Islander to Create Mobile Art Classroom from A School Bus

When ’s son Cooper went to kindergarten five years ago, she was stunned to discover that none of the Island’s elementary schools had a dedicated art classroom or teacher. “I didn’t grow up in a well-to-do area of New Jersey, but even we had an art teacher and an art classroom when I was a kid,” she said. “I discovered that the second challenge (the first is money) to having an arts program is space, because all the elementary schools are way overcrowded—every single school has 150 more kids than it was built for, so having an art classroom is not an option.”

Eighteen months ago, Hand heard that Mercer Island was replacing old school busses with new ones due to a bus levee, and found herself having a “Eureka” moment with the Superintendant of the , Gary Plano. “I said ‘what are you going to do with all the old busses?’ and he said ‘We’re going to sell them’ so I told him I’m going to buy one and use it for an arts curriculum.”

“I loved the idea,” said Plano. “The more (Hand) talked about it, the more I loved it, because I believe that design thinking is a 21st century skill, and a is important for children to be successful.”

Hand talked Ron Mitchell, an architect and parent of a school student, into designing the retrofit that will turn MISD bus #17 into a mobile 21st century visual arts learning facility, complete with a generator, sinks, media screens and a designated teaching area for demonstrations. But Hand was told that bus 17, which has had the same driver for over 20 years, would still have to remain in service until she could come up with the $80,000 it was going to take to refurbish it.

After pitching her bus recycling idea to several contests, Hand won the “Make Your Mark” contest sponsored by Bayer Women’s Health, and was awarded a $5k prize package including a trip to New York and a photograph taken by famed Vanity Fair photographer Annie Lebowitz. Added to an anonymous donation made to the Mercer Island Fine Arts Advisory Committee (FAAC) of $70k, and Hand knew the project was a go.

“I’ve been a part of FAAC for years, and we’d never had money drop from the sky like that before,” she said. “I realized, though, that we needed to make sure the ArtBus program is sustainable for the long term, and in order to do that, we can’t just repurpose the bus, we have to fund two fully certified art teachers for several years.” So though the FAAC has the money to buy and retrofit the school bus, they still need another $170,000 for art teachers.

“A certificated art education teacher can teach specific design skills and use our state visual arts standards to teach a progressive arts curricullum that kids can apply in their own creative ventures,” said Dr Nancy Lorem, principal of Island Park Elementary School. “I think (the ArtBus) is a brilliant idea, to have a mobile classroom that can hold a room full of students and move between our (elementary) schools.”

Hand and the FAAC had to take a step back from their fundraising efforts this year until the “Bridge the Gap” campaign made their goal of gathering over a million dollars for teachers and programs in the MISD. “Now that they reached their goal as of June 10, we’ll hit the ground running to raise those teacher’s salaries,” she said. “With the recent budget cuts to the state education system, it’s been a challenge to raise money for important programs that our kids need and deserve, but I’m confident that there will be enough people who feel art is important to a child’s ability to think creatively that we’ll make the ArtBus happen.”

Jane Voss, age 10, feels that the ArtBus would certainly enhance her learning experience. “At Island Park (Elementary), there's no space for an art room. It's true at the other schools too. Having an art bus, a classroom on wheels, solves the space problem and is also just more exciting,” she said “When we do art now, we are crammed at our desk and we have to do a lot of setting up and we need to be really careful when doing our art. I think (the ArtBus) is great because I'm so creative and art is my favorite subject, a lot of my friends agree. When there's art docent, everyone gets really excited but I think an art bus would be better than just having a volunteer mom come into the classroom. It would be better to have an art teacher because it is more serious and more professional."

“My goal is to make the visual arts program as integrated into the educational system as our internationally-renown music program,” said Hand.  “Kids now have iPods and graphic novels and make split second decisions based on design, they’re so in tune with the designed world around them. They communicate via multimedia. So I don’t think at this most creative time in history, that an arts education is just an option, it’s a necessity.”

To learn more about the ArtBus, visit Mercer Island Fine Arts Advisory Committee website here.