(Photo: Courtesy of SouthLake Church)
Pastor Kip Jacob of SouthLake Church in West Linn, Oregon.
Thanks to the efforts of one Oregon suburban church, a public school in inner-city Portland that was once on a short list to be shut down due to frequent gang violence and had a reputation of being one of the most underperforming schools in the state, has been transformed and is now thriving at its highest academic level in years.
“Roosevelt High School was well known as the most under-resourced and failing school in the state. It had become a metaphor for failure, with a capital ‘F,”‘ pastor Kip Jacob of SouthLake Church in West Linn told The Christian Post.
Although Roosevelt High School in north Portland and its surrounding neighborhood used to be considered relatively safe and family friendly, all of that changed in the late-1980s when gang members from Los Angeles traveled north looking for a new stronghold to claim.
As members of the Bloods and Crips gangs settled in Portland, most of them found their new home in the Roosevelt neighborhood. Subsequently, the neighborhood has declined over the years to become a depressing gangland, notorious for stabbings, murders, drugs, teenage pregnancies and poverty, while Roosevelt High School plummeted to become one of the biggest academic failures in the state.
While administrators struggled to get parents and the community to take an interest in the students’ academic success, teachers were having a difficult time doing their jobs because there were so many external and societal factors keeping the students from focusing on their education.
Fortunately for all involved, members of SouthLake Church took it upon themselves to partner with the school to help change the campus’ culture by providing for the impoverished students and showing them that people do actually care about their lives.
The partnership between SouthLake Church and Roosevelt started in June 2008, when faculty invited members of the church, which is located in a suburb about a 30 minutes outside of the city, to participate in a campus clean-up day.
“When the opportunity for that first work day came, people rallied and communicated to the kids that they are really worth it,” Jacob told CP. “That is one of the things that has been so exciting for us to see is that it has led to a renaissance of the school and the community.”
Jacob commented that he didn’t expect more than a couple hundred people to show up for the clean-up day, but was surprised to see that over 1,500 of the church’s 2,000 congregants showed up with their own tools, paintbrushes and wheelbarrows to help make the school beautiful again.
Due to the success of the clean-up day, the school’s faculty continued to invite SouthLake back to help them tackle other pressing needs.
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SOURCE: The Christian Post
Samuel Smith
