bus program, which was created by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

The federal agency announced in May that with the 2023 awards, California school districts are getting $91 million for 47 California schools and school districts to replace 380 existing school buses, with total funding of nearly $900 million for 530 districts across the nation to replace over 3,400 school buses.

In Ventura County, Ventura Unified School District will get $2 million and Simi Valley Unified School District will get $1.98 million.

“Clean air leads to public health enhancement, quality of life for our community, for our children, for our bus drivers. It addresses climate change,” said Congressman Salud Carbajal, D-Santa Barbara.

Carbajal, who represents Ventura, noted that many children are vulnerable to asthma.

“It'll help everybody who has a respiratory challenge because this will go towards cleaning up our air,” he said.

The Clean School Bus program funds electric buses with zero tailpipe emissions and propane and compressed natural gas buses with lower tailpipe emissions than their diesel counterparts.

In May, the Ventura County Air Pollution Control District also granted another $1.56 million to Ventura Unified and Ocean View Elementary School districts to purchase more electric buses. The funding is granted through the California Air Resources Board and will cover the cost of charging equipment and about 87% of the cost of purchasing electric buses.

Ventura Unified will get funds to replace two buses and purchase two new charging stations. Ocean View in Oxnard will receive funds to replace one bus and get one new charging station.

The air pollution control district also helped fund electric buses and infrastructure in the past. Including the latest grants, the agency has funded eight electric school buses since 2019.

Arie Wiberg, transportation director for the Ventura Unified School District, said in an email the district has 28 large transit diesel buses, 29 gas powered small buses and two large electric buses. Two or three may get replaced each year.

The two current electric buses in the Ventura Unified School District's fleet were acquired about three years ago through a previous air pollution control district grant.

When replaced, the old buses are scrapped and can't be sold or repurposed for another use, Wiberg said by email. The buses are taken to facilities where the bus frames are cut, and the engines are destroyed. The grant programs aim to take diesel vehicles off the road completely.

Infrastructure needs to catch up

The Simi Valley School District only plans to purchase three electric buses through the Clean School Bus program although the grant would have allowed them to purchase as many as 10.

David Wehlage, director of student safety and transit at the district, said that Simi Valley would not get all 10 buses because the district only needs to replace the existing diesel buses that are aging out. Any remaining funding reverts to the state, he said.

Currently, the district has about 44 buses in its fleet out of which about two are replaced on average each year.

He said that there are also some cases in which switching to electric buses doesn’t make sense for the district until the infrastructure catches up. Their athletic teams, for example, venture to remote areas all over Southern California.

Associate Superintendent Ron Todo said that a full transition can only be possible once all schools have the capacity for buses to charge for the return journey.

“It's very similar to stories I hear about the people in their Tesla where they can't quite make it to Vegas,” Todo said.

Dua Anjum is an investigative and watchdog reporter for the Ventura County Star. Reach her at dua.anjum@vcstar.com. This story was made possible by a grant from the Ventura County Community Foundation's Fund to Support Local Journalism.