A rotating letter game. Cubbies for vegetable and book donations. And arches that mimic the drawings of neighborhood kids.
These are some of the ideas for a covered bus stop for Ivanhoe Estates that University of Illinois architecture professor Joseph Altshuler presented to the Urbana Board of Education on Tuesday.
“It’s a small project, but it’s going to have a big impact on well over a hundred students who live in Ivanhoe Estates,” Altshuler said.
While most Urbana District 116 students go to a school near their neighborhood, Yankee Ridge students take the bus from across town. There aren’t any elementary schools in the northern side of Urbana near Ivanhoe Estates, and many in Ivanhoe Estates are Spanish-speaking families who want the Spanish-English dual language instruction at Yankee Ridge.
Two years ago, Spanish liaisons at the home visiting program CU Early learned that many kids in Ivanhoe Estates miss school because they get so drenched or cold while waiting for the bus without a covered stop. The liaisons started working with the mobile home management company, Urbana District 116 and partners at the U of I to build a stop.
At a recent neighborhood event, the team got kids to draw designs for the bus shelter. Altshuler combined the ideas from the kids and their parents into three options that could be built within their fundraising budget of $50,000.
Altshuler said the option called “The Cloud” is based on the shapes in the drawings.
“This one features a lot of the arcs and fun shapes from students’ drawings. This design a features a small stage in the middle,” he added. “The shelter can double as not only a bus pickup point but also [a center] for other kinds of informal programs.”
Altshuler described the features of the other designs and answered school board member questions at the meeting. In response to questions, he explained that families would like the shelter to have a heater, but adding one depends on how much money the group raises. He also said that the roughly 100 students who would use the stop take the bus in waves, so the goal is to fit about 40 to 50 people in the stop at a time.
Urbana District 116 Board of Education President Paul Poulosky thanked Altshuler and CU Early for their efforts to improve student attendance. He said absenteeism has been substantial in the district, harming learning and the district’s performance.
“Engaging our hard to reach populace, finding out what their needs are, coming up with a creative and innovative solution, partnering to build something beautiful. This is exactly what we need to do as a district. We need to apply this method and technique to a lot of problems we’re facing,” Poulosky said.
Now, Altshuler said neighbors get to give feedback on what they like for the final version of the bus stop design. The goal is to start construction in the spring.