Electric buses for schools

New York City’s massive yellow school bus system may soon be going green.

Education Department officials Monday will unveil a $1.25 million pilot program to put electric school buses on city streets starting in September, beginning with four buses replacing gas-powered vehicles.

Brooklyn Councilman Rafael Espinal, who conceived the program, and DOE officials said the program could scale up.

“At a time when climate change is upon us, the city has to be aggressive on all fronts,” Espinal said. “Investing in electric school buses will help get us there in reducing our carbon emissions.”

Recent research from the New York League of Conservation Voters shows that converting the city’s roughly 9,000 school buses to electric vehicles would be the equivalent of pulling more than 621,000 cars from the streets, reducing greenhouse gases by 2.9 million tons each year.

League officials also say a switch to electric buses would reduce the occurrence of asthma among city kids — the No. 1 cause of missed school days.

“It would mean fewer cases of asthma and fewer missed days of school,” said the group’s program director, Adriana Espinoza, adding, “It would also mean savings in money for families that have to pay for medical care for asthma.”

The new pilot plan will get its first look in public at a City Council hearing on a separate, previously announced bill cosponsored by Espinal and City Councilman Daniel Dromm (D-Queens) to make all buses electric by 2040.

“It’s to speed up the implementation of electric school buses for the environment and also to help children who ride the buses to school,” said Dromm, a former city teacher, who added: “If you just sit on a school bus you can smell the emissions. It’s enough to actually make you sick,” he added.