DeKalb County students head back to school this year with 75 electric buses joining the fleet, bought almost entirely with federal money the district says it couldn't have replaced on its own.
Bernando Brown grew up riding DeKalb buses and now runs the district's student transportation. He told CBS Atlanta the math never worked before the grant: a diesel bus runs about $170,000 while an electric one can hit $400,000. "The financial impact on the district made it very hard for us to just automatically, just look into buying them. But so when the EPA offered the grant, we saw it was a perfect opportunity," Brown said.
The roughly $30 million came from the EPA starting in 2024 through its Clean School Bus Program, the $5 billion fund Congress created in the 2021 infrastructure law to swap diesel buses for cleaner ones nationwide. CBS's story doesn't name the program, but it's the same pot that has been buying electric buses for districts across the country, and at $30 million for 75 buses, DeKalb's award works out to the full $400,000 sticker per bus.
The buses are Blue Birds, built in Fort Valley, Georgia, and they're a small slice of a fleet of more than 1,000 vehicles running diesel, propane, gas and natural gas. The district expects them to carry about 40,000 children on a typical day, which it says is about a third of its bused students. Routes are going in around Stone Mountain, Tucker and Buford Highway. For scale, the district's 131 schools enroll about 92,000 students.
The drivers' reviews so far are about the quietness of not having an engine. "You can hear what's going on," said George Graves, a driver and field trainer. "You'll be able to pay attention to your kids without all of the noise from the engine." He said the turning radius beats the diesel, propane and gas models too. Brown's pitch to the neighborhoods is the same: "They won't even realize that the buses are coming through."
Georgia Power is building the charging stations through its Make Ready Initiative, and students start riding once those are done, expected this month.
Sources
CBS Atlanta: Dozens of new electric school buses ready to roll through DeKalb County's neighborhoods
EPA: Clean School Bus Program
School and enrollment figures from allk12's analysis of National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) data, SY 2024-25.
