The death of a neighborhood: Inside Public School #8

Unfortunately, the story of Public School No. 8 represents a lack of understanding the critical role neighborhood schools have on the overall health of the communities they serve. The quickest way to drive an economic nail in the coffin of a distressed community is to sever its connectivity to adjacent neighborhoods, while also permanently closing its schools. Thus, with no public school and completely surrounded by expressways and railroad lines, Phoenix is in a dire situation.

According to the US Census Bureau between 2000 and 2010, the neighborhood’s population declined 15.2% while its number of vacant residential units increased 19.7%. These are numbers that should be considered unacceptable in a Sunbelt city that grew 11.7% over the same period of time.

Public schools are supposed to be engines of educational and economic opportunity. Public School No. 8 was initially converted into the James Allen Axson Montessori to attract more students and economically sufficient families to neighborhoods like Phoenix. Now located in suburbia, less than 12% poor students are enrolled in its programs. They say a child’s course in life should not be determined by the zip code they’re born and raised in. Unfortunately, in many inner city neighborhoods like Phoenix, the opposite continues to take place today.

So as the historic Public School No. 8 building and the surrounding neighborhood continues to decline, it should be no surprise that a recent Jacksonville Public Education Fund (JPEF) white paper suggests that the city’s poor African-American students are doubly segregated and doubly disadvantaged.

Article courtesy of Ennis Davis, AICP. Contact Ennis at edavis@moderncities.com. Photographs courtesy of Bullet at Abandoned Florida

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