Mount Desert students create ecosystem out of school bus

BAR HARBOR – A school bus parked behind Mount Desert Island Regional High School is taking a group of students to some new places.

School, however, is not one of them.

The 15 or so students in the high school’s elective sustainable agriculture class, led by teacher Dustin Eirdosh, were busy Friday morning converting the 1973 bus into an ecosystem.

By the time the service learning project is done, the bus will be a greenhouse for organic lettuce and tomato seedlings, a home for two angora rabbits and a compost factory where worms will turn rabbit droppings into fertile soil.

Despite the chilly wind that blew outside, junior Dylan Brann of Lamoine worked with energy to turn over the soil in the school’s organic garden, another part of the class. He described the class’s efforts to turn the bus into an ecosystem in glowing terms.

“I love it,” he said. “It’s a huge relief from academics.”

Brann is a part-time student at the high school’s on-campus alternative school, Compass Rose. He said he enjoys the gardening experience and the chance to work outdoors that the class provides.

Eirdosh teaches “a group of kids that are not your shining stars, typically, but boy do they love that program,” said Sally Leighton, the high school’s principal, earlier this week.

The idea of turning a school bus into a greenhouse germinated with students in his class, Eirdosh said Friday.

“The idea sort of came out as a joke, but we all really liked it,” he said. “I think they were really excited to do something that will make a lasting resource that can be used all year round.”

The $400 school bus, lumber for planters, worms and rabbits have been purchased with the help of several grants, Eirdosh said. The labor has been free.

Starting in February, students cleared out the bus and removed a third of its roof, which was later covered with thick plastic. They removed the engine and cleaned lichen off the hood. They also care for the two fluffy rabbits, named Cornelius and Myrtle, that will provide a source of income for the project when their fur is spun into yarn to sell.

The bus was clearly a work in progress Friday, but one that was just as obviously a labor of love. Warm sunlight poured through the plastic sheeting and tiny green buds peeked out from the rich soil in trays in the back of the bus.

Budding electrician Dan Hadley, 16, of Lamoine tinkered in the front with a radio that provided music for two girls who painted a sky mural on the ceiling in cheerful yellows and blues.

Chelsea Libitzki of Mount Desert and Nell Woodworth of Bar Harbor, both 16, said they were pleased with the effect of their artwork and enjoyed other aspects of the school bus project, including shearing the rabbits’ fur Thursday.

“It’s not something we would normally do,” Libitzki said while wielding a paintbrush.