Porterville Unified receives $13.8 million award to help transition to electric buses

There volition besides beryllium 30 paid internships for students who volition get the accidental to oversee the full project.

PORTERVILLE, Calif. (KFSN) -- Porterville Unified schoolhouse buses are getting quieter.

That's due to the fact that they're dilatory shifting distant from diesel and moving to electric.

Assistant superintendent Brad Rohrbach says that modulation is present accelerating acknowledgment to a $13.8 cardinal grant from the Environmental Protection Agency's 'Clean School Bus Program'.

"It's truly the adjacent measurement successful our endeavor to prolong and determination guardant connected our sustainability and vigor efforts astatine the district," Rohrbach said.

Director of Transportation and Sustainability Richard Tree says the 35 electrical buses they volition acquisition with the wealth volition assistance trim the district's c footprint and make a exemplary for others successful the Central Valley.

"It gives america the quality to truly enactment this caller exertion into work and let different schoolhouse districts to travel cheque it out," Tree said.

The wealth volition beryllium utilized on with $14 cardinal leveraged from authorities and section partners to acquisition and instal 40 electrical charging stations, and a microgrid that has an vigor retention system.

There volition besides beryllium 30 paid internships for students who volition get the accidental to oversee the full project, enactment with contractors and prosecute with the assemblage astir the changes.

"They'll person first-hand experience, beryllium capable to enactment with our manufacture partners from commencement to finish," Tree said.

Once the electrical buses arrive, the diesel buses volition beryllium dismantled and parts volition beryllium recycled.

The changes payment PUSD's "Striving to beryllium 1st to 0" inaugural to trim vigor costs and greenhouse state emissions by 80% by 2030.

"It's going to supply cleaner air, it's that question forward, I deliberation we tin each larn from it and I deliberation our students tin larn from it arsenic well," Rohrbach said.

The program is to person 90% of the diesel buses replaced with electrical by the twelvemonth 2026.

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