$5.1M Electric School Bus Grant In Brick In Jeopardy Over Cost, Safety Questions

BRICK, NJ — In May, the Brick Township Schools were awarded a $5.1 million grant for electric school buses — the largest grant awarded to any New Jersey school district through the EPA's Clean Schools Buses program.

The program provides rebates for school districts to replace diesel-fueled buses to reduce diesel emissions exposure for students and communities. To take advantage of it, however, the Brick Township Board of Education must commit to buying the buses.

The grant funding is in jeopardy after the board delayed a vote on a $6.2-million lease purchase agreement for 25 electric buses — 20 54-passenger buses and five smaller buses for transporting students with wheelchairs or other special needs.

Superintendent Thomas Farrell, at the Nov. 14 board meeting, said the district had a Nov. 29 deadline to vote on the lease-purchase agreement to be eligible for the rebate. A special meeting called for Nov. 19 to hold the vote was canceled, and as of Tuesday the status was unclear.

At the Nov. 14 meeting, James Edwards, the district's business administrator, said the lease-purchase agreement would spread the cost of the buses and the infrastructure to support them over 12 years, costing the district about $678,000 per year. That is about $78,000 more per year than the district will need to spend each year to replace buses in its fleet that are aging out anyway, Edwards said.

Edwards said the difference would be made up by the reduction in costs for fuel and maintenance that go with the aging diesel buses.

"This would get 25 of our worst buses off the road," Edwards said,

Brick residents Charlie Bacon and Mark Vazquez questioned the lease-purchase on both the costs and concerns about the safety of lithium-ion batteries that power the buses.

Here is a closer look at both issues.

The costs of diesel

While the EPA and other agencies emphasized a significant reduction in diesel fumes exposure for students, one of the bigger issues for the Brick schools is the difference in costs between diesel buses and electric buses in both fuel and maintenance.

The district has 104 buses currently. Of those, 65 are 54-passenger buses, and 58 of those are powered by diesel. The district spent $266,780.94 on diesel fuel in the 2023-24 school year, according to Edwards.

Replacing 20 of the 58 diesel buses — 34.48 percent of the fleet — would save the district $91,986 in diesel fuel costs, based on the 2023-24 spending.

The district also spent $252,498.64 on unleaded gasoline for the remainder of its vehicles, including seven 54-passenger buses, 39 of the smaller buses and its maintenance and grounds vehicles. Removing gasoline-powered buses in favor of the electric ones will have a reduction but a specific amount could not be calculated.

Beyond fuel costs, Brick spent $68,704.67 on repairs and maintenance, $276,922.27 on parts for the bus fleet and $49,036.10 on major repairs on transmissions and engines.

There will continue to be some maintenance costs but not to the extent seen with the diesel buses, Edwards said.

"There are very minimal parts that have to be replaced within the (electric) bus," Edwards said. The repairs needed are similar to diesel buses, with switches and tires being at the top of the list. "There are no fuel pumps or water pumps that need to be worked on."

While the district might have to outsource some of the maintenance while mechanics are trained, Edwards said the district has been outsourcing maintenance currently as it has two open positions for diesel mechanics that it has not been able to fill for months.

In response to questions about warranties, Edwards said the batteries on the electric buses have 8- to 12-year warranty depending on which company the district chooses, and the buses themselves have 5-year warranties — longer than the warranty on the current diesel buses, which is generally one year or 125,000 miles.

The electric buses have a range of 120 miles on a full charge for one manufacturer or 176 miles on a full charge for the other, Edwards said.

The EPA funding covers the infrastructure costs to install the charging stations for the buses and the electric meters, according to the EPA Clean School Bus Program website.

"This will get 25 of our worst buses off the road, the ones our mechanics spend the most time trying to keep running," Edwards said.

The lease purchase of the electric buses also would mean the district would not need to buy new buses for nine years, he said.

Thanks to cuts under S2, the Brick Schools have seen a $23 million decrease in funding from the state since 2017 while being required to increase the property tax levy by 2 percent each year. The 2 percent cap on the property tax levy has widened the gap between what Brick schools spend and what is referred to as "adequacy," which is the amount of money the state Department of Education says a district should be spending per student to provide a thorough and efficient education.

Farrell and Edwards have been met with skepticism and downright disdain during their testimony before the state Assembly and Senate budget hearings the last two years, and Farrell at the board meeting expressed concerns that turning down the $5.1 million grant will have a negative effect on Brick's efforts to obtain equitable funding going forward.

What about safety?

Lithium battery fires have prompted warnings about charging everything from smartphones to hoverboards to other devices, and photos and videos of burning electric cars have sparked fear about safety for occupants.

In response to questions about how the electric buses respond in cold weather, Edwards said the electric buses are heavier than diesel buses, which gives them better traction in snow or ice.

One speaker at the Nov. 14 school board meeting expressed concerns about the potential for explosions with students on board.

A lengthy search of online sources found few reports of fires involving electric buses. A 2022 report by CT Insider on a fire on an electric bus in Hamden, Connecticut, noted such fires were rare; there had been 18 such fires worldwide the article said, quoting the National Transportation Safety Board. The bus in that incident was not a school bus but was one used in mass transit.

A September 2024 report on a study conducted by the University of Miami on the effects of an electric vehicle fire also noted the rarity of those fires: About 25 for every 100,000 electric vehicles, or 2 hundredths of a percent, according to the National Transportation Safety Board. By comparison there are about 1,530 fires for every 100,000 gas-powered vehicles sold.

That report did not say how many of those 25 EV fires were school buses.

A report by the Daily Mail in January 2024 about an "explosion" on an electric bus in London, England, during a school run said everyone was evacuated safely and there were no injuries reported. "Fire expert Neil Pedersen said (the fire) was most likely due to an electrical fault and not linked to lithium batteries," that report said.

The University of Miami report said the problem with EV fires is they are more difficult to extinguish. "Their lithium-ion batteries take a long time to cool, creating a danger of reignition. During an electric vehicle fire, more than 100 chemicals are released, including heavy metals, carbon monoxide and hydrogen cyanide. Controlling the fire can take hours, prolonging firefighter exposure to toxins," the report said.

According to the Electric School Bus Initiative website, there are a number of safety measures for electric school buses, including an automatic electric disconnect if the bus is in a crash. The batteries themselves are "typically enclosed in a weather-durable metal casing and laid in between the guard rails of the bus chassis for maximum protection. This area is often referred to as the vehicle’s safe zone as it is separated from passengers by a structural barrier and away from the front of the bus where collisions are more common."

Vic Fanelli, a frequent critic of the school board and school district, supported the proposed lease-purchase agreement, saying there would never be 100 percent ironclad answers about the "what ifs" surrounding electric school buses.

"Nobody is going to warranty a vehicle for 20 years," he said. "Nobody does it now." The potential cost savings to the district and the chance to be at the front of a significant change are reasons to move forward soon, Finelli said.

New Jersey lawmakers enacted legislation to jumpstart the state's move toward electric school buses with a state grant program because the state has made little progress on the initiative. About two dozen electric school buses are operating statewide and 150 are on order, with 21,700 school buses of all types registered across the state, New Jersey Spotlight News reported.

New Jersey ranks 25th in funding committed to electric school buses, according to the Public Interest Research Group. The top 10 states in funding committed are California, New York, Illinois, Texas, Michigan, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts.

While some view the move to electric vehicles as based in climate change concerns, much of the push across the country to eliminate diesel buses is concern about the effects of the exhaust fumes on children.

Diesel fumes are more concentrated inside the school bus, and can harm children contributing to asthma, which is the leading cause of chronic absenteeism, the New Jersey Spotlight News report said.

Removing diesel fumes and pollutants helps children do better in school, according to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in March 2024.

In that study, which looked at 1,941 school districts that received funding under the 2012-2016 School Bus Rebate Program, districts that replaced the oldest and highest-polluting buses saw significantly greater improvements in district-average test scores compared with other districts, the New Jersey Spotlight report said.

Test scores have been a hot-button issue in Brick and included in what has become politicized campaigns for school board, which is supposed to be a nonpartisan entity.

With the deadline looming Friday, it's unclear what will happen. No board meeting was scheduled for a vote on the lease-purchase agreement, which could mean Brick will forfeit the $5.1 million grant.

"If we turn the money away it will be held against the district," Farrell said.

Note: This report has been updated to remove a reference to a bus fire in Sayreville. The bus in question was assumed by firefighters to be attributed to an electric bus, but the Sayreville School District has not received any electric bus funding and does not have any at this time. Patch regrets the error.