Deb Portner, facilitator for literacy in primary grades, assesses a kindergartner's reading skills. Photo by Suzie Boss.

SPOKANE, Washington—
If you asked around town about Bemiss Elementary School a few years ago, you might have heard: "Bemiss? Isn't that the one up by the junkyard?"

Or maybe: "Isn't Bemiss the one that's been in the news because it's so bad?"

Or worse: "Isn't Bemiss the one with the lazy teachers?"

In 1992 achievement tests, Bemiss students ranked rock bottom in the Spokane Public School District. The local newspaper ran a story, singling out Bemiss Elementary as "a school from the poor part of town, where kids couldn't learn and teachers couldn't teach," recalls current Principal Lorna Spear, who was teaching a multiage classroom at another Spokane school back then. Television stations picked up the story, leaving the Bemiss community feeling attacked. "It got personal," says Bonnie Smesrud, a primary teacher with a kind face and a big heart who grew up not far from the school where she's been teaching since 1974.

Without question, the Hillyard District where Bemiss is located has seen better times. The money that has poured into Spokane's downtown in recent years—bringing new buildings and cultural attractions to the scenic riverfront district—hasn't flowed uphill to this neighborhood, northeast of the city center.

Earlier this century, Hillyard was home to blue-collar workers who walked to jobs at the nearby railroad yards and roundhouse. Those glory days still provide some local color. There's a bold mural on the side of a building dedicated to railroad builder James Hill (the neighborhood's namesake), and a popular café housed in an old train car. But the steady, solid jobs that railroading once provided have faded into history like the noontime lunch whistle.

Poverty has grown more visible in recent years. Many of the small, wood-sided homes bordering Bemiss Elementary are peeling paint. Asphalt gives way to gravel at back alleys. Front yards are more likely to sport chain-link fences than flower gardens. Two housing projects provide subsidized shelter. Immigrants from Russia and Ukraine have recently found homes in the neighborhood, bringing an influx of schoolchildren for whom English is a new language and Spokane a new world. Many families are in transition, packing up children and possessions when relationships fray or bill collectors close in. Every year, one-third of the Bemiss enrollment turns over. And children who feel unsettled at home pack their worries with them to school.

Staff members at Bemiss have never used poverty as an excuse for poor academic performance, even though more than 80 percent of their students qualify for free or reduced-price lunches. No one doubts that children from higher-income neighborhoods, with better-educated parents, enjoy advantages that help them succeed in school. But Bemiss children are the ones these educators feel compelled to teach. Says Smesrud, "This is where my heart is."

Instead of fleeing from criticism, Bemiss staff members have united behind the goal of remaking their school from the inside out, to give every child a chance to thrive. They weren't sure, when they began this journey, which path would take them where they needed to go. But like the hero of that classic children's tale, The Little Engine That Could, they've drawn strength from the motto, "We think we can." And they've been chugging steadily uphill ever since.

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