Schools as Learning Communities

A Crisis Opportunity

John Dibert Elementary School is located on the fringes of the downtown business and industrial area of a large, southern, urban city. This kindergarten through grade six school serving400 students is surrounded by houses in need of refurbishing where a majority of the students come from low-income families. The seventy-year old building is close to a large city park, and there is a community college not far away.

As has happened in many urban neighborhoods, the population of the school dwindled as families grew older and residents moved to the suburbs. In the early '70s, the school became highly bureaucratic and rigidly structured, and hierarchically dominated by its single administrator as the sole decision maker. Because of the ever-decreasing student population, the school board discussed closing the school, and this crisis stimulated significant action by a few tenacious parents who did not want to lose their school.

These parents developed a coalition of other interested parents who initiated dialogue with the board to keep the school open. As a result, a decision was made to maintain the school as an open-enrollment magnet school. With the new concept of magnet school came new administrators and the challenge to generate sufficient student enrollment to remain open. This paper is the story of that challenge, of the re-creation of the school, and of the principals who played a major role in the re-formulation of the school.