Arizona Governor Doug Ducey has announced that the second wave of settlement funds from the Volkswagen Environmental Mitigation Trust has been distributed to 22 school districts around our state. Tucson Unified School District has received $3.5 million to obtain 32 new school buses.

Thanks to the funding, the district will be able to provide better transportation services to our students.

"We are thrilled that the VW Settlement grant will allow the District to purchase 32 new buses. This will bring the average age of the fleet to nine years old, and most importantly, it will reduce the number of buses without air conditioning to 32," said John Muir, Interim Chief Operations Officer for Tucson Unified School District.

TUSD Transportation Facts

• Currently, TUSD has 320 buses in the fleet.
• 64 buses do not have air conditioning; this will be reduced to 32 buses with the grant.
• We transport 13,000 students daily
• Our buses drive 24,000 miles per day on average.
• Our buses drive 4.3 million miles per year.
• The average mileage of the fleet is 125,000.
• The average bus age is 11 years old; however, the buses purchased through this grant will bring the average age to nine years.
• 80 buses are 15 years or older with 17 of them being 1997 models, averaging 300,000 miles each.

While the district will continue to seek additional funding to improve our aging bus fleet, we are very appreciative that this grant allocation will help us better serve the community's students.