Article from the Oregonian, which can be found at this link.
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Making school matter for disappointed students at Portland’s soon-to-close Marshall High School
Published: Tuesday, March 01, 2011, 8:00 PM Updated: Wednesday, March 02, 2011, 12:32 PM
It’s easy to get cynical about news that Marshall High School administrators are offering incentives such as pizza parties, Netbooks and Harlem Globetrotters tickets to keep students in class during these finals months of the school’s existence.
It’s tempting to roll your eyes at pleas from faculty and parents to help make Marshall’s last prom — moved up nearly two months in part to ensure that pictures from the big night make the last campus yearbook — extra special.
After all, Marshall students learned an important lesson this academic year, maybe the most important one for growing into a healthy, highly functioning adult: Life isn’t fair. Sometimes you give everything to a cause and still lose. When that happens, there’s no choice but to pick yourself up, dust yourself off and go back to work.
But that’s not the moral some students at this outer-Southeast school took from the experience of watching Portland Public School board members vote to ax their campus last fall. Attendance at Marshall’s three mini-schools has fallen like a late February rain: hard and constant. The average daily absence rate at Renaissance Arts hit nearly 25 percent in February — up from 16 percent at the same point in 2010.
“They’ve taken what is happening very personally,” said Amber McGill, who oversees the SUN program at Marshall, a collaborative effort with the nonprofit Impact NW to give students both basic services and extracurricular activities. “You hear kids say, ‘They don’t like us. They don’t care about us. It doesn’t matter what we do.’ It may sound melodramatic to an adult, but we’re seeing the impact in grades, attendance, discipline, everything.”
None of this should be surprising. The timing of the vote to close Marshall — barely two months into the school year — stunk. The typical teenager takes even the most minor slights or setbacks personally. Students and parents at Marshall felt disenfranchised and undervalued long before the high school redesign debate.
But the hard decision has been made. Rather than re-fight that battle — or talk about the inevitably unpleasant redistricting battles to come — the grownups need to ensure that Marshall students end the school year on a high note. Or at least end the school year in school.
To that end, McGill and her colleagues are rallying community support for the March 11 prom. Only 60 of 341 juniors and seniors have bought tickets, and McGill fears many more want to go but cannot afford either tickets — $25 for individuals, $45 per couple — or appropriate clothing. So she’s looking for help, including cash to cover ticket costs, donations of formal wear, styling products and flowers, and people willing to help with hair, manicures and makeup. In a dream world, someone would step up to cater the Treasury Ballroom event; the only refreshments planned are soda, candy and chips.
It might sound shallow, but there’s no denying the appeal of dressing up and dancing the night away to a certain segment of the teenage population. This is about maintaining a sense of community and making school seem relevant.
Two racks of donated dresses and suits sit outside McGill’s office. Students who wander by to spend a few minutes rifling through them might wind up taking part in another, more academically minded extracurricular activity, such as an after-school resume-writing class or field trips to tour Portland Community College campuses.
“It’s been a rough year for everyone here. Morale is … well, ‘not good’ is an understatement,” McGill said. “We’re just trying to make the rest of the year feel special for students. We just want them to know the adults still care.”
Written by Anna Griffin
