Oliver P. Lent School is an elementary school in the Portland School district. There is a lot of history and a lot of promise held at this little school.

Growing from a one-room, log schoolhouse to the brick building it is today Oliver P. Lent School has had a long, varied, and not always easy history. Lent School is located on a bluff overlooking I-205 on 97th Avenue and Steele Street. The name was taken from the founder of the community in which the school is located-Oliver P. Lent-and does not take the name of the Lents community.

County School, as Oliver P. Lent School was originally called, was founded in 1861 at the current location of 97th Avenue and Steele Street on a donation land claim. The original building was a 14' x 14' one-room, log building. There were four children who attended the school. One of whom was William Kern's son. Kern lobbied for the school because he felt it was unsafe for his son to walk through the fir forest, which had been decimated to skeletons by fire in the previous years.

As time progressed, the school became crowded, necessitating a schoolhouse. In 1868, Oliver P. Lent donated land opposite his homestead for the construction of a new school near current day S. E. Foster Road and 100th Avenue. The building was still only one room; although it was large it still was not adequate. There were only four families sending their children to the school-the Lent, Campbell, Johnson, and Gate children. It should be noted the Lent family alone had twelve children. The continuing population boom, of children coming of age as well as incoming population, was beginning to overcrowd the school again and the community decided that a new, more permanent school was necessary.

In 1878, a new school was built, but the exact location is now in dispute. It is thought that to have stood in the same location as the previous school. The new school had two stories-the lower story for classrooms and the upper for community events. This school lasted for twenty-four years; but in 1902, it burned down.

At Southeast 92nd and Harold Avenue, a new school was built. Although the new school was more modern, it lacked the space to accommodate future growth. The school had to be rebuilt.

In 1910, County School moved into a modern three-story, stone building which some say was magnificent to look at. Since the school was built on the same sight as the previous school, no new land was purchased. Community School was able to accommodate the growth and change in Lents for forty years, but was shut down because of age and population growth.

In 1950, the current school was built at 97th and Steele. At this time, the name changed to Oliver P. Lent School after the person who originally donated land for the second school and founded the neighborhood.

Oliver P. Lent School is not without its controversy. In 1906 A. F. Herschner, a very capable administrator, was elected to the principal's office of the school. The committee that elected him ignored a petition signed by 215 persons of the community wanting to retain the original principal H. A. Darnall. This same committee declined to listen to the same people on the issue of teachers. The directors fired or ignored certain teachers the public liked, while they kept teachers which the public had registered complaints against. Unfortunately, the school committee's decisions stood, and the school went on as normal.

The school no longer has issues like the previous one facing it. However, there are more serious issues which supplant the seemingly huge issues of past decades. Drugs, gangs, and intolerance run rampant in schools today all the way down to the elementary school level. Oliver P. Lent School seems to have avoided many of these pitfalls thus far. The principal, Paul Steger, has kept up-to-date on the issues facing the school and has made preemptive strikes against them.

Today, Lent Elementary School is a diverse society running within a diverse neighborhood. There has been an influx of immigrants into the area-Hispanic, Russian, Polish, Czechoslovakian, Asian, and others -so the school has put together plans for helping these parents. An example is the Spanish Parent nights, which are conducted completely in Spanish. These nights help Spanish-speaking parents understand what their children are learning in school and how to help in the learning process.

Continuing their dedication to diversity in the school environment, Lent School recently began an active English as a Second Language (ESL) program. This program allows students to receive a certain amount of help with their schoolwork and be taught in their native languages. This program also has helped to quell any confrontations that might occur between students of different ethnic backgrounds.

Oliver P. Lent School is not only dedicated to its students, but also to the community as a whole. It has a play time for children (newborn­three years) one morning every week. In addition, it has a Headstart program which services all of outer southeast Portland.

The school also has seen numerous benefits to the neighborhood as a whole since their attempts to improve have been noticed by neighborhood organizations. The school has attempted to help beautify the area. Recently, the school planted a number of trees at one end of the playground. Though many were damaged by the storms in the previous year, they were graciously replaced by Portland General Electric. There also have been numerous new low-income housing units built near the school.

All of these projects have helped the school to succeed in one of its primary future goals-to make the school a central part of the neighborhood. Despite all of these valiant efforts by both the school and the community, the school is not impervious to problems suffered by other public schools throughout the state. A case in point is Ballot Measure 50.

Ballot Measure 50, which was passed in 1994, was meant to equalize the money to every school. However, this had a serious impact on many schools including Lent Elementary. Dr. Paul Steger states, "Education is the most complex action a human takes [and] each person is different and each person has had different experiencest his is where expense comes into play."

What is being said is that each person comes to the school with different strengths and weaknesses. Steger also pointed out that while these differences are a great source of strength in the school, they are what makes the utopian idea of equality (in terms of money for each student) an impossibility. The problem is compounded by the media. The sound bytes the media quotes oversimplify the problems facing schools and have hurt the community support so sought after by Paul Steger.

The future of Oliver P. Lent School is not a bleak one, despite the cutbacks and difficulties. The school has employed numerous unconventional teaching techniques to keep the students interested, such as teaching physics and mathematics with Legos, giving homework help classes for parents to give parallelism in thoughts of the teachers and parents, maintaining a chess club which competes against other elementary schools in the area, and allowing of parents to check out books from the library to promote family reading times.

Currently the school is being supported monetarily primarily by the state. However, the state funding does not bring enough money into the school to continue to improve and meet its every day expenses, so the few volunteers who help free up enough money to make a large difference. The music program is sponsored, organized, and run by a retired music teacher and a member of the Experience Corps. The school supports many activities throughout the year to raise money and equalize the money cut from the budget, the largest of which is the Oliver P. Lent carnival where booths charge money for different "services" in order to raise money for the school.

One of the long term goals is to have the support from the community which is present in other areas of the city. Volunteers make running the school possible; and if there were more volunteers more help and money for the education of the students would be available. The school's hope is that in the future most of the support comes from the community which it serves.

Oliver P. Lent Elementary School, its staff, and volunteers are a resouce and cohesive unit within the Lents neighborhood. With the staff, school activities, and school programs, the residents of Lents are fortunate to have a school that tries-sometimes with great difficulty- to meet the needs of the community.

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