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Settling in at Rose City Park School
Displaced Marysville students and staff adjust to their new surroundings
“I like this school way better because we are on the top (third) floor and walking up all the stairs is exercise. We can also see Mount Hood perfectly.”
“I like this school because the surroundings are very nice. Also the people are very nice.”
“I love being at school, but I don’t like it here because of the stairs and how big it is. Once I got lost going to the bathroom.”
“It doesn’t feel like home and it will never be home.”
These comments from four sixth-graders reflect the mixed feelings Marysville K-8 School students have toward their temporary home in the re-opened Rose City Park School (RCPS). They and 431 of their classmates were relocated to RCPS after a devastating fire swept through their Southeast Portland school on November 10.
On top of coping with the trauma of the fire itself, both students and teachers are dealing with the myriad disruptions to teaching and learning caused by the loss of their school. For students, this means riding the bus five miles to Northeast Portland each school day, a new experience for the 95 percent of them that used to walk to school. For teachers, many of whom lost everything in their classrooms in the fire, it means scrambling to make up lost learning time and making do without a library until it could be moved at the end of December.
Making the switch from the one-level Marysville to the three-story RCPS building was an experience as well. The staircases make for long trips to the first-floor bathrooms, and the students in the different grades are more physically separated than they were before since their classrooms are now on different floors.
Both students and teachers are adjusting to what Marysville counselor and Rose City Park resident Michelle Slama calls the “new normal” of their dislocation.
“Schools are more than just a place to work,” she says. “They are our homes away from home. Many of the students have been at Marysville since kindergarten, and many teachers and other staff have spent more than a decade at the former Marysville site. To be so displaced in a matter of hours takes a lot of getting used to.”
Slama adds that she likes RCPS’ spacious hallways with their murals, and that students seem to enjoy the playground after having lost the use of a brand new one at Marysville. Both were freshened up by an army of over 100 volunteers recruited from the neighborhood and across the city by Hands On Greater Portland to repaint the interiors and clean up the grounds.
The reopening of RCPS was a bittersweet event for many Rose City Park residents and others with connections to the school. Its closure almost three years ago and the way in which it was done remains a sore point for many families for whom RCPS was their neighborhood school. Still, many are happy to see the school back in use, however temporary.
“It feels ironic and very unexpected to have Marysville now housed at the former RCPS, the closure of which was very challenging and difficult,” said Mary Dingle, RCPS’ principal from 2003 to 2007 who now heads the Roseway Heights School. “But I am tremendously thankful that the beautiful old RCPS facility was there and available for Marysville.”
“Do I wish it was still our neighborhood school?” asked Kelli Joy, who serves as RCPNA’s secretary and who has volunteered and worked as a student and substitute teacher in classrooms at both Marysville and RCPS before it closed. “Yes, but I’m glad to see its lights back on and its halls filled with
children again.”
The Marysville students and teachers will remain at RCPS through the rest of the school year. Whether they stay there next year, move to a different temporary location, or return home to their old school will depend on how quickly the estimated $4.25 million in damages the fire caused to the Marysville building can be repaired.
As for RCPS, its quick return to service seemed to validate Portland Public Schools’ strategy — articulated most recently, ironically, just two weeks before the fire by School Board Member David Wynde at the October 27th RCPNA General Meeting (see “October Meeting Highlights” on page 3) — to keep the school as “swing space”. In this role it would house students and staff displaced from other schools undergoing renovations funded by a future bond levy. The school did indeed swing back into action, but much sooner and for a very different reason than anyone expected. |
Buses loading Marysville students | 
Rose City Park School building |
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