This isn’t just any old school bus — it’s a fully functioning, state-of-the-art classroom on wheels.
The seats are removed, replaced with laminate flooring. There is an art center, literacy center, math center and one of those cool light tables for playing with colorful translucent items.
The unveiling event is Friday, August 2 from 2 to 3 p.m. at the Thelma B Johnson Early Learning Center.
Early Childhood Community Liaison Kelsie Todd said preschool is not required, and this is a way to reach families who haven’t enrolled their children.
“One of our goals is to build relationships with families, and to find families that don't have transportation, or families that don't really know about public preschool.”
Henderson County Schools has one preschool — the Thelma B. Johnson Early Learning Center on N. Grant Street.
After it’s unveiled, the bus will be used for community engagement, but Todd said she would like to eventually have a dedicated mobile pre-school teacher.
The bus is designed to encourage preschool attendance and Kindergarten readiness.
“We have areas in our community that have low kindergarten readiness scores. So these kiddos are going into kindergarten, and they're not ready,” Todd said.
She said they asked these communities how they could help.
“Some of the families have transportation barriers,” she said. “Some of them … they feel like their students are just too little to get on the bus. Some of them have language barriers, where they don't quite understand how preschool works …”
So Henderson County Schools donated a bus to the preschool program. They were awarded a $100,000 grant to convert it into a real, mobile classroom to reach families where they are.
Todd feels their bus is unique, but it is inspired by mobile classrooms in larger districts, like Fayette County which has two preschool mobile classrooms. Warren County has one as well.
“We took their ideas, and then our own ideas and just kind of, you know, made ours a little bit unique and our own based on our needs in Henderson County.”
She said tying mental health resources to their bus was one example of how they tailored the bus to their students’ needs.
