Since the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law was passed in 2021, there has been a boom in electric bus purchases by American public school districts. That’s thanks to an Environmental Protection Agency program funded by the law called the Clean School Bus Program, which will pay out $5 billion in grants over the course of five years to help districts upgrade their diesel fleets.
Schools from Boston to Montgomery County to Los Angeles are making strides to electrify student transportation. School buses are, in total, the largest transportation fleet in the country, and before the EPA started awarding grants, just 1 percent of those buses were electric. Switching the country’s school buses completely over to electric would result in an emissions cut of 8 million metric tons annually.
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But after being awarded its own $20 million EPA grant, Chicago Public Schools is standing out in the electric school-bus rush: the some 50 buses it will acquire over the next three years will serve neighborhoods “most impacted by poor environmental policies and practices, and historic disinvestment,” according to a press release from Mayor Brad Johnson. Namely, the city’s predominately Black and Brown South and West side communities.
Until recently, Chicago was the country’s third-largest public school district (it was recently overtaken by Miami-Dade County), just over a third of students at Chicago Public Schools are Black. And in parts of the city like the South Side, Black students are more than 80% of the student population.
The longest school commutes in the city are concentrated in these same neighborhoods.
There is a long and depressing history of disinvestment and neglect of Chicago’s predominantly Black schools — including the city’s decision to shutter 50 schools that were disproportionately attended by students of color, which only happened just over a decade ago. So it’s a notable shift to see a Black mayor (and former teacher’s union organizer) actually prioritize the city’s Black and Brown students.
But if students on the South and West sides will eventually be able to travel to school while generating zero emissions (currently, CPS is only providing busing for disabled and homeless students due to the bus-driver shortage), those students will still likely have to travel much farther than, say, a white student riding a diesel bus to school in the city’s River North neighborhood.
According to CPS, the longest school commutes in the city are concentrated in these same neighborhoods, too — including many of the some 7,000 high school students who spend more than an hour traveling to school. The top reason why students take on such long commutes? To attend better schools.
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Nearly half of elementary school students and just over three-quarters of high school students do not attend their local schools — numbers that reflect both the uneven quality of CPS schools and the city’s embrace of school choice, which began in the late 1990s. Mayor Johnson, however, is trying to change that and move Chicago back to a neighborhood schools model.
That kind of remaking of a massive public school system will take longer than procuring 50 new school buses. But if an emissions-free drive to school is good for the environment, walking to a good neighborhood school is even better.