The year in review..
This past year at Love City we were focused on expanding and deepening our initiatives to develop community. We finished the 2021 - 2022 school year in May at Mighty Oak Academy and took all that we had learned to expand our staff to be able to meet the needs of not only our students but also our educators. Over the summer in the midst of summer camps and parties on the porch, we hired additional teachers, along with an instructional coach, a behavior interventionist, a chef nutritionist, and Nicole Essex, a long time member of the Love City Family left her job of 28 years with Norton Health Care and come on full time as our Head of School.
This elevation in our administrative team allowed us to better handle the doubling of our student population over the summer. We went from 40 students in the 2021 - 2022 school year to 85 students in the 2022 - 2023 school year. Our educators came back in mid July for three weeks of training to help prepare them for the school year. Our students started back in August and began the year with a full month of social emotional learning before we dove into academics in September. At the beginning of December we added an Athletic Director to help bring the added benefits of sports to the school.
While this year was heavily focused on building up Mighty Oak Academy, we continued with all other Love City programs. Summer camps came back for the 5th year, and party on the porch flourished over the summer. while we continued the Fall festival, Thanksgiving dinner and School Christmas program.
Even though we had a setback with the zoning issue at Porkland forcing us to return to just a Friday fish fry the community continued to come out strong every Friday making the Friday only event a continued strong revenue driver for supporting Love City.
Closing out the school year in the spring semester 2022, we had the dental clinic Big Smiles visit the school for the first time, we started our partnership with Heuser Hearing screening our students for speech and hearing, and finishing out a fun day celebrating the derby in the gym
Head of School Nicole working with the administrative team to plan out training for the teachers starting in July. New Instructional Coach Shayla Branch checking in a family for their enrollment assessment interview over the summer. Our school staff at an all day retreat before school started in August at the Earth and Spirit Center in the Highlands
Summer camp field trip to the Science Center. Art Camp displaying their crafts, campers learning skills at boxing camp
The Mighty Makers after school club working on a project, Preschoolers out with the rest of the school cleaning the neighborhood on one of our community Fridays.
Thanksgiving community dinner with appetizers and desserts made by Mighty Oak students. Lou City soccer clinic and the first intramural basketball practice on the last week of the semester at Mighty Oak Academy.
We're approaching the end of the year!
Over the past seven years we at Love City have been privileged to partner with many people to advance the development of community in the Portland neighborhood. We want to thank you for your past support and invite you to take another look and see all the great things that have been happening!
While the pandemic took its toll on many community organizations, we are proud of the way our community rallied together to love one another. The world may have changed after 2020 but love remained, and we got to witness the full display of neighbors loving neighbors. As we look forward to the next year we wanted to reach out and reconnect! We would love for you to get even more involved in Love City this coming year. Whether it’s through time, talent or treasure community is happening and there has never been a better time to jump in!
Next year we will continue to grow Mighty Oak Academy and grow sustainability for both Love City and our neighbors. Our main focus will be to add Mighty Oak Academy Preschool. This will be a key part of the education pillar at Love City building up students and families in the neighborhood and also providing vital sustainability for all of Love City’s initiatives. We are always looking for volunteers to help with everything from tutoring, construction, education or business development, we would love to see you!
If you are considering making a year-end donation, please consider donating to Love City. As we seek to build sustainability, we need to raise some capital to get those initiatives off the ground. In addition to construction costs, we will need to hire staff to shepherd the preschool through the licensing and opening process prior to taking in any revenue. We also have continued operations at Mighty Oak Academy to support while the revenue generator of the preschool gets up and running.
Please click the button below to see ways that you can partner with us to cover these start up and operational costs while we continue to seek creative ways to bring sustainability to our efforts.
We wish you a joyful holiday season !
If you are interested in volunteering or to find out more information about supplies needed please email: info@lovecityinc.org or call (502) 272-078.