Two years ago, Hurt Park Elementary School was like a house caught in a mudslide.

Enrollment was dropping, test scores were abysmal and leaks had sprung in the roof. Families were abandoning the neighborhood and its increasingly dilapidated rental housing, open-air drug markets and prostitution.

Teachers feared their school would be shut down, its students bused to better-performing schools and the building shuttered.

It was the smallest, poorest and one of the lowest-scoring schools in Roanoke. Slowly, inexorably, it seemed destined to fade.

But that's not what happened.

Over the course of the year, Hurt Park shared its sense of desperation with its students.

"We told them if they didn't succeed, there was a possibility the school would not be there," said Carlton Bell, who has served as principal since 2005.

Students listened. The pass rate on English and mathematics Standards of Learning tests last spring rose by 25 and 15 percentage points respectively, catching everybody by surprise. The school is now fully accredited for the first time in its history.

To get there, teachers first had to bond with their students, get to know their strengths and weaknesses and make them believe in their own potential. Now, the school has caught the attention of community activists who hope its success can be a spark for turning around the depressed neighborhood a dozen blocks west of downtown.

Gaining buy-in

In the fall of 2006, teachers realized that most of the discipline problems came from a small number of students and that those students tended to do poorly on tests.

Teachers volunteered to mentor one another's students. The idea, developed by national consultant Ruby Payne, was to give students somebody outside their classroom they could relate to, somebody they didn't want to let down.

"Some of the kids who were on that list when we looked at the data for this year passed all their SOLs," said Michelle Hamilton-Moore, the school's counselor.

The school has students apply for jobs inside the school, such as hall patrol or student assistants. Teachers also give points for good behavior, dubbed "Husky Bucks," which students can redeem for school supplies or small toys. And the school hosts regular volunteers and offers several after-school programs.

All of this gives students a sense of pride, Hamilton-Moore said, while teaching them to interact socially with others. It helps them settle down and makes class time more productive.

"We work nonstop until we go outside at the end of the day," said Nashawn Wilson, a fifth-grader.

The school serves a challenging population. All but seven or eight students a year take part in a free lunch program for poor families. Teachers say many of their students come from single-parent households, struggling to make ends meet. A few of the parents have substance-abuse problems. Others are incarcerated.

"Of course they bring that to the classroom," said Karen Bolton, a fourth-grade teacher. "They come in angry. They don't know how to manage that anger. We have to manage that stuff."

Families move in and out of the neighborhood regularly, looking for cheaper rent or better housing. It's not uncommon for students to leave the school midway through the year, disrupting their education.

On top of that, the federal No Child Left Behind Act allows families to transfer out of failing schools.

"Most of them can't give a valid reason why they don't want their child to come to Hurt Park. It's the name Hurt Park and the neighborhood," Bell said.

Eric Brady | The Roanoke Times

Fifth-grade teacher Sheila Drobot works with Lakerra Johnson during a writing assignment earlier this month at Hurt Park Elementary School.

There are other hurdles.

Last year, Roanoke School Board members suggested closing or consolidating one of the city's 21 elementary schools in response to lower enrollments citywide and aging buildings. At Hurt Park, years of failure, a leaking roof and a sharp drop in student enrollment stoked rumors that the school was about to close.

Enrollment, which stood at 358 in 1999, dipped to 185 in September, a 48 percent decline.

The school board has so far not named any schools targeted for closing or consolidation, but that has done nothing to reassure teachers.

"Since I've been in the system, it's been chaos," said Hamilton-Moore, who is in her fourth year at Hurt Park. "Just that fear of not passing the SOLs and fear of it being closed."

Small class sizes praised

Despite the school's reputation, parents give Hurt Park high marks.

"Our kids get more one on one with only having 12 or 13 or 15 kids to a classroom," said Lira Moore, the mother of a fifth-grader at the school and an active member in the school's fledgling PTA.

Not only are the classes small, but they also tend to have more than one adult in them. Besides the classroom teacher, there may also be a teaching assistant, a special education assistant or a day treatment counselor.

In one classroom, fifth-grade teacher Sheila Drobot is leading 13 children in a writing exercise. Students are writing a story about their experience losing a tooth. For some reason, Drobot has put on an oversized white glove.

"What's the first paragraph supposed to do?" she asks.

"Grab the reader's attention," respond several students in unison. Drobot playfully grabs a couple of them with the glove.

"What are some good ways to grab the reader's attention?"

"Wiggle, wiggle?" suggests Kalik Calloway, an impish 10-year-old in the front row.

Drobot beams.

"Using sensory words are really going to help your reader."

Besides Drobot, there are three other adults in the room. They flit from student to student, helping each one for a couple of minutes before moving on. Teachers don't hesitate to pat students on the back and to praise them. There's a low hum in the room from the murmuring voices.

Spending time with a student, even if it's only two minutes, lets that student know he or she is cared for, Hamilton-Moore said. And it lets teachers know early on who is in danger of falling behind.

"That two minutes may save him," she said.

Neighborhood ripples

Jimmy Cook is perhaps not the kind of person one would expect to pay close attention to the record of an elementary school. But Cook, a 56-year-old professional musician with no children, took note this fall when test scores showed Hurt Park's success.

Cook grew up in the neighborhood, on the 1800 block of Salem Avenue Southwest and attended Hurt Park. Even though he moved to the Mud Lick area a couple of years ago, he remains active in Hurt Park, serving on the neighborhood association.

Once home to middle-class black families who worked for the Norfolk and Western Railway, the neighborhood suffered when N&W merged with Southern Railway and moved its headquarters to Norfolk in 1982. Families moved, and landlords bought the turn-of-the-century homes with their tidy lawns and carved them into rental units.

"I can't say landlords. Actually they're slumlords, because they don't care about the property and they don't care who they put in," said Peggy Parker, 64, who has lived in the neighborhood for 35 years.

Today, Hurt Park is a neighborhood of peeling paint and sagging porches. The wind kicks up potato chip bags and losing lottery tickets.

But a revival may be in the works.

City officials are working on a plan to get federal money to help homeowners fix up their derelict properties rather than tearing them down.

This summer, the Roanoke Redevelopment and Housing Authority tore down a 105-unit public housing complex, which longtime residents had been wary of, saying it attracted drugs and prostitution. In its place, the agency will break ground in two to three months on a greener, more open development of 40 low-income housing units, said Roger Vest, the agency's vice president of real estate development.

The housing authority is also investing in other neighborhood houses with the goal of blending low-income housing with market-rate housing.

"The first question that's generally asked is what school would they attend," Vest said.

To Vest, the school is the "nucleus"; to Cook it's an "icon," a "landmark."

Its success could be the first step toward the neighborhood's rebirth, Cook said. He envisions grocery stores, restaurants and carriage rides ferrying tourists down Patterson Avenue, a wide boulevard flanked by once-stately mansions.

If the school hadn't done well, "it would be a hindrance" to that vision, he said.

And if the school were to close, "it would do great damage to the morale of the neighborhood."

With the neighborhood's hopes pinned on its students, the school must now maintain its test scores. And there's still no guarantee that the school board won't suggest closing the school later this year.

But teachers say they try to push those thoughts to the back of their minds when they're in the classroom.

Spend some time at the school and it will start to feel cloistered. What happens outside stays outside. Inside, teachers reach for the small victories, saving children two minutes at a time.