At a crossroads, teachers create new school

After Crossroads school closes, new Hera Community School begins

By Ellen Spitaleri

The Oregon City News, Jul 30, 2008, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (1 Reader comment)

Ellen Spitaleri / Clackamas Review

From left, Anna Meyrick, Carol Hohman and Carol Whitten inside the Oregon City house that will be the home of the newly formed Hera Community School.

It was a bad-news, good-news situation for a group of parents, students and staff, when they learned that Joey Zarosinski had decided to close the Crossroads Alternative School in Oregon City.

When she heard about the closure, Kelly Bissett said, “It was really upsetting. My son Shane will be a junior next year ... I had no idea where he was going to go.”

The good news is that after parents and students contacted the Oregon City School District, the Hera Community School will open this fall.

The Crossroads School was a non-profit alternative school, serving grades seven through 12 – students had to be referred by school counselors.

The closure left about 16 students without a place to go.

Anna Meyrick, the art teacher at Crossroads who had been there for 10 years, is the driving force behind the opening of the new school.

When she learned that Zarosinski was retiring, she was worried about her own job prospects, but more than that, she was worried about what would happen to the students.

So she made an appointment with Roger Rada, the Oregon City School District superintendent, to talk about options.

“In the meantime, parents were calling the superintendent telling him there is no place for their children to go, and some of them have severe problems,” Meyrick said.

Even former students expressed concern about the school closure.

“I had attended Crossroads for three years and [students and staff were] like my family to me. I didn’t want them to get split up and go to different schools,” said Ashley Osborn, a June graduate from the school.

The process begins

By the time Meyrick met with Rada, he told her the district was already looking at alternatives, and said if she could come up with a non-profit organization, the district would support her efforts to start a new school.

Meyrick already had a non-profit called Hera International Community, and Oregon City administrators helped her find the paperwork to file an order to get a provisional education license for three years; she sent the paperwork in and is now forming a board of directors.

She and the other two staff members, administrative assistant Carol Hohman and English and social studies teacher Carol Whitten, are anticipating that the school will open in September.

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