Rosa Parks Elementary School is one of Portland’s newest schools– by a long shot. Designed by DOWA for a quickly expanding, mostly minority area of the Portsmouth neighborhood, this school goes beyond its title of “school” to really fulfill the needs of the community. I recently had the opportunity to visit and interview the school’s principal, Tamala Newsome.
Rosa Parks Elementary School lives by two colluding principles: that “it takes a whole village to raise a child,” and that the school should care for the “whole child.” This amounts to a progressive program that both relies on and provides for the community.
The concept of the “whole child” is that in order to care for a child, and to provide a positive learning experience, one has to care not just for that child’s physical, social, emotional, and intellectual well-being, but also for the family and community that surrounds that child. Rosa Parks hosts an amazing array of resources for the “whole child.” By partnering with the local Boys & Girls club, meals and care from early morning to late evening. Within the school, a community resource room offers ESL and other classes, as well as provides support to parents helping their children read and do school work at home. It is also a place parents can give back to the school and their child’s education, by helping assemble papers and materials for teachers. By bringing the community into the school and giving them ownership, they have pride and take care of it.
The real genius of Rosa Parks Elementary School is that it provides a struggling community with exactly the resources it needs most. In doing this, it ensures the students are getting the full support they need– a school and at home.
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