MCPS Parents and Guardians Have No Idea They are Putting their Children on School Buses Owned by a Shell Corporation out of Massachusetts. Buses are Not Marked. @mcps @mocoboe

UPDATE: On September 7, 2023, a MCPS electric school bus was involved in an accident with 5 vehicles and a tree.  No children were on the bus at the time of the accident. 

*****

Electric school buses are all the rage and Montgomery County Public Schools has gotten national attention for their supposed plan to convert their entire school bus fleet to electric buses. 

But who owns the electric school buses that Montgomery County children are riding on?  

When the Board of Education was buying diesel school buses the diesel school buses were owned by the Board of Education.  But the electric school bus scheme the Board of Education signed up for at the insistence of their former Department of Transportation Director Todd Watkins (Mr. Watkins' sentencing is this week.) does not have the Board of Education buying the electric school buses.  Instead, the scheme involves a shell corporation called HET MCPS, LLC. putting school buses on Montgomery County roads.  

The HET MCPS, LLC electric school buses are apparently unmarked as shown in the image below, so parents actually have no idea they are putting their children on a school bus owned by a shell corporation instead of Montgomery County Public Schools.  

When MCPS signed up for this electric school bus scheme the company that actually bid on the contract (NOT HET MCPS, LLC) had exactly ONE electric school bus on the road in Beverly, Massachusetts.  That Beverly, MA bus was clearly marked as belonging to Highland.  

But the electric school buses on the road in Montgomery County are not clearly marked.  

Who owns the electric school buses in use by MCPS, but more importantly WHO IS INSURING THEM?  

MCPS says, "...that the contractor covers them for liability...", but who is the contractor?