October 16, 2008

 

Roosevelt High School has a poverty problem. Some of the North Portland school's students don't know where their next meal is coming from. Too many times, students come to class day after day wearing the same clothes.

The building serves 850 students from 30 countries who speak more than a dozen languages at home. As many as one in six students meets the federal definition of "homeless."
Clearly, the challenges at Roosevelt are enormous, and so the solution has to be big as well.

One important piece of a solution to re-energize the school is a planned $3 million athletic complex on the 82-year old campus. Organizers say it is a key component to an effort to make Roosevelt, and St. Johns, thrive again.

 

This week's homecoming celebration is wrapped around an effort to inform the public, including elected officials, about the steps being taken to turn Roosevelt's fortunes around.

Amid the pregame barbecue, the resurrection of the school band and the football game against Cleveland on Friday night is a subtle red carpet being rolled out for neighbors, alumni, business owners and parents.

 

"It's a kickoff in the sense that every Roughrider, honorary Roughrider or wannabe becomes aware of this project," said Rich Recker, who was hired a year ago to connect the school and the community.

 

Negative perceptions
Roosevelt is comprised of three small academies and is sometimes better-known for what it lacks --factors that lead to low self-esteem and a perception that the school's glory days are decades behind it.

Negative perceptions might be Roosevelt's most pressing problem.

 

"Everyone has the assumption that we're ghetto, a school of delinquents, where there are people that have guns and you fear for your life," sophomore Kristin Cubbison said. "All of my friends and I had the same assumptions because we all tried to get into Grant.  "Now that I'm at Roosevelt, I'm glad I decided to go here."

 

Cubbison said students on her block in North Portland scramble to get into other schools. Some don't like the small-school model that changed the organization of Roosevelt and several others schools. Whatever the reason, more than 500 students who live in the St. Johns area are saying no to their neighborhood high school, Principal Deborah Peterson said.

 

Leaders at Roosevelt are trying to reclaim that lost social capital.

"The stronger a community is in the weakest section of town, the stronger the entire community is," Peterson said. "I believe that with every ounce of my heart and soul."

 

TRAC, which stands for Teddy Roosevelt Athletic Complex, is one example of the effort to make the school community stronger.

Recker, a former associate director of development at Central Catholic High School in Southeast Portland, fills a similar role at Roosevelt. His job was created to pursue investment to prop up a school that has been damaged by nearly two decades of diminished public funding.

"I feel like it's my calling," Recker said.

 

Recker works to bring in stakeholders, whether business owners along North Lombard, or Roughrider alumni, or parents, or volunteer groups. "My job is to reintroduce the community to the Roosevelt campus," Recker said.

 

Recker extended an open invitation to homecoming, and more than a thousand guests are expected. He wants them to feel the renewed energy at Roosevelt and to notice that there is nowhere to sit for the game. Roosevelt's condemned grandstands were torn down over the summer.

 

He wants them to learn about TRAC and what it could mean for turning Roosevelt into a focal point for North Portland. The intention is that the athletic complex would include two artificial turf fields, a football stadium, a track, tennis courts and the potential for a community center. It would not merely serve Roosevelt athletic teams, but become a community-wide youth activity center that serves the whole area.

 

Recker said he believes about one-third of TRAC's cost is safely assumed to be committed to the project.

 

Norm Daniels, former executive officer of Joe's Sporting Goods and a 1966 graduate of Roosevelt, is a co-chairman of the project, along with Multnomah County District Attorney Michael Schrunk, another Roosevelt alumnus.

 

Another partner is Michael Bergmann, who works in Nike's tennis division but has a passion for track and field and recently orchestrated the construction of a community track at Holy Trinity Parish School in Beaverton.

 

"Rich and I are longtime friends," Bergmann said. "Roosevelt is a place that's desperate, and the kids are in such need. Wouldn't it be great, through athletics, to instill some pride back into this school?"

Bergmann drew more energy for his involvement in the project the first time he showed a plan of the new athletic field to a Roosevelt football player.

 

"He looked at me and said, 'If that was here I'd come to school every day,' " Bergmann said.  "What more do you need to hear than that?"

 

"We feel really poor”
Vanessa Crock, the Roughriders' girls soccer coach, recalls making a trip with her team to Oregon City several years ago.  "The girls didn't want to get off the bus," Crock said.

 

From the bus windows, the players saw the football stadium and facilities of the suburban school --and recoiled.  "They were like, 'We feel really poor,' " Crock said. "They didn't feel like they were able to compete at those levels because of the facilities we have compared to the facilities other schools have."  As recently as last season, some of Crock's players were using duct tape as their uniform numbers. The team practices and plays in nearby Columbia Park because the field at Roosevelt is deemed unsuitable.

 

The new athletic complex could change perceptions about the school and keep students engaged.

 

"Kids are pretty visual," Roosevelt football coach Cam McFarland said. "If they see something nice they'll want to be around it. It's why the numbers have gone down. There's nicer stuff at other schools.  "If you give these kids something to be proud of, they'll stay home."

 

Senior Terrell Malley, the football team's quarterback and a member of the school's basketball team, said he could envision using the school's new fields on weekends even after he graduates.  "We don't have a lot around here, but soon we will," Malley said. "It's good for the community. I think this could motivate a lot of kids."

 

Recker is intent on working every angle to bring the final cost 20 percent to 40 percent below the $3 million retail price. Through in-kind donations and negotiations with contractors, as well as grants, he said, there is every reason to believe the money will be in place to move forward.

"If we can pull this off then it's a great opportunity for more schools in the PIL that haven't been rehabilitated yet," Daniels said. "But it can't be half-baked or half done, or only be a football field. It's got to serve girls and boys and be available to youth activities on the weekends. That's why I'm involved."

 

More than anything, they want to see the new athletic complex be a gathering place so that Roosevelt is a hub for St. Johns again.

The effort follows similar facilities upgrades at Lincoln and Cleveland high schools. 

 

"When you look at Lincoln, Cleveland and Roosevelt, you have three very different models," Portland Public Schools spokesman Matt Shelby said. "We're pleased with the level of support that Roosevelt has been able to generate on its own as a school community."

 

If Recker, Bergmann, Daniels, Peterson and others can establish a precedent by rejuvenating Roosevelt, others in Portland will certainly be paying attention.

 

"What we're trying to do is take the values of the community that have been here for 100 years," Peterson said, "and we're trying to use a new athletic complex and a community center to say want to do this through education, through physical education that's healthy."

 

Best persistence rate
Thinking outside the box may be the only way for Roosevelt to survive, Peterson said. That's why she brought on Recker for development, and why she has a social services coordinator, Nora Lehnoff, on-site to assist students with problems at home. Lewis & Clark College operates a counseling program at the school. And a new University of Portland work-study program brings college students to Roosevelt as tutors and support staff.

 

"We're measured by how our kids cross the finish line," Peterson said. "But some kids in our community, in Portland, need help to even get to the starting line."

 

Peterson came to Roosevelt four years ago. There was no Parent-Teacher Association. No booster club. No band. No cheerleaders. No school dances or assemblies. Those things are changing.

Roosevelt students, she said, "are hard-working kids that can overcome anything. Many of them already have."

 

In a word, Peterson said, Roughriders are "persistent." Persistence is also a statistic used to describe the ability of students who begin four-year colleges to graduate on time. Out of the 10 Portland public high schools, Roosevelt has the best persistence rate of them all, Peterson said.

One of Recker's pet projects is organizing a spare classroom across the hall from the gym. He envisions the high walls covered with old photos and school memorabilia, with room for Roosevelt's dusty old trophies --the school hasn't won a state championship since 1954 --and new ones to be won.   In the center of the room sits a stately oak desk, a gift to the school from a former school district employee and possibly the most impressive piece of furniture in the building.

 

"This," Recker said, "is where our students will sign their letters of intent."