By Angelica Lugo, Arts and Culture Editor
May, 2022
Last week, The Cardinal Post sat with Cameron Lipe, AP Environmental Science teacher, to discuss the bus project she initiated in 2020. Along with her husband and friends, for Ms. Lipe the bus project has been an amazing accomplishment she is glad to share with the KAC community.
Angelica Lugo: Tell us a little bit about yourself to provide context for students who might not know you.
Cameron Lipe: My name is Mrs. Lipe. I am the AP Environmental Science teacher. This is my first year teaching AP Environmental, but this is my second year at KIPP. Last year I supported Geometry and Chemistry.
AL: Describe the bus project in your own words.
CL: The bus project is essentially a giant DIY project with a giant vehicle. Essentially last year while I was proctoring for STAAR, I thought about what if we renovated a school bus into an RV. We could potentially live in it, or we could have that as a family vehicle one day. I came home and told my husband the idea and within a week he had researched buses. Two weeks later we purchased a bus out in Burnet. I drove it to our family’s land in San Antonio and that’s where we have been working on it. It’s a lot of hard work; we had to completely gut the bus, so a lot of physical work. We just painted it, we have to do some roof work, and insulate it. So it’s just step by step of one giant project.
AL: What motivated you to get started on the school bus project?
CL: My husband is a construction manager for Prairie Homes, so he has a lot of background knowledge. My father in law also owns his own custom homes company, so between them we knew this could be possible. Personally I don’t know much but if I am taught something I can find ways to help and be of great support. Yeah so motivator in that sense and just to grow in my relationship with my husband. It’s been super fun working together to reach our goals.
AL: What has been the most memorable experience you have had while transforming the school bus? Any challenges along the way?
CL: My most memorable experience was gutting the entire bus. We had to take out all the seats, floors and walls. We had 6-7 of our friends doing it with us. It was a super hot summer day and it was fun hanging out with everybody. Everyone had a drill on their hand. People were ripping stuff out, so it was just fun. Even though it was hard work and probably the grossest part of the bus we have done. I feel like the biggest challenge for us right now is trying to figure out insurance. When you buy a school bus, you have to get it insured and get it registered. However, because we raised the roof on our school bus there’s been a lot of insurance companies that don’t want to insure us since it’s a bigger liability. So we have liability on our bus, but we want to get actual R&B insurance. Before we can get that we have to prove that we are an R&B, so once we get further in our project we will be able to get R&B insurance.
AL: Would you say your school bus experiment has been costly? If so, how much have you spent so far?
CL: Yes it’s pretty costly. Little things add up. So the bus itself, you can get it anywhere from a couple thousand to $10 or $12,000. Our most expensive item right now has been solar panels. So we bought all of our solar and electrical equipment such as: batteries, charged controllers, and wires. We do have a budget; we have a whole spreadsheet that we go off of. We also save up each month. I would say by the time we are done with it, around $20,000-30,000 would be spent. Whereas if you go buy an R&B, you will probably spend about $100,000.
AL: What is your end goal or, in other words, what was the purpose of you transforming a school bus?
CL: Originally our end goal was to be done this summer 2022. However, buses take much longer than you think. We wanted to potentially live in it next year, but we did not reach that goal which was totally fine. So now our goal is to be done by summer 2023 and be able to take that out for a few months. Currently we live in an apartment paying a lot of rent, so what better way to not pay rent than to hop on a bus and live on that. We are looking for ways to cut costs so that we could pay off student loans and other debts.
AL: By when do you think the finished product will be ready? And will you perhaps consider renting it or giving other people tours of it?
CL: Our goal is to be done with a lot of it by November or Aggie football season. We are trying to do a big family tailgate at Texas A&M, and just have a big party with friends and family. Everything will most likely not be done done until further months after that. Our goal is to have a lot of it completed so we could take short trips on the weekend. We wouldn’t rent it out for others to drive, but we might rent it out for a place to stay like an B&B. It is just too much liability to have someone take it for a drive.
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