Mike Conners and Doug Hemmig ride to class in an unusual, bright yellow bus.

Instead of arriving daily at the same red-brick school building, Conners and Hemmig crisscross the country in the C-SPAN television network’s high-tech rig, sharing the gospel of public-affairs television programming. The bus serves as a classroom on wheels.

“It’s a great way to see the country,” Hemmig, a marketing representative for C-SPAN from Rockville, Md., said Thursday during a pit stop in Lawrence.

“I’ve been coast to coast, all 50 states,” said Conners, a C-SPAN driver since 1993 working out of Milwaukee. “We put the bus on a ferry to go to Alaska.”

The road to Lawrence High School and Free State High School proved less complicated.

Conners pulled the 44,000-pound bus into parking lots at both high schools so students could check out the vehicle featuring the latest in digital television equipment and computer gadgets.

“It’s tight,” said Scott Andrews, a junior at LHS.

Fellow bus tourists Alex Ayre, another LHS junior, said he wasn’t an avid C-SPAN watcher, but he had stopped briefly while channel surfing. He said the programs were, well, “boring.”

“When they walk off the bus, we know they’re not going to watch C-SPAN,” Hemmig said.

The C-Span School bus rolls into Lawrence to give students a peek at the world of public affairs television. The rig, seen here at Free State High School, visited Lawrence's high schools Thursday and today will be at the Capitol in Topeka.

However, he said, it might be possible to plant a seed that the network offers an unusual perspective on world events unavailable elsewhere in America. For example, the network is running Canadian coverage of the Iraq war. When available, feeds from the Middle East are part of the programming.

“What we like to do is make people think,” Hemmig said.

Stops at both high schools were sponsored by Sunflower Broadband, which carries C-SPAN’s 24-hour programming on its cable network. C-SPAN’s commercial-free coverage is available to 86 million households nationwide.

“It’s an inspiring network because we’re not trying to sell you anything,” Conners said.

Most students on the tour eagerly snatched up a pocket edition of the U.S. Constitution and a blue C-SPAN pencil.

“We give away about 500 a week,” Hemmig said.

The bus moves today to the Capitol in Topeka. On this leg, the bus has already been to Liberal, Garden City and Wichita.

¢ 6News video: C-SPAN brings traveling studio to Lawrence¢C-SPAN.org

C-SPAN was created in 1979 to provide live coverage of the U.S. House of Representatives. It has expanded to cover proceedings of the U.S. Senate and much more.

The network now has had two yellow buses on the road since 1996. The other was in Georgia on Thursday. The buses are on the move 11 months out of the year.

In addition to serving as a classroom on wheels, the bus doubles as a mobile studio for C-SPAN’s coverage of government, politics and history.

After four years of touring, Hemmig said he wasn’t ready to give up his seat on the bus.

“I’ve been to 45 states in the bus,” he said. “Your office always changes. People are always different. I’ll keep doing it until it’s not fun anymore.”