Upset with adults for not taking the climate crisis seriously and inspired by the youth climate strikes around the globe, students in Arizona found a way to get adults to listen.
In 2019, they founded the Arizona Youth Climate Coalition (AZYCC) and over the years successfully convinced the city of Tucson to adopt a climate emergency declaration and an EV Readiness Roadmap. By 2023, the city, county and state all had climate plans and were getting to work. But the team didn’t want to stop — where else could they make a change?
As they assessed their options, Ojas Sanghi, a member of the coalition, attended a national conference full of like-minded student activists. Many of them were working on school district climate action plans. A light bulb went off.
Inspired by the conference, Sanghi came back to Tucson and together with a team from the AZYCC (ages 13 to 20) worked with their school board to research, write and pass a comprehensive climate action resolution covering topics from a greenhouse gas inventory to plant-based meal plans.
“A critical component of this resolution is electric school buses,” Sanghi highlighted in a video posted to YouTube. “They’re quieter, healthier, saves districts money and release no tail pipe emissions and are proven to work everywhere from the winters in Michigan to right here in the desert heat of Arizona.”
The team in Arizona is part of a growing wave of students calling for climate action at the school district level. While they may not be old enough to vote, they’re voices can make a big difference.
Schools are a key site for climate action. The Department of Education found that districts emit around 72 million metric tons of carbon dioxide from their energy use alone. School districts also own the largest public transportation fleet in the country with roughly 480,000 buses. Today 76% of those school buses run on diesel and another 19% run on gasoline.
Unfortunately, diesel-, gasoline-, propane- and compressed natural gas-burning school buses all produce a number of dangerous air pollutants, which contribute to respiratory and heart diseases and climate change. The good news? Electrifying the full U.S. school bus fleet would not only improve student health but also reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 9 million metric tons per year, the equivalent of taking 2 million cars off the road.
Students see that pushing for school bus electrification gives them an opportunity to make a difference in their own communities. From Arizona to Ohio, students are becoming an impactful voice in the effort to electrify fleets.
Student Advocacy Leads to More Buses
In Montgomery County, Maryland, which currently leads all U.S. school districts in electric school bus adoption, students played a key role in the county’s plan to purchase 326 electric school buses.
Emily Lee, a junior at Montgomery Blair High School, got involved with climate advocacy through the BIPOC MOCO Green New Deal Program three years ago after feeling a lot of anxiety around climate change and feeling powerless while sitting on fossil-fuel emitting diesel buses.
“Everybody kind of assumes, ‘well it’s not my problem it’ s someone else’s problem’,” she said. “But the issue is if everybody has that same idea that ‘it’s not my problem, someone else will take care of it,’ [then] nobody’s ever going to take care of it, so it needs to start somewhere.”
More Student Voices
Across the country, students have been searching for ways to fight climate change. Many of them found that opportunity in school bus electrification. Find more of their stories in the Electric School Bus Initiative’s Student Voices Series.
She continued: “So what we do is we advocate for electric school buses; we advocate for clean energy. Montgomery County Public School System Board of Education committed to only buying electric school buses, and we’ve also attempted to eliminate carbon emissions by 2030. By advocating for electric school buses here in Montgomery County, it persuades and encourages other students in other places around the U.S. to want the same.” Even today, student advocates continue to engage the county in the critical deployment phase.
In Cincinnati, Ohio, Audrey Symon, a senior at Walnut Hill High School, is part of an advocacy group that includes students and parents. Their efforts first helped the Cincinnati Public School System secure a $3.95 million grant from the EPA’s Clean School Bus program.
“It was because we showed the district that we cared about electrification, for the health and safety of the students and their futures,” she said. “It was because we were persistent in advocating for the future we wanted to create.”
Additional efforts by Symon and the Electrify CPS Campaign resulted in even more grant money from the EPA and deeper commitments from the school system.
“In less than a year, our campaign — a small but mighty collection of CPS parents, students and teachers — [was] able to unanimously pass our Renewable Energy and Electrification Resolution, which outlines a plan for our school district to transition away from fossil fuels, including diesel buses, into an era of sustainable energy use,” Symon said. “Now, our school district is continuing to tackle the goals outlined in our resolution, recently acquiring an additional $8.6 million from the to fund electric school buses, with 35 already added to the fleet.”
Electric School Bus Benefits Go Beyond Climate
While many students got involved in advocating for electric school buses due to their climate benefits, the students who experience the impacts of dirty diesel buses every day also understand their negative impact on physical and mental health. These burdens are particularly potent for students with disabilities who experience sensory overstimulation from diesel buses, difficulty boarding the bus due to unreliable school bus ramps, and trouble breathing from extended time in and around bus exhaust.
“School buses can be super noisy, which can create overstimulation and stress for those who have sound sensitivity. Even the sheer amount of diesel fumes that are emitted from school buses can cause headaches and dizziness for students,” said Sahana Chauduri, a senior at Eleanor Roosevelt High School in Greenbelt, Md. “One of my friends who uses a trach tube especially faces trouble with breathing while on the school bus. For a system designed to be universal, there are many issues with my current public school bus system.”
Today roughly 15% of K-12 students have a disability and, for many of them, school buses are the only way they can get to school. Despite laws guaranteeing accommodations, recent research found that school buses often remain inaccessible due to issues with accessibility design features and bus operations. Research also found that students with disabilities , low-income students and Black students, are more likely to ride on school buses than white and nondisabled students. Extended commute times not only increase the amount of time kids spend in uncomfortable riding conditions but also increases their exposure to diesel pollution that can cause asthma, cancer and other respiratory illnesses.
Students with disabilities like Chauduri are calling on school districts and policymakers to think about these disparate health impacts as they consider making the transition to electric: “Electric school buses have the opportunity to serve as a major solution for the pitfalls of diesel school buses,” she said. “They are also up to 20 decibels quieter than diesel school buses, which would be helpful for those with sound sensitivity. With the addition of a heating unit, electric school buses can also have the option to allow students to self-regulate the heating of their seats. This is something I could see myself benefiting from, since my muscles tend to cramp up and stiffen during cold temperatures.”
Student Advocates Need Adult Allies
Despite best efforts, some students are facing challenges convincing their school districts to invest in electric school buses. In New York, three students worked on a project to create an analytical model that would help schools envision the process of decarbonizing their bus fleets but ran into challenges obtaining responses or data from the school system.
“Working on the [electric school bus] project was disheartening at times,” said Annabella Pathania, a recent graduate from Kingston High School in Mid-Hudson Valley, New York. “New York State has a mandate requiring that all school transportation be zero-emission by 2035, but the administration in my school district didn’t seem at all interested in the work I was doing. My emails to them would often go unanswered and I would only make progress due to the intervention of a few supportive teachers.”
Demand from students is not always enough to convince school districts to pursue school bus electrification. School districts sometimes face challenges to electrification that students cannot overcome alone. New research surveying school districts across the country found the main barriers include cost, infrastructure, technological readiness, maintenance, route length and transition fatigue. At the same time, recent research finds that school districts, parents and students alike are excited about the health and air quality benefits that electric school buses can bring to their communities, pointing to an effective starting place for student advocacy.
While students continue to get their districts excited about electrification, policymakers, practitioners and advocates can help schools electrify by investing in regional technical assistance such as grid infrastructure, funding and financing, and capacity building for school districts and regional practitioners. Regional technical assistance providers are also well-placed to address region-specific infrastructure barriers, local community and political perceptions of electric school buses, and community engagement and partnership approaches.
Despite the challenges, Pathania still found advocating for electric school buses rewarding. “Becoming more actively involved in my school gave me a sense of purpose and belonging. Collaborating with people who shared my values gave me a sense of community and meaning. This project revealed to me how it doesn’t matter how monumental your work is, how big of a difference you make in the short term — it matters that you are doing it.”
What Comes Next
While the past decade has seen a lot of optimistic momentum and millions of dollars of government funding become available for electric school buses, the Trump Administration is now attacking climate initiatives of all types. In particular, the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean School Bus Program is under threat which has already funded 67% of all committed electric school buses in the U.S.
Federal policy changes should not mean that students stay in diesel buses — exposing themselves to harmful pollutants — just to access education.
Now is the time for action at the state and local level. States, cities, and school districts must listen to and work with their students to continue to invest in the next generation’s health and education. Many states already have their own funding programs and continue to support electrification.
Students have the power to be leaders in this transition. By following in these activists’ footsteps, they can bring clean air and quiet rides to their own communities. Getting started can take a number of forms including joining an environmental club, researching climate action resolutions, starting letter-writing campaigns to district leaders, speaking at school board meetings or just learning more about school bus electrification.
Ojas Sanghi with the Arizona Youth Climate Coalition, who advocated for electric school buses in Tucson, summed it up simply: “We made this change, and you can too. Fighting the good fight will take all of us. Embody radical hope and take action.”
