But, this school year, one thing about his job is different: The school bus he operates is electric.
His work is largely the same, he said, but it’s made for a different atmosphere — a quieter one.
“It’s nice and quiet,” Sommerville said, noting that the less noisy engines on the EV buses mean students don’t have to talk over them. “The quieter it is, the less noise … the kids make.”
Sommerville is one of a number of West Aurora school bus drivers who started driving electric buses last month. The district recently got 27 new electric-powered buses and 28 charging stations after applying for and being awarded a grant from the United States Environmental Protection Agency .
West Aurora has 79 buses in total, according to its Director of Transportation Brandy Kackert, meaning the new vehicles represent just over one-third of its total fleet.
The partial switch to EV buses has been some time in the making for the district, which serves nearly 11,000 students in Aurora, North Aurora , Montgomery, Sugar Grove and Batavia.
According to West Aurora, the recent addition makes its electric school bus fleet the largest in the Chicago region.
At a ribbon cutting on Monday, school officials pointed to the environmental benefits as a driving force behind the switch.
Standing in front of rows of school buses at the district’s transportation center, West Aurora’s Associate Superintendent of Operations Angie Smith said that this is one of a number of sustainability-related initiatives the district has taken on. It also has EV driver education cars, she said, along with buildings with geothermal and solar power.
And West Aurora’s school board president Rich Kerns called them “a symbol of progress and sustainability for many years to come.”
The district got $5.5 million from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean School Bus program for the new buses, according to Smith. They also received $930,000 from ComEd to support the initiative, for which a check was presented by ComEd President and CEO Gil Quiniones to the district on Monday.
The total cost for the buses themselves was about $8.6 million, Smith said, along with around $1 million for the installation and construction of the new electrical service and chargers. The district is expecting to save around $120,000 annually on fuel with the new buses.
The cost of the project was a significant factor, Smith explained, and would have been considerably more expensive had the district not gotten the EPA grant and ComEd rebates.
But other school districts may not have those same options going forward, as Smith noted that the EPA has since stopped accepting applications for the grant program West Aurora received much of its funds from.
“That doesn’t mean that you won’t have districts that can still do it, but it’ll make it much more difficult … you might do it because it’s the right thing to do for the planet, but the math won’t work at the level it did (for West Aurora ),” Smith said.
The district’s school board opted to partner with Massachusetts -based Highland Electric Fleets, according to past reporting, to purchase the 27 Blue Bird buses — which is the vendor the district already uses for its gasoline-powered buses.
The EV buses largely blend in with the gas-powered ones, but are marked with a green bird symbol, rather than a blue one, Smith explained, to alert first responders in case of an emergency or accident.
According to Sommerville, though the driving experience is much the same, adjusting to the new buses has been “a learning process” for the drivers and the rest of the district. But they’ve been able to help each other out along the way.
“Some things that one driver may experience, they can pass it on to the next driver,” he said. “It’s … a teamwork effort.”
As for the noise, Smith said the difference in volume has been so significant that the district has warned families not to wait for the sound of the bus getting to the bus stop to know when to send their kids to get picked up.
The new buses take the shorter routes in the district so they don’t have to be charged midday, she explained. Most of the time, they charge up overnight.
And the district isn’t able to use them for longer trips because there isn’t guaranteed availability of a charging station at their destination.
Going forward, the district has plans to install a solar panel canopy at the transportation facility where the EV buses are housed, so as to generate additional renewable energy.
But, for now, district officials said the EV bus initiative has been a win-win.
“It’s one of the few times where, you know, the environment wins, taxpayers win, employees win, like, there was no negative,” Smith said on Monday. “It was a perfect situation.”
©2025 Beacon-News (Aurora, Ill.). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
