Source: E&E News

Excerpt:

School buses are lifelines in this tiny reservation town near the Canadian border, where the youngest members of the Red Lake Band of Chippewa spend hours bouncing over winding, unpaved roads to attend daily classes.

Come August, Red Lake’s K-12 students will begin boarding a very different kind of bus.

While the new vehicles will look the same — bright yellow with the stenciled black district identifier — they won’t come with the combustion engines and tailpipes that pump out heat-trapping gases and damage young lungs.

Red Lake Schools is among the first tribal districts to receive electric-powered buses courtesy of the Biden administration’s $5 billion Clean School Bus Program. The program, rolled out last year, is a centerpiece of the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law and a down payment on the administration’s promise to spend $13.7 billion to improve the lives of Native Americans.

Read more: Electric school buses help tribes bridge the energy transition