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As Atlanta students head back to school in the coming days, a fraction of them will be taking electric buses. Those students will be getting a healthier, quieter ride - and research shows they may also perform better on tests and have fewer absences.
Most of Georgia’s school bus fleet is traditional diesel-fueled vehicles, which contribute to air and noise pollution. Replacing them with electric versions is a pricey endeavor at about $300,000 or more apiece, compared to about $100,000 for a traditional bus.
About 124 of Georgia’s 20,000 school buses are electric so far, according to data from the World Resource Institute’s Electric School Bus Initiative.
The transition to electric school buses is in the early stages in the United States, jumpstarted by federal funding during the Biden administration, said Susan Mudd, a senior policy advocate at the Environmental Law and Policy Center. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law passed in 2021 included $5 billion over five years for the Clean School Bus program at the Environmental Protection Agency.
Some Atlanta area districts got funding, but others that applied, like Gwinnett County, did not. And the most recent round of awards under the infrastructure bill has stalled amid changes at the EPA since President Donald Trump took office in January.
Meanwhile, local climate and children’s health advocates are looking for cheaper, interim solutions to ease school bus pollution until more electric buses are on the road.
How diesel-fueled school buses affect students’ health
Traditional diesel school buses create air pollution that can damage children’s lungs, said Sara Adar, a professor at the University of Michigan School of Public Health who is an expert on air pollution.
There are several reasons for that, she said, including that children are still developing. They breathe in more air relative to their body size than adults do, and since they’re typically shorter than adults, they are closer to the tailpipes that emit exhaust fumes.
“We’ve found that there are no safe levels of air pollution, so it is of concern to all children,” Adar said. The oldest buses are the least clean, she said. About half of the school buses in Georgia are from 2009 or before, when buses were subject to lower emissions standards, according to the Electric School Bus Initiative.
Replacing older school buses with models that pollute less can also bring educational benefits, Adar said. That includes better performance on math and language arts standardized tests, as well as improved attendance.
“The evidence for those associations is really strong,” Adar said.
There are two theories for explaining those links: Kids who ride cleaner buses may perform better because they have better attendance due to breathing cleaner air.
“Their lungs are less irritated. They’re less likely to get sick or to have asthma attacks and therefore be at school more frequently,” Adar said.
Or air pollution could be damaging kids’ brains.
“We also know that air pollution can damage our brain, so on high air pollution days, we know that your brain just is a bit more sluggish than usual, and so it’s possible that the improvements we see in the standardized testing actually have to do with reducing harm to the brain itself,” Adar said.
There can be other community benefits, as well, Mudd said. Some models of electric school buses can store energy and send it back to buildings or the power grid when the buses are not in use, like during school holidays, and during emergencies.
Districts praise EV benefits: cleaner air, cheaper maintenance
DeKalb, Atlanta, and Clayton school districts are among those trying out electric school buses.
Clayton has a total of 467 school buses. Twenty-five are electric, with another 75 slated to arrive within the next year, said Denise Hall, executive director of transportation for the district. While most of the funding came from the EPA grants, the district paid $2.9 million to build charging stations and infrastructure.
“The buses have provided clean air for our scholars and reduced gas and maintenance expenditures,” Hall said.
Neighboring DeKalb has ordered 25 electric school buses for its fleet of 1,005, with plans to order 50 more, using EPA funding, spokesperson Carla Parker said.
Atlanta Public Schools has 25 electric buses purchased through the Clean School Bus fund, said Anthony Ashley, senior director of fleet operations for the district.
“You want to give them the best environment to grow in, and EVs advance that avenue for them, because, for years, kids were exposed to diesel fumes, which have been shown in studies that tend to stunt kids’ growth or their brain,” Ashley said. “We always want the best for our kids, and this is one pathway to advancing that cause.”
Students and drivers also enjoy the quieter environment, Ashley said.
“Kids don’t want to make as much noise as they have in the past, when they have to talk over the engine or yell or scream or whatever. So the environment tends to be a bit more quiet and calm,” he said. That makes for a nicer ride for both students and drivers.
Some APS drivers were initially reluctant to make the switch, but he now has a waiting list of drivers who want electric buses.
Mothers and Others for Clean Air, a local advocacy group, partnered with Georgia Physicians for Climate Action and the Georgia State Medical Association on a campaign to advocate a switch to electric school buses. They have met with district leaders from across the state to educate them about the benefits and how to find funds.
Fulton County Schools has only one electric school bus in its fleet of 930, spokesperson Anne Hamspon Boatwright said. It was bought with funds from the EPA and local taxes.
“We use our bus on a limited basis but have not found it to be practical or effective for our needs. Our green, natural gas-powered buses work very well for us,” Boatwright said.
Natural gas- and propane-powered school buses still pollute, albeit less than diesel, said Tanya Coventry-Strader, executive director of Mothers and Others for Clean Air.
Gwinnett County Public Schools – which claims to be the third largest transporter of students in the country – operates 2,006 buses, but none of them are electric, said Kondria Woods, director of communications. The district applied for federal funds over the past four years but was not selected.
Much of the funding is allocated to eligible school districts through a lottery system, according to EPA materials.
Advocates testing air-cleaning devices on diesel buses
Applications for the fourth year of the Clean School Bus program were due in January, and EPA materials state that notifications to awardees were to be sent out in May.
The notifications have not been sent out, according to a statement to Healthbeat from the EPA press office. The agency will provide an update to applicants “in the near future,” the statement said.
“The good news is that in the BBB [the Big Beautiful Bill signed by Trump on July 4], they did not claw back future rounds of Clean School Bus program” funding, Mudd said.
Meanwhile, Mothers and Others for Clean Air in Atlanta is exploring other ways to reduce the impacts of air pollution on children riding diesel buses, Coventry-Strader said.
The group worked with a company called EnviroKlenz to install air-cleaning devices, called Smart Mounts, on four school buses in Atlanta to see whether the devices would reduce air pollution. They found that the filters did reduce air pollution.
Coventry-Strader said that ideally, all Georgia children could travel to school on a non-polluting electric bus. However, that transition could take a long time due to the high cost of the buses.
“The initial test looks really great,” she said of the air filters, which help protect passengers from ambient air pollution that may enter the bus from surrounding vehicles.
She emphasized that electric school buses are a top priority since they protect children and do not emit air pollutants.
“These are a much more cost-effective means to clean the air inside the bus, to immediately affect the health of students and the bus drivers while districts make the switch to electric buses,” Coventry-Strader said. “We know that these diesel school buses are harming our kids’ health.”
Rebecca Grapevine is a reporter covering public health in Atlanta for Healthbeat. Contact Rebecca at rgrapevine@healthbeat.org.
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