Students at Unaka High School have been putting their skills and knowledge to use to give back to their community and help out other children.
This year, the auto body repair program at UHS — part of the county school system’s Career Techinical Education (CTE) program — undertook the task of refurbishing an old school bus for use by the Elizabethton Boys and Girls Club.
The project spanned across both the Fall and Spring semester and involved a large number of students.
Work began on the bus in November, said Phillip Taylor, the Auto Body teacher at UHS.
“We had to do it all outside, so the weather played a big part in when we could work on it,” Taylor said.
The work had to be done outside, he said, because the school could not get the bus into the garage bay to work on it.
Since November, the students have been hard at work getting the bus ready for use by the Boys and Girls Club.
“I don’t know just how many hours they’ve worked on it because I didn’t keep track, but they’ve spent a ton of time on this,” Taylor said.
The students had to remove all 32 seats from the bus, which Taylor said was labor intensive because the old bolts had rusted so they had to be cut out.
Once the seats were out, the students set to work removing the old wooden floor in order to get to the metal floor base, which needed repair work. After the metal floor base was repaired, the students installed new wood flooring, which was then covered with new vinyl flooring. The seats were then re-installed. The students also did other repair work to the body of the bus to get it ready.
“The kids enjoyed working on the bus,” Taylor said. “It was a real challenge. It is probably the biggest job we have undertaken since I’ve been here.”
The students regularly work on other vehicles as part of their CTE program — including performing body repair to police cruisers and other vehicles for the Carter County Sheriff’s Office.
For the Elizabethton Boys and Girls Club, the partnership with Unaka High School to get the bus road ready was a dream come true. The students performed the labor for free as part of their training and the Boys and Girls Club only had to purchase the supplies, which greatly reduced the cost of repairs to the bus.
“It made it feasible to get it back on the road,” said Justin Clark of the Boys and Girls Club. All in all, Clark said, the materials to make the repairs cost the Boys and Girls Club “a little over $1,000.”
Clark said the Boys and Girls Club planned on putting the bus into immediate use.
“We pick up at all the city schools and the majority of the county schools for our after school program so that will be a tremendous help there,” Clark said. “It will also be used daily during the summer to take our kids on field trips.”
This year, the Boys and Girls Club anticipates having as many as 250 children a day taking part in their summer program, Clark said.
“Having this size bus will help us provide them with more opportunities,” he said.