School board moves closer to buying $423,000 electric bus

Cell phones won’t be the only things that need charging before a school day. Soon, Wrangell is going to need to plug in its bus too.

The school board moved forward on Aug. 20 with plans to purchase an electric school bus. Most of the $423,000 cost will come from a $378,000 federal Environmental Protection Agency grant the school district received in 2023. The rest of the funding will likely come from the district’s reserve fund.

Superintendent Bill Burr estimates the bus will arrive sometime in 2025.

The board is tentatively set to formally approve the bus purchase as soon as its next meeting.

The plan is for the district to own the bus and the pupil transportation contractor to operate the vehicle, Burr said.

After receiving three bids for the bus, the school board plans to buy the bus from Blue Bird Corp., a Georgia-based bus manufacturing company. While one bid came in slightly lower, Blue Bird offers several advantages over other competitors.

For starters, the district might be able to save money on any repairs. The manufacturer has committed to send a repairman to Wrangell free of charge for any non-battery issues. For battery repairs, the district would need to ship the bus to Seattle.

Electric school buses are built on top of a four-ton battery pack, according to schools maintenance director Kevin McCallister. Wrangell simply lacks equipment capable of lifting the bus off the battery for repairs.

The cutoff date for the EPA grant requires the bus to be constructed by this October, an untenable timeline according to Burr. However, he is confident that the EPA will be flexible and hopes to extend the cutoff date on a month-to-month basis, depending on Blue Bird’s timeline.

The other issue the school district faces is finding a space to store the bus. To effectively and efficiently charge, the bus must be stored in a facility between 50 and 85 degrees Fahrenheit, according to McCallister. This will require construction of a bus barn or a specially built RV-style cover to house the bus. An advantage of the Blue Bird bus, though, is the price includes a diesel-fueled battery heater, so the storage facility would not need to be climate controlled.

The $423,000 price tag also includes a Level 3 electric charger, valued at around $16,000, according to McCallister.

While McCallister also considered a less powerful Level 2 charger, he realized the higher-powered unit would be more effective in the winter months.

“The issue isn’t charging the bus overnight,” he said. “It’s making sure the bus gets enough charge between picking kids up in the morning and dropping them off in the afternoon.”