Washington County Schools eye bus, security upgrades

Washington County Schools is modernizing its fleet and its security. Plans for 2026 include adding alternative-fuel buses and installing districtwide security vestibules to better control campus access. The district's interest in electric buses began not with a funding opportunity, according to Washington County Schools Chief Operations Officer Jarrod Adams. Adams said the district pursued grant funding through the Volkswagen Diesel Settlement Environmental Mitigation Trust, which followed emissions violations tied to the automaker's diesel vehicles. The grant allowed school systems to apply for alternative-fuel buses, including electric or propane models. "It was a great opportunity presented," Adams said. "You could get any type of alternative fuel bus. So it could be electric, it could be propane." Adams said then-Director of Schools Bill Flanary worked with him on the application, and the district chose to pursue an electric bus in part because the technology was still new in Tennessee. "Dr. Flanary and I talked about it, and we decided that since there was never an electric bus in the state of Tennessee at the time that we would apply for that grant, and we got it," Adams said. The initial grant covered about half the price of the bus, or roughly $296,000, Adams said. The district also combined that with donations from the Tennessee Valley Authority and BrightRidge to complete the purchase. Washington County Schools currently has one electric bus and plans to add a second after securing other grants. "We just got another grant for a second electric bus that we'll be purchasing, hopefully, this summer, or maybe sometime next school year," Adams said. "When you work with grants, it gets a little funny, meaning all their separate requirements of when you can do this and when you can do that. More likely it'll be sometime next school year." Adams said the district sees long-term value in electric buses because they require less maintenance than traditional diesel models. "They save money long term because there's less moving parts to it," Adams said. "You don't have to worry about parts of the gas engine or the diesel engine. You don't have to worry about any of the EPA-regulated modifications you have to make to the engines." He said the buses otherwise operate much like conventional models, relying on large battery packs and an electric motor. "It runs on giant batteries underneath the bus," Adams said. "It's just an electric motor, kind of like a giant Tesla." Still, Adams said cost remains the biggest barrier to a larger-scale shift toward electric buses. He estimated a typical diesel bus costs about $160,000, a propane bus about $170,000 and an electric bus nearly $400,000. "If I had my way, I would say yes," Adams said of eventually replacing more buses with electric models. "But they're very expensive. Without grant opportunities, right now they're kind of out of the price range." For now, Washington County Schools has made more substantial progress with propane buses. Adams said the district currently has 27 propane buses, which makes up close to a third of its fleet. "Really, the plan is to go to a more renewable source or perhaps a more green source of fueling, and that's why we're really investing in the propane technology for our school buses," Adams said. He said the district has worked with the East Tennessee Clean Fuels Coalition to secure grants that help offset the cost of propane buses, sometimes allowing the system to buy them for less than diesel models. "By doing that, we actually purchase propane buses for cheaper than we would if we bought diesel buses," Adams said. "Again, the technology's cleaner. There's less moving parts to the propane buses, which then makes it cheaper to actually maintain the bus." Transportation is only one part of the district's current infrastructure push. Adams said Washington County Schools is also focused on school security, especially through the construction of security vestibules at buildings that do not yet have them. "We're building security vestibules at all of our schools that don't currently have them," Adams said. "We just finished the ones at David Crockett and Daniel Boone High Schools, and now we are working on the other schools in our system that do not have it." He described the vestibules as a second layer of protection between visitors and the rest of a school building. Visitors may be buzzed into the vestibule, but they cannot proceed farther until front office staff confirm their identity and purpose. "They'll be able to communicate with the front office staff, and once you are cleared that you have a purpose for being in the building, they'll buzz you into the front office," Adams said. Adams said other 2026 priorities include expanding controlled-access entry points at exterior doors, adding more security film to outside windows and maintaining core building systems such as HVAC units. "By using card readers and things like that, we're able to identify who is coming in and out of the building and at what time," Adams said.