| By Zahra Hirji When it comes to President Donald Trump's administration, one constant is that things change. I learned this covering Trump's first term and it's held true so far for the second term. Case in point: the Environmental Protection Agency's $5 billion Clean School Bus program. Launched by President Joe Biden's administration, the program aims to bring down climate and health-harming pollution The EPA had already dispersed some $2.7 billion in awarded funds going into this year. It closed applications for a fourth funding round in early January. Then the Trump administration swiftly put in place an unprecedented government-wide spending freeze in late January that included the Clean School Bus awards. While other EPA money was quickly released, these funds remained locked. I've been following what's happened to this money ever since, tracking how the story repeatedly shifted but the uncertainty looming over the electric school bus industry remained. The lack of clarity forced school districts to make tough decisions early this year. Plum Borough School District in Pittsburgh, for example, decided by mid-February to scrap its electric bus plans, according to the district's Superintendent Rick Walsh. After winning a $9.8 million Clean School Bus grant to cover 25 electric buses in 2023, Little Rock School District was about to start updating its bus yard to accommodate electric buses in early February. Then its EPA grant was frozen. "We did not have the money to pay for these buses," says Linda Young, the school system's director of grants. To her relief, the EPA released the funds on Feb. 19 and the district was able to proceed with construction. The buses, which will transport special-needs students, are slated to arrive by the end of April and go into operation by the fall.  A worker fuels an electric school bus at First Student's Maywood, IL location. Courtesy: First Student Meanwhile, First Student Inc., a contractor that handles the rest of Little Rock's school busing needs, had won its own EPA award for 25 electric school buses but the funds remained unavailable, according to Young. This wasn't First Student's only frozen award either. According to EPA's publicly available award data, the nation's largest school bus contractor has a total of $216 million in awards for more than 700 electric buses that haven't been delivered. When I reached out to First Student in March, they declined to comment about their funding. I tried again weeks later, and once more on Monday. This last time, they had good news to share: Last Friday, the EPA had started the process of issuing funds for some of its awards. "We're watching our account associated with the program to monitor for deposits," says Kevin Matthews, First Student's head of electrification. (No money had been deposited as of this morning.) The EPA then confirmed "the approval of nearly $90 million in pending requests for use in school districts in 22 states across the country as recently as the end of last week." But could something change again next week or month? With the Trump administration reversing course on everything from agency layoffs to tariffs, there's no guarantee the situation won't change again. Read the full story on Bloomberg.com. | 
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