It started with a passion for neighborhood and a desire to keep open an older middle school in the heart of that neighborhood. It grew into a campaign for educational change by putting a new school into an old building.
The charter school we envision for the "old" Leslie Middle School in the Salem/Keizer School District will, we believe, enhance rather than downgrade the neighborhood. After an inner-city school, where many of our children have been educated, was slated for closure, the possibility of developing an innovative, excellent school was our last best hope to keep this school open. In our view, the heart of a neighborhood is the school—a school from which young sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-grade students can walk to school and back home.
Salem's near south side is a diverse neighborhood that brings many special qualities to the school. It is close to downtown. It includes some of our older and wealthier parts of town and some of our poorer and more troubled sections, as well as a range of socioeconomic groups in between. Salem's magnificent Bush's Pasture Park, where museums and art centers thrive in the homes of city pioneers, lies in the middle of our neighborhood and just a few blocks from the school. Homes and elementary schools adjacent to the Oregon State Penitentiary are there, too. It's the school, then, which binds families into neighborhood. The new school, miles away and where 70 percent of the children will be bused, loosens this tie.
Just as the school helps hold the neighborhood together, the neighborhood is part of the education of the school children. We believe it is true that it takes a whole village to raise a child. Charter schools focus teachers, students, parents, and the wider community on students' needs. Teachers work in curriculum development, as professionals. Charter schools foster student choice. Students buy in to a curriculum when it's their choice; they make it work for them.
It's to maintain, or even add to, the strength of our neighborhood, our "village," that has motivated and nourished us through the years of long hours and frustrations that this project has brought with it. As voters and volunteers, we have always supported public education, the school board, and the schools. Some of us, but not all, are parents with children in the district. Some of us, but not all, have children at the age where they might attend the school when it opens. Some of us, but not all, have been classroom teachers in the district. Two are former school board members; another a former newspaper reporter on the education beat. Able to choose between a public school and private school education for our children, we chose to work within the public school system for the alternatives and excellence a charter school can provide middle school youngsters in our district.
We know what effect dedicated teachers can have on the development of our children. We want to create a learning place where that can happen. Charter schools give public schools the opportunity to show themselves at their innovative best.
Equal education doesn't need to be the same education. We're seeing a movement toward real local control. The city is made up of many neighborhoods and different people with different needs.
The vital elements of our curriculum are math/science, language (including second languages), and the arts. In recognition of each of these three areas, all of which are forms of language, we call our curriculum "Einstein, Ellington, and Esperanto."
But, at this stage of our school's development, its building blocks come from the community and the neighborhood. Artists offer to take children into their studios. In this way students will develop their talent and, at the same time, see where art comes from and how it is used. Science equipment, from Bunsen burners to lab tables, are offered by a university in the neighborhood. Even the neighboring high school, whose building abuts the middle school, offers students the potential of richer offerings. A major high-tech manufacturer, the city library, a children's science museum are attracted to the light given off by our idea for a school. This kind of community involvement will be as essential to our charter school's education after it's been opened for many years as it is to getting it started.
The possibilities we see from what has already happened in other parts of the state, the region, and even the nation energize our efforts. There will always be frustrations. Changing education in this country comes very slowly. But when there is communication, a shared vision, a shared definition of terms, change comes.
We all would like to see our school granted a license for risk-taking, even failure, to let the air come in, in a way that doesn't have to come as a challenge from the outside. We want our school to create a blueprint for what's possible. We want to show a district ready to try an alternative.
The Salem Statesman-Journal newspaper headlined its October 28, 1996, editorial, "Public Education Benefits from Charter School Plan," and went on to say, "We believe that it's important to provide a variety of educational venues—traditional public and private schools, home instruction, and now charter schools. Children can learn in many settings, and it makes sense to provide as many as Salem and Keizer can support."
Even at this early date in the development of our school, we've provided a vehicle for alternatives. To learn what alternatives there are is motivating. The biggest effect of our school will be to make it possible for other alternatives to emerge.
Our school emerged from a campaign to save our school and save our neighborhood. We intend to show the two, a school and its neighborhood, are inseparable.
—BENTLEY GILBERT
Bentley Gilbert is a public affairs consultant. Other founders are: Alan Boner, a mechanical engineer; Caryl Gertenrich, a retired teacher and a fabric artist; Pam Mattson, a management consultant, a former state agency director, and a board member for the Salem Schools Foundation; Sally Miller, a community volunteer and former teacher; Janet Tornquist, a travel consultant and former Salem/Keizer school board member; Beth Unverzagt, a staff member of a private school and a former school board member in Turner, Oregon.
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