Neighborhood Schools, Second Homes, and Warm Hugs

Portland, Oregon is known for its neighborhood culture. It’s what made this pretty large city feel very small through all the years I was growing up and getting to know my city.

Multnomah Village, Woodstock, Hollywood, Roseway Heights, Belmont, Hawthorne, Hillsdale, Foster-Powell. All of these places have personalities and spirit all their own. And they also have schools which have served their communities for generations. Almost all the elementary schools in Portland are literally nestled among blocks and blocks of residential homes. Many of them are not even adjacent to busy streets. It creates a beautiful feeling of connectedness.

Beverly Cleary’s Ramona Quimby books even made some Portland schools famous. Ramona and Beezus walked to school through their neighborhood. And Fernwood, Grant, and Gregory Heights (now Roseway Heights) will forever warmly remind us of Ramona, Beezus, Howie, and their friends and neighbors.

The history of the Portland Public Schools is messy and complex, just like any other big district. But in these times of Covid and chaos, Portland has a great opportunity to restore order and comfort for students through its schools. The infrastructure is already there. Although many of these schools have been in flux for years as charter schools, closed buildings, or multi-campus experiments, the buildings could just as easily be returned to their old-fashioned neighborhood public school selves.

Other districts in the nation could learn from the power of these neighborhoods and their schools. What makes the return to neighborhood elementary schools so important right now?

Shared Experience: Children who grow up together and attend the same school will always have people they can connect with on the basis of that shared experience. As they grow, they are able to reminisce about teachers, playground adventures, the times when the cafeteria almost caught fire or someone threw up or so-and-so broke their arm on the monkey bars. They have a whole collection of shared seasons.

Community connection: As children build shared experiences together, so do the adults in their lives. The neighborhood school becomes a place for the whole surrounding community to gather, celebrate, fundraise, and build up their students.

Geographical groundedness: Neighborhood schools provide children a physical space to grow intellectually, emotionally, physically, and perhaps spiritually. When they are able to connect deeply to a geographical location through the experience of growing up and spending time there, they grow to love and care for it. They learn to become invested in the neighborhood as a whole: the people and the environment. The school building provides the home base from which to spread out and care for larger and larger circles of influence. First the neighborhood, the city, and the state, then the nation and the world. When students have roots, they have more confidence to fly.

A stable foundation: Sometimes family life is just chaotic. Sometimes the world is chaotic. But schools don’t have to be. Especially if they are neighborhood-oriented, understand their demographic, and create traditions to look forward to, neighborhood schools can control the culture within the building. They can be a second home, a stable foundation, a place where students can come and expect routine, learning, attention, and care.

Neighborhood schools are often largely homogenous. In the big world, we often see this as a negative. But at the elementary level, it allows the teachers and administration to really understand the demographic, to care for students very specifically. As long as teachers guide students to remember that there’s a big world out there, this builds stability, safety, and eventually confidence so that upon graduation to middle school or above, kids are confident enough in themselves and their identity that they are able to branch out and find connections with others beyond their root community.

Perhaps maintaining the infrastructure of neighborhood schools is expensive. That’s not my area of expertise. But as someone who is naturally a shepherd, who cares empathetically and emphatically for the psychological wellbeing of my students, I know that whatever the cost, neighborhood schools are a good investment. We need psychological and social wellbeing more than anything else right now.

There’s a time and place to scale things back. This is it.

I know that school is miserable for many children. It wasn’t for me, but I had the benefit of a neighborhood public elementary school and then a neighborhood Catholic school. I believe that the shared experiences with my peers, the geographical groundedness, and long-term community connection created the stable foundation that made all the difference.

There is a time and a place for educational experiments. K-8s, magnets that draw students from all different neighborhoods, and charter schools make an enriching educational experience. But if a neighborhood or neighborhood school isn’t broken, there’s no need to fix it. And if a neighborhood school doesn’t exist, perhaps it’s time to build it.

It all comes back to stability, the number one things students and teachers are craving as we navigate the end to the Covid-19 pandemic. A neighborhood school is like a warm hug. As we figure out how to relate to one another without masks. As we figure out how to relate to each other in person. We’re already seeing all the negative consequences of Covid isolation, stress, and fear playing out in the classrooms and hallways. Students are fighting so much some schools have had to return to remote learning. We’re hearing gunshots, students are dying. We need familiar faces. We need faces, period. We need hugs.

SOMETHING DRASTIC MUST BE DONE.

The return to neighborhood schools is both drastic and doable, especially in Portland. So let’s do it.