Created by Audrey Symon in Cincinnati, Ohio

Let’s start in medias res: I’m sitting in a grey bean bag chair on a hot June day, trying to keep my posture upright as I arrange my notes in front of my computer screen. It's a crowded room, in the Zoom world. There are green schools advocates and innovators from across the country, all uniting for a panel at Harvard Climate Action Week on public schools as climate leaders. I was nervous. I felt out of place in a room with so many qualified, inspiring changemakers. But this feeling shifted with one pivotal moment, when it felt as though my efforts finally came together. A man who works for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) informed me that my school district, Cincinnati Public Schools (CPS), had recently received $3.95 million in funding from the EPA Clean School Bus Program. My jaw dropped.

It dropped because I knew that this funding did not just come out of the blue. It was because of the advocacy work that I, and my campaign, had done. It was because we showed the district that we cared about electrification, for the health and safety of the students and their futures. I knew that the reason why our Chief Operating Officer applied for that grant was because CPS students, like me, showed up to tell him that we cared about making that change. It was because we were persistent in advocating for the future we wanted to create.

But how did I get to this point? Well, let’s start back at the beginning.

Our campaign, the Electrify CPS Campaign, started in the summer of 2021 after a friend and I teamed up with a local CPS parent/climate advocate to join the Great School Electrification Challenge. The challenge — an effort of Citizens’ Climate Lobby that encouraged students across the country to form campaigns focused on passing “Electrify Everything” Resolutions in their schools — was an entirely new project, and we all had little experience with an effort of this size.

But, if there is one characteristic that defined the campaign’s core leadership, it was this: persistence. We were persistent in our involvement of grasstops and grassroots; we were persistent in sharing our story; we were persistent in showing up and speaking out at School Board meetings; we were persistently compassionate towards our campaign members, providing them a sense of community; we were persistent with our vision. I believe this quality was the most necessary part of our success, and we needed a ton of it.

The school district I am in is huge. It serves roughly 35,000 students across 66 schools. All of which, prior to our efforts, were accustomed to using traditional diesel fuel buses. I had been in the same school district my whole life, but it wasn’t until middle school that I started to learn just how important our school transit system was to students and their well-being.

Every day after school, I would rush speedily to my locker, shoving notebooks and binders as I scampered eagerly out to the bus stop. At least a hundred students gathered for their buses to arrive, impatient to get home. I could not help but notice that the buses storming to a stop were spraying out fumes that stunk. The buses would often be idling on the street for what seemed like far too long for the health of the students, especially as I soon learned that diesel exhaust is a known carcinogen, according to the EPA. The more I learned about climate change, its connection to oil and gas, and the negative health impacts of these fuels, the more I wanted to help.

The transition to electric school buses seemed key to addressing climate change and addressing this public health issue, but I knew from the start that it would not be easy. Our school district was in serious debt from the COVID-19 pandemic--around $13.6 million. Would our School Board even budge? With our persistence, it did. In less than a year, our campaign—a small but mighty collection of CPS parents, students and teachers—were able to unanimously pass our Renewable Energy & Electrification Resolution, which outlines a plan for our school district to transition away from fossil fuels, including diesel buses, into an era of sustainable energy use.

Now, all this is great, but I have consistently found myself asking, from where did I derive this persistence? What keeps me going? In my mind, it was the collective vision I shared with my fellow campaign leaders. Not only were we intergenerational—parents, students and teachers—but we all came from different backgrounds, different parts of our city, different races, different socioeconomic classes. But ultimately, we all wanted the same thing: cleaner air in our community, safer rides for our children and a brighter future for the generations to come.

Consistently, we returned to this vision, creating thoughtful spaces for campaign members to share their personal stories and hopes. We talked about our climate fears and ambitions for change over homemade earth cupcakes and shared our public comment speeches “poetry slam” style. In this way, we stayed grounded in that visionary sense. I believe this is what kept me, and those in the campaign, persistent.

And to all the students out there, know this: your persistence is contagious. Now, our school district is continuing to tackle the goals outlined in our resolution, recently acquiring an additional $8.6 million from the EPA to fund electric school buses, with 35 already added to the fleet. I have been astonished by the compassion of my school leaders towards the students’ concerns, and seen the persistence that they too now possess, to continue to fight for our future.

Audrey Symon is a student at Walnut Hills High School, class of 2025, who took up the Great School Electrification Challenge.

Hear from more youth voices in Students for Electric School Buses.