Richard Riley Award
Community Learning Centers for the 21st Century
Presented by:
Rosa Parks School at New Columbia Community Campus
School Demographics
- Location: Portland, OR
- Community Type: Urban
- School Population: 550
- Grade Range: K-6
- Free/Reduced Lunch: 95%
- School District: Portland Public Schools
- School District Population: 47,000
The Rosa Parks School was unanimously selected by a national jury as the winner of the 2007 Richard Riley Award as a school that best reflects the growing trend to design schools as centers of community. According to Sean O‘Donnell, AIA, LEED, AP and a member of the Richard Riley Award jury, this is one project that is "firing on all cylinders." O‘Donnell went on to note that the school "skillfully combines a variety of users and uses into a very appealing urban campus setting."
The jury singled out Rosa Parks School www.pps.k12.or.us for numerous reasons including its support of small learning environments, the variety of services available to the entire community and the fact that the school has recently received a Gold LEED certification for sustainability. The jury also recognized that this is the first public school in the nation to use New Market Tax Credits www.cdfifund.gov to finance the construction of the facility and also noted that the construction of Rosa Parks School helped to establish community design principles for schools in Portland, Oregon.
The city of Portland has always been a center of urban innovation and Multnomah County, which surrounds and incorporates Portland, is an established national leader in supporting the community school movement www.sunschools.org. What captured the attention of the jury was the complexity of the project and the reality that the Rosa Parks School is part of a larger vision of community and community building.
The Rosa Parks School is a central part of the New Columbia Community Campus, a mixed-use partnership project that is the largest low-income housing revitalization project in Oregon history. The impetus for the design was the need to provide greater educational and social services for a growing population in New Columbia. As a result, the New Columbia Community Campus was conceived as a public/private partnership including a new K-6 school, a new Boys & Girls Club, and a revitalized Parks & Recreation Community Center, on land donated by the Housing Authority of Portland.
Small Learning Environments and Numerous Support Services
The centerpiece of the Community Campus is the new Rosa Parks School; only the second new school designed and constructed by Portland Public Schools in 30 years. With 95% of the students eligible for free or reduced lunch and over 12 languages being spoken, Rosa Parks focuses on learning, family, and neighborhood support.
Students formerly attended the well respected John Ball Elementary School, one of the top achieving schools in the district. In 2004, Tamala Newsome, the former principal at Ball and the new principal at Rosa Parks received a $25,000 Milken National Educator Award for her achievement in turning around Ball www.mff.org/mea/.
To focus on learning, the new school is divided into four neighborhoods, each containing 125-130 students. Each Neighborhood contains five classrooms, a resource/support room, toilets, and a common area. Encouraging family participation, one is met at the entry by Meet & Greet, Family Resource, Literacy, and Media Information Centers.
Internal programs are augmented by support from businesses and local universities including 20 University of Portland volunteers and 40 local reading buddies that are part of the SMART reading assistance for students at Rosa Parks. To support the child and their family, the other campus partners provide early childhood youth, adult, and senior programs, nutritional services, and health/social service access from 6:00 am to 11:00 pm daily
The Rosa Parks School is the focus of the American Architectural Foundation and KnowledgeWorks Foundation’s DVD and Resource Guide "Partnerships for a Sustainable Future: Schools and Community," available from the American Architectural Foundation in early 2009.