Governor Ducey awards $5M for new school buses

Governor Doug Ducey announced the funding of $5 million for the purchase of 45 new school buses for rural school districts and charter schools across Arizona on Friday.

“Investing in our K-12 schools remains a top priority,” said Governor Ducey. “Arizona found an innovative way to use these settlement funds to invest in public education. The new school buses have gone a long way to benefit Arizona schools, especially those in low-income districts and rural communities. And with this last round of funding, every rural county in Arizona received at least one bus. Rural schools can use freed up funds to meet other capital needs.”

You can see the list of applications awarded in the fifth wave of funding here.

In 2018, Ducey released a $38-million plan to purchase an estimated 280 school buses and after completing four waves of funding totaling $31.8 million for the purchase of 285 buses, Arizona had remaining funds available to allocate additional buses.

Arizona chose to allocate the remaining funds for school buses to schools in rural counties, working directly with 13 rural county school superintendents.

Many of the school districts receiving buses in the final allocation did not receive a bus during the first four waves.