Neighborhood schools engender the idea that schools can be integral community centers with learning facilitated by the personal relationships developed between teachers, administrators, students, and parents. Neighborhood schools have also represented stigmatized segregated spaces, and some African American communities—particularly those communities with high poverty rates, low high school graduation rates, and little opportunity for social mobility—are launching serious efforts to reclaim neighborhood schools. Drawing from print and online media sources related to the closure and re-opening of D. C. Virgo, a racially and economically segregated middle school in an urban, southern community, this study uses conceptual content analysis to examine the competing discourses of neighborhood schools. The authors conclude that public discourse depicted the conversion of Virgo from a stigmatized pit with little hope of stimulating authentic learning to a beloved place of tremendous possibility where students and teachers might resist oppressive structures.
