Vice President Kamala Harris promotes clean school bus grant program in Seattle visit

389 school dis­tricts across the Unit­ed States will soon receive about $1 bil­lion in fund­ing from the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment to pur­chase thou­sands of clean elec­tric school bus­es for stu­dent trans­porta­tion, the Biden-Har­ris admin­is­tra­tion announced today at an event in down­town Seattle.

Vice Pres­i­dent Kamala Har­ris head­lined a morn­ing event at Lumen Field with stu­dents, par­ents, and the press to laud the award­ing of the grants.

She was joined by Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency Admin­is­tra­tor Michael Regan, Wash­ing­ton Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee, Seat­tle May­or Bruce Har­rell, and the state’s senior Unit­ed States Sen­a­tor, Pat­ty Mur­ray, who was one of the votes for the Infra­struc­ture Invest­ment and Jobs Act of 2021, which cre­at­ed the program.

The event was part of the Vice Pres­i­den­t’s first offi­cial vis­it to Seat­tle and Wash­ing­ton State since tak­ing office in Jan­u­ary of 2021. Pres­i­dent Biden made his first trip to the state as Pres­i­dent last April, while First Lady Jill Biden has vis­it­ed mul­ti­ple times, includ­ing ear­li­er this month. The Vice Pres­i­dent also spoke at a fundrais­er for Sen­a­tor Mur­ray’s reelec­tion cam­paign at the Show­box Market.

A large num­ber of stu­dents were on hand for the Lumen Field event, with one, Audrey Gmerek, hav­ing the hon­or of intro­duc­ing Har­ris. Gmerek is involved in the Unit­ed Stu­dent Lead­ers and runs cross coun­try at South Whid­bey High School.

A group of stu­dents and par­ents even got to par­tic­i­pate in Har­ris’ motor­cade (which left the Fair­mont Olympic Hotel at 9:31 AM) on an elec­tric school bus.

The assem­bled crowd offered a warm wel­come as the Vice Pres­i­dent walked out, prompt­ing Har­ris to smile broad­ly, laugh and declare: “I’m here because of all of our young lead­ers who are here. It is you who has moti­vat­ed the work that we are doing that is demon­strat­ed by these beau­ti­ful yel­low school buses.”

South Whid­bey is one of five dis­tricts in Wash­ing­ton State that were select­ed for rebates by the EPA in this first round of the clean school bus program.

The Vice Pres­i­dent not­ed that there’s much more to come. The Infra­struc­ture Invest­ment and Jobs Act autho­rizes a total of $5 bil­lion for clean school bus­es. This first round includes awards that total about $1 bil­lion, as mentioned.

“Twen­ty-five mil­lion chil­dren a day go to school on the yel­low school bus — twen­ty-five mil­lion chil­dren a day,” Har­ris observed. “And today, nine­ty-five per­cent of our school bus­es are fueled with diesel fuel, which con­tributes to very seri­ous con­di­tions that are about health and about the abil­i­ty to learn.

“So, when I think about what the expe­ri­ence should be for our chil­dren of going to school on the school bus, I think about the fact that it should be about max­i­miz­ing that expe­ri­ence for them, under­stand­ing that this bus sym­bol­izes so much about our col­lec­tive invest­ment in our future. Because, of course, it is about our invest­ment in our chil­dren, in their health, and in their education.”

“And these invest­ments are going to go every­where that our school bus­es go. It’s going to be in urban com­mu­ni­ties. It’s going to be in rur­al com­mu­ni­ties, Trib­al com­mu­ni­ties. It will be in all fifty states.”

“What we’re announc­ing today is a step for­ward in our nation’s com­mit­ment to be a leader on these issues to reduce green­house gas emis­sions, to invest in our econ­o­my, to invest in job cre­ation, to invest in build­ing the skills of Amer­i­ca’s work­force — all with, as that young leader this morn­ing said to me, a goal of not only sav­ing our chil­dren, but, for them, sav­ing our planet.”

Atten­dees had an oppor­tu­ni­ty to climb aboard one of the elec­tric school bus­es parked around the stage from which Har­ris and the oth­er elect­ed offi­cials spoke. Many young­sters got their pho­tos tak­en behind the wheel of the bus.

The bus­es behind Har­ris bore the name of the High­line School Dis­trict, which serves around 18,000 stu­dents in South King County.

The Pacif­ic North­west has been a leader in bus electrification.

King Coun­ty Metro has set a goal of end­ing its reliance on fos­sil fuels by com­plete­ly elec­tri­fy­ing the fleet as of the year 2035. The agency has been an ear­ly adopter of elec­tric bus­es and is buy­ing more — in fact, this year, Metro says that “an addi­tion­al forty bat­tery-elec­tric coach­es are set to start arriv­ing to join the Metro fleet. Pro­duced by New Fly­er, both the 60-foot and 40-foot vehi­cles can trav­el 140 miles on a full charge, test­ed to approx­i­mate a full pas­sen­ger load.”

“Those school dis­tricts who received an award can now pro­ceed with pur­chas­ing new bus­es and eli­gi­ble infra­struc­ture,” the EPA explained in its announcement.

“Selectees will need to sub­mit Pay­ment Request Forms with pur­chase orders demon­strat­ing they have ordered new bus­es and eli­gi­ble infrastructure.”

“EPA is also part­ner­ing with the U.S. Depart­ment of Ener­gy and Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion to pro­vide school dis­tricts with robust tech­ni­cal assis­tance to ensure effec­tive implementation.”

This means that it should­n’t be long before the Pacif­ic North­west dis­tricts cho­sen by EPA for this first round of grants can put in their pur­chase orders.

Thanks to these clean trans­porta­tion invest­ments, we are get­ting one step clos­er to a more sus­tain­able future in which we lib­er­ate our­selves from dirty fos­sil fuels.