Fort Bend ISD will replace eight school buses with help from a grant aimed at improving student health and safety.
At an Aug. 31 meeting, Fort Bend ISD board of trustees approved a budget amendment to use 2023 bond contingency funds to fund the remaining $515,679 for eight new school buses after the district was awarded a $841,072 grant as part of the Texas Clean School Bus Program.
The details
The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality’s Clean School Bus Program offers schools grants to replace diesel buses that are at least 20 years old with newer buses. Its mission is to reduce children’s exposure to diesel exhaust emissions, according to its website.
The nearly $1.36 million investment will replace aging buses that cost too much to maintain and are more likely to have mechanical issues, per agenda documents.
The district’s new 77-passenger school buses will also burn cleaner fuel than the older buses, although both use diesel, Chief Operations Officer Thomas Lawing said in an Aug. 17 agenda review meeting.
Zooming out
The grant comes as the state works to ensure all school buses have three-point seat belts for every passenger and driver.
In March, Fort Bend ISD officials said only 122 of 416 district buses were equipped with three-point seatbelts, while 61 of 107 contracted buses included the required seatbelts.
All the new buses have seatbelts, making them the district’s first set of buses with seatbelts since March, Director of Strategic Communications Maria DiPetta said in an email.
Looking ahead
The district has already purchased the buses and they will be available to use after an inspection, DiPetta said.
