BENTONVILLE -- Kenzie Robinette came bounding off the bus with a big smile, jumping up and down and clutching a couple of books.
The Bridge Bus -- an old Bentonville school bus transformed into a library on wheels -- was making its weekly stop outside the Sienna Estates clubhouse in Centerton.
Kenzie, a third-grader, and her little brother were there to exchange books they'd picked up the previous week for some new reading material.
"They think it's fun," said Jessica Robinette, the children's mother. "I think because it's a bus, it makes it more exciting for them than just going to the library. Plus it's all spray-painted, and they love seeing the teachers."
The Bridge Bus debuted June 19. It makes a series of 11 stops each Wednesday morning in the attendance zones of Osage Creek Elementary and Creekside Middle schools.
It's a dream come true for longtime friends and co-workers Carol Halbmaier and Kim Moss. The two taught kindergarten together more than 20 years ago at Thomas Jefferson Elementary School. Now, they are the librarians at Osage Creek and Creekside, respectively.
The two schools are connected and share a library, called The Bridge, because of a second-floor walkway on one side of the library that links the schools.
Halbmaier and Moss had thrown around the idea for years about doing something to support summer reading habits among children. They joked about buying an ice cream truck and handing out books instead of cold treats, they said.
"Research tells us our students who don't have access to books in their homes lose a lot of their academic gains," Moss said. "The longer it goes on, the more they lose. We don't want our kids to come back to school and have to start over academically."
Moss was in a meeting in the spring of 2018 with Sarah DeWitt, a social studies specialist for the school district. DeWitt mentioned that each year the district retires or sells some of its older buses, and how it would be great to see one converted into some kind of bookmobile, Moss said.
Moss and Halbmaier were up to the challenge. The two got together with Chris DeWitt, Sarah's husband and the district's transportation director, who gave them an old bus and pulled together other resources to transform it. The district also agreed to pay for gasoline and insurance.
Workers pulled out all but the first few rows of seats. They installed bookshelves, wood flooring and padded benches that cover the wheel wells. The shelves are organized by genre, with sections labeled "adventure," "scary," "realistic fiction" and more.
Most of the books have been donated, and those donations have come from many places. Eric Walters, a Canadian author of books for children and young adults, sent his basketball-themed books in honor of the Toronto Raptors winning the NBA championship last month, Moss said.
Volunteers sanded the exterior of the bus, and a body shop covered up the yellow with white paint. Napoleon Dezaldivar, a Creekside art teacher, gave the bus distinctive artwork on both broad sides representing the two schools.
Moss and Halbmaier obtained the bus routes for their schools and spent hours driving them, charting what they thought would be the best stops for the Bridge Bus.
The bus left the transportation department at 9 a.m. June 26 with 10 school staff members, including Osage Creek Principal Lisa St. John and Creekside Principal Jeff Wasem. Holly Treat, a Bentonville High School teacher and coach who has a commercial driver's license, was the volunteer driver.
Treat honked the horn as the bus approached its stops. Staff members knocked on doors in efforts to rouse students. At some stops, they also handed out snacks donated by Creekside parents.
Children can take a couple of books. If they want to take those books back the next time the bus swings by, that's up to them. But it's clear there's no expectation that they do so.
The Bridge Bus will take children however they appear. One preteen boy wandered out at the Coffelt Park stop in Centerton wearing only pajama bottoms.
Molly Baker, a mother of four young children, was at her home in Centerton's Meadowlands neighborhood when a school staff member knocked on her door to inform her the Bridge Bus had arrived.
Her only child at home at the time was her 4-year-old daughter, so Baker took her out to explore the bus. Her daughter loves to read, she said.
"I'd seen something on Facebook about this," Baker said. "This is really, really neat. This is really cool."
The bus volunteers tried to stick strictly to the schedule -- 10 minutes per stop -- although sometimes the number of children at a stop made that challenging. The bus saw a total of 101 children on one day, up from 87 on its inaugural trip the week before.
Halbmaier said the main goal of the Bridge Bus is getting books into the hands of the schools' children. A bonus, however, has been the opportunity to get to know the children and families in their attendance zones.
Osage Creek's zone is changing this fall because of the opening of Evening Star Elementary School. Dozens of children who attended other schools last year will be in Osage Creek classrooms.
"So to meet these families and offer books and snack packs, I think those relationships are going to pay off in the long run," Halbmaier said.
State Desk on 07/06/2019