The Rhythms of Central Grade School

This photograph from the 1930s was taken from the corner of Pine and 8th streets. The building now serves Central Elementary School.

By: Lori Hall Steele

The rhythms of Central Grade School have been part of my son's life since his birth-buses rolling through fallen leaves, school bells ringing at 7:51 a.m. on snowy mornings, ambient trumpet noise in spring, all followed by the dead quiet that descends over Traverse City's Central Neighborhood when the children vanish each summer.

As an infant, Jackson listened, enthralled, swaddled in my arms at the back of the school's auditorium, to the strings and sopranos of the practicing Traverse Symphony Orchestra. As a young toddler in footy pajamas, he'd pull himself up to the window to hold guard, announcing "school bus!" for each and every one that parked next door at the red three-story brick building, one of the oldest schools Up North.

Last spring, when he was four, we stood outside and I held out my hand to my son.

"Ready?" I asked.

"Yeppers," he nodded and grabbed my hand. Together with his father, we crossed the street to visit the kindergarten classroom he'll be in this fall-a bright, broad room built in the roaring ‘20s with a fireplace and Pewabic tile, overlooking a courtyard of sunflower teepees and tulips.

He is on the verge of entering this primary-colored world, an empire of ABCs, swingsets and lunchroom trays. It's the same school his grandfather attended; the same solid doors his great-grandfather walked through after a horse-drawn wagon ride to school, covered in a blanket on dark winter mornings.

And though the school has been there for four generations, its future is anything but certain. Traverse City has closed three elementaries in recent years, and will begin studying the fate of others this fall. Central Grade School could be shuttered or it could become a location for students in specialty programs like Montessori or Talented and Gifted, with those youngsters driven in and neighborhood children bused elsewhere.

I worry what either fate would teach my son about life and how we live it.

Today he sees a school that is very much part of our everyday life. The very existence of neighborhood schools says this: Learning is something we don't go away to do-it is so integral to our existence, it's part of the street grid. It is so accessible, we can walk to it.

Historic public structures have their own unspoken language, an iconography that tells the stories of our communities. They reveal what matters to us. Compulsory education is considered one of civilization's greatest achievements, and nothing is quite as emblematic of that as a school building just down the block that's taught generation after generation of neighborhood children, a building that persists despite the troubles and trends of the day. Central Grade School has survived a depression and wars, baby booms and bursts, budget crises, suburban sprawl and schools of choice.

Neighborhood schools also teach our children about community. My son swung on his first swing at the school's playground, and he's played with the same children there year after year, all of them graduating from the dinosaur toddler slide to the yellow spiral slide together. Next year, these children, born in the neighborhood during the same too-hot summer, will officially enter Central as kindergarteners together. They'll join the daily journey down the sidewalk, past the crossing guards, to school.

And like all moms, I'm choked up at the thought of him leaving the sanctity of early childhood and excited about the wonderland of learning ahead of him. And I'm saying a little prayer that there, in school, he learns the right things.

Today's challenges for school administrators are very real. They're also an opportunity to teach our children well. Creative problem solving-the kind of smarts that can't be measured by standardized tests-can balance budgets while keeping neighborhoods together, schools intact and maintaining a community where it's possible to walk where you're going.

The rhythms of Central Grade School have been part of my son's days since his birth, and they've also been part of the Central Neighborhood's life since the first loggers built homes here. As my son zips up his superhero backpack and heads into kindergarten this fall, I want to believe that Central Grade School's sonata of school bells and children's voices will persist another four generations.

Lori Hall Steele is a northern Michigan writer, editor and designer. lori@lorihallsteele.com / www.lorihallsteele.com