City Heights – Building the Bus Planning Capacity for Under-resourced Students and Seniors (C-BUSS)
Organization: Cherokee Point Elementary School
Funding Request: $365,500
Project Summary
Cherokee Point Elementary School in City Heights, San Diego, is leading the C-BUSS project (Building the Bus Planning Capacity for Under-resourced Students and Seniors), a planning and capacity-building effort funded by the California Air Resources Board. Cherokee Point is a 298-student, K-5 public school in the San Diego Unified School District, designated as both a Title 1 school (with 91.6% of students socioeconomically disadvantaged) and a Community School that provides meals, clothing, and family support alongside general education. The school serves a largely minority, high-poverty community where at least 79% of families live below twice the federal poverty level.
Over an 18-month timeline (May 2026 to October 2027), the project will run a 12-month community needs assessment, develop a Community Bus Deployment Plan, and produce a ready-to-submit Implementation Proposal Package that the school can use to pursue future funding. The total project value is $373,980, with $365,500 requested from CARB and $8,480 contributed by Cherokee Point and DelCommunity. Notably, 64% of the budget goes directly to community assessment, engagement, and outreach, reflecting the project’s “100% community-led” philosophy in which decision-making power sits with residents rather than outside experts. The effort is explicitly designed as a replicable pilot for other under-resourced schools across the district.
Project Descriptions and Transportation Equity
City Heights faces two intertwined transportation gaps. First, chronic absenteeism: in 2025, 29.2% of Cherokee Point students were chronically absent, with over 60 students missing more than 10% of instructional time, largely because there is no general-education school bus and many parents work multiple jobs or cannot afford a reliable vehicle. Only one MTS route (the 965 City Heights Circulator) serves within the school boundary, and walkability is poor for young children. Second, senior isolation: seniors near the school lack accessible transportation to reach food, daily essentials, healthcare, and social services, contributing to declining mental and physical health. The neighborhood is also an environmentally burdened community, ranking in the top 25th–50th percentiles for air pollution under CalEnviroScreen 4.0, which makes a zero-emission solution especially fitting.
To address these gaps equitably, the project envisions a single zero-emission, battery-electric community school bus that would carry chronically absent K-5 students to and from school in the morning and afternoon, and transport isolated seniors to community resources during the midday hours. The bus would charge overnight at the school’s solar-equipped parking lot. The work unfolds in three stages: a 12-month Community Needs Assessment across three low-income census tracts (using multilingual surveys, listening sessions, phone and door-to-door outreach, and Hoover High School interns); a Community Bus Deployment Plan that selects the right vehicle and charging station and designs operations, maintenance, and workforce training; and a customizable Implementation Proposal Package the school can submit for future grants to procure and deploy the bus. Throughout, equity is the organizing principle, ensuring the families and seniors most affected shape every decision through a Community Advisory Group and ongoing town halls.
Community Benefit
The project’s intended benefits reach across the whole community. By bringing chronically absent students to school reliably, it creates a pathway to resolve absenteeism, so children receive a full education, with the potential over time to increase first-generation college attendance and improve family economic stability by freeing both parents to work. The same bus would improve the mobility and well-being of seniors, connecting those who cannot access public transit to meals, daily essentials, clinics, libraries, recreation centers, and social support, directly addressing the isolation and declining health that local partners have flagged as a growing concern. Around 3,000 residents (children under 10 and seniors over 65 across the three census tracts) could potentially benefit.
Beyond individual mobility, the project delivers community-level and environmental gains. Deploying a battery-electric bus improves neighborhood air quality in an area already burdened by pollution. The project builds the planning and grant-readiness capacity of Cherokee Point, the school district, and local partners in zero-emission transportation, while upskilling the district’s transportation-division workers on operating, servicing, and maintaining electric buses and charging infrastructure. Residents are also informed and educated on clean transportation options throughout the process. Finally, because the project is designed as a replicable pilot, supported by the district’s Area Superintendent overseeing 20+ schools and aligned with SANDAG’s Regional Plan, its templates and lessons can extend these benefits to other low-income schools across San Diego.
Partnerships and Structure
Cherokee Point is the lead applicant, handling contracting, sub-contracting, invoicing, reporting, and overall project coordination. The school’s leadership, under Principal Quyen Corral, is candid that Cherokee Point is under-resourced and lacks the technical capacity to plan a transportation project alone, which is why capacity-building runs through the entire partnership. The team is structured so that community organizations lead the work while technical consultants contribute only narrow, project-specific expertise, and government and transit bodies advise on policy and alignment.
The roles break down as follows:
Community-based organizations: CirculateSD (1st sub-applicant) leads the design, execution, and analysis of the community needs assessment, as well as public outreach. DelCommunity (2nd sub-applicant) supports the deployment plan, drafts the implementation package, identifies grants, and trains the school and partners in grant readiness.
Technical consultants: Greenumerix (4th sub-applicant) handles zero-emission vehicle evaluation and workforce training, while Richwill Sustainability Group (3rd sub-applicant) handles charging infrastructure, site planning, and permitting.
Community partners: San Diego Unified School District, Bridge of Hope, and the Disabled Services Advisory Council, together with Therapeutic Recreation Services and AgeWell Services, plus a wider network including the PTA, Mid-City GO, neighboring schools, recreation centers, libraries, and faith-based organizations.
Government and transit partners: SANDAG, the regional planning agency, and the Metropolitan Transit System, were invited to ensure the plan aligns with policy, permitting, and existing public transit.