Roseville Joint Union High School District

Transportation Department 

Zero-Emission School Bus Plan

The Roseville Joint Union High School District (RJUHSD) serves the educational needs of more than 10,000 students. On average, RJUHSD Transportation safely transports 1640 eligible students each day. Geographically, the district includes the city of Roseville, the Granite Bay community, and a part of Antelope. It includes portions of both Placer and Sacramento counties. The district currently operates six comprehensive high schools, a continuation school, an adult school, and an independent study school. RJUHSD also provides the majority of bus service to the Roseville City School District.

RJUHSD has a fleet of 44 school buses, 41 diesel, two propane, and one gasoline. Approximately two-thirds of the buses in the fleet are model year-2008 or older, with more than half of those buses being model year 2002 or older. The school district has a goal to retire the aging diesel engine buses and acquire 22 electric school buses (ESBs) and charging infrastructure.

To obtain its initial fleet of 18 ESBs and 20 chargers, RJUHSD relied principally on external funding sources for the buses and infrastructure. The total cost is estimated at almost $9 million dollars with a school district contribution estimated at $865,000. External funding sources include HVIP, HVIP School Bus Set-Aside, Environmental Protection Agency Targeted Airshed Grant, Roseville Electric, Sacramento Air Quality Management District SECAT Program, Placer County Air Pollution District Clean Air Grant Program, EnergIIZE and a private donor.

With these grants, RJUHSD has ordered 18 Blue Bird buses; 7 full size 78 passenger and 11 mid-size 38 + 2WC with variable seating. On average, our bus routes run 75 miles a day for their home-to-school routes. The expected range for the buses is 120 miles per charge. This may vary due to the potential use of wheelchair lifts, A/C units and driver techniques.  The cost of each bus is between $430,000 and $480,000 with a school district cost of approximately $22,000 per bus. The first four buses are scheduled for delivery in May. 

The school district broke ground on the charging infrastructure installation in August of 2022, and the project is expected to be completed in August 2023. The chargers installed will be Level 2 ChargePoint CP6000.  

The bus yard and several schools in the district are located adjacent to and have bus routes that serve low-income communities. RJUHSD students, staff and the low-income communities surrounding the bus yard, schools and bus routes will benefit from decreased pollution as a result of replacing old, diesel buses with zero-emission school buses.

Upon completion of the project, RJUHSD will have the largest electric school bus fleet in Placer County and welcomes the opportunity for other school districts to learn from our process. We are optimistic that electrifying almost half of our fleet will lower maintenance and operating costs, improve air quality and reduce health impacts from diesel particulate matter pollution.

Video cameras are installed on all buses. Students may be filmed at any time while riding the bus. The video recordings may be used to determine violations of the Code of Student Conduct. Violations of these standards or any inappropriate behavior by a student (s) may be used as grounds for suspension from bus/school and/or expulsion from bus riding privileges.