ISUS Students Show VIPs Home Showcase ; Senators Tour House in Wolf Creek Neighborhood.

By Scott Elliott Staff Writer

DAYTON — The house at the corner of Williams and Second streets in the Wolf Creek neighborhood now has walls and floors and stairs.

Pretty soon, it will be ready for a family to occupy, and the army of young men and women who gather here day after day to build it will have moved on to another house.

But for now, it’s a showcase.

For the second time in six months, students from ISUS Trade and Tech Prep High School hosted VIP visitors from Washington, D.C., on April 14. This time, it was U.S. Sen. George Voinovich and U.S. Rep. Mike Turner who walked through the house and chatted with the students who have been building it.

In October, it was Elaine Chao, the U.S. Secretary of Labor, who presented ISUS founder Ann Higdon with a check for the first half of a grant for more than $1 million from her department’s Youth-Build effort, designed to provide job training and employment opportunities for youth.

ISUS is a charter school started in 1999 to teach dropouts construction trade skills while helping them finish high school. ISUS, which stands for Improved Solutions for Urban Systems, enrolls about 175 students in Dayton.

Students learn in the classroom and at the job site. ISUS has built and renovated homes in two Dayton neighborhoods. Students also earn stipends of $12 to $30 a day if they come on time and ready to work.

But the program is costly at more than $14,000 per student. It receives about $6,000 in state aid and raises funds through grants and contributions to fill the gap.

Higdon said contributions such as the $3 million in YouthBuild grants and a $1.6 million gift from the Mathile Foundation have helped the program.

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2485 or selliott@DaytonDailyNews.com.

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