Closing schools is like “taking away part of my body”: the impact of gentrification on neighborhood, public schools in inner Northeast Portland

Abstract

This “politically engaged educational ethnography” explores the role that gentrification played in the disinvestment of inner Northeast Portland neighborhood schools (Lipman, 2009, 216). Inner Northeast Portland, Oregon, USA, a predominately African American neighborhood, began gentrifying in the mid-1990s. As investment flooded into the neighborhood, its schools paradoxically declined, losing students and resources. As longtime resident families were displaced from gentrification pressures, newer white, middle-class residents utilized the school choice program to opt-out of sending their kids to the neighborhood schools. Facing declining community support, inner Northeast schools were targeted for closure or redesign. Despite these challenges, the longtime resident community was able to successfully resist some of the district’s attempts to shutter or remake schools, and Jefferson High School now stands as a rare example of how redevelopment can benefit all residents if the needs of longtime residents are put first.