Three Austin-area school districts will receive millions in federal funding to purchase electric school buses as part of a nationwide effort to create cleaner environments around schools.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Jan. 8 announced almost $1 billion in awards to 280 school districts across the country, including Austin, San Marcos and Del Valle.

For Austin area districts, the grants are a small part of potentially bigger plans to shift the school bus fleet to greener technologies, which officials hope will be healthier for students and surrounding communities.

The EPA awarded the Austin district close to $6.3 million to purchase 25 electric buses, according to the federal agency.

The Del Valle district didn’t immediately know how much money and number of buses it would receive since it applied as part of a group including San Marcos and 10 other districts, some of which aren’t in Texas. The group was awarded over $31.1 million to purchase 91 buses.

The total $965 million federal grant will help school districts in 37 states purchase over 2,700 buses. In Texas, 19 school districts will receive funding to purchase more than 100 electric buses. The initiative is part of the EPA’s $5 billion Clean School Bus Program, which is funded through the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

In Austin, three of the district’s 548 school buses are electric, as part of its effort to use clean energy.

“Our district is very excited that we will be able to provide transportation for our students on zero emission school buses,” said Kris Hafezizadeh, the Austin district’s transportation and vehicle services director. “This is an important step towards clean transportation and improved air quality for our students and community.”

In 2022, the district announced it planned to begin replacing its diesel-run buses with electric vehicles, hoping to have an all electric bus fleet by 2035.

Del Valle plans to use its electric buses for six routes that take students to Austin Community College campuses and other internship and workforce training sites, said Steven Alves, assistant superintendent of operations.

“We’ll potentially have students riding on an electric bus and getting a certification to work on electric vehicles,” Alves said.

The district will need to install charging infrastructure and purchase the buses, so students likely won’t be riding the electric vehicles until 2025, he said.

“Utilizing electric buses decreases the overall emissions output and we wanted to be very strategic and purposeful about the locations we service through the electric bus,” Alves said.

The federal program’s goal is to create healthier spaces for students and the communities surrounding schools, said U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Austin.

“There are serious climate issues but there are also serious issues for students with asthma, for folks in neighborhoods where buses may idle outside of schools,” he said.

Doggett said he hopes more districts will begin converting their bus fleets to electric vehicles.

“All of us have a stake in addressing the climate crisis,” Doggett said. “We saw what it did last year in the summer months. The value here is not only in greenhouse gas emissions, but just in air pollution, in particulate matter.”

Both the Austin and Del Valle districts said they don’t yet have detailed information about how or when they’ll acquire the buses.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: EPA awards several Texas school districts grants for electric buses