FLEMING COUNTY, Ky. (LEX 18) — The Fleming County School District is receiving more than $10 million in federal grant money to revolutionize its school buses.
Kerri Moran has been the transportation director for Fleming County Schools since 2021. The county has 27 buses that run throughout the county.
"It looks probably the same way as it did 20, 25, 30 years ago," she said Monday while walking through the inside of one of their current buses.
Changes are coming. Moran has a background in grant writing. She learned there were some grant opportunities from the Environmental Protection Agency for electric school buses.
"I started researching and looking into it to see if our routes would sustain and be able to run those with an electric bus. Every single route that we currently have in Fleming County can be driven with an electric bus," Moran said.
The district put in two rounds of grant applications. The first has already been approved. Today, the EPA announced the second was also approved. That means they'll get 24 brand new electric buses.
"We are right at a little over $10 million," Moran said.
The new fleet, Moran says, will save the people of Fleming County a lot of money.
"Our diesel bill for last year was over $250,000, just for the diesel. It's going to save us a tremendous amount of money, because you're looking at the electric savings would be about $0.12 per mile where diesel is $0.50 a mile, approximately," Moran said.
There's no set date yet for when the new buses may arrive. When they do, Moran will take a lot of pride in the Fleming County fleet.
"I'm just most excited about the fact that Fleming County could possibly be the first school to have a completely brand-new fleet on the road and for the kids to have nice, dependable buses," Moran said.
For more information on the program, go to Clean School Bus Program Awards | US EPA.
