When Elizabeth Larson went to Outdoor School as a sixth grader, she hated it.

But Larson, now a junior, has been back three times since then.

“I had a horrible experience as a sixth grader,” she recalled. “I cried the first night. One of my leaders was really mean, and I wanted to make sure that no other kid had to cry on their first night.”

Every fall and spring session, over 100 Lincoln students join other high school Student Leaders from around the county to spend a week each at an Outdoor School site. There, they serve sixth graders as teachers and counselors.

But after 40 years and over a quarter million sixth-grade students, the program is in danger of being cut for Portland students due to the district’s continuing budget problems.

It’s not the first time budget cuts have threatened Outdoor School. The program costs the district about $1 million per school year, and is almost always listed among the first programs to cut. Even after extensive fundraising, sixth graders who were not on free or reduced lunch programs paid $100 to participate this year. In ’06-’07, that might not be enough to keep it running.

“I know that Outdoor School may seem like something that’s easy to cut, but to me it is a vital item in our budget that affects me and so many others in a way that regular school cannot,” Larson said.

Junior Marshall Reynolds-Stein agrees. “I think [saying Outdoor School will be cut] is like saying, ‘Oh, by the way, Portland isn’t going to have water next year. Deal with it.’ It’s crazy. It’s something that cannot be sacrificed,” he said.

At Outdoor School, student leaders like Larson and Reynolds-Stein teach about a particular field study – plants, animals, water, or soil – and act as mentors for sixth grade students.

“Outdoor School immerses kids in the environment and what they are learning like no four walls can ever do,” said senior Rob Knight, who has been to Outdoor School six times. “They get a life-long love and appreciation for the outdoors.”

Sophomore Bailey Davidson thinks humans have lost contact with the outdoors. “Nature is so much of a part of our world that I think it is important to spend time learning about it and just being submerged in it,” she said. Davidson believes the outdoor setting helps students learn. “One sixth grader my week said that he learned more in one week at Outdoor School than he had in all of fifth grade,” she said.

Reynolds-Stein agrees that the program encourages learning in a different, more effective way. “It’s not just a bunch of kids running around skipping school for a week,” Reynolds-Stein said. “It’s kids making bonds [and] having friendships. It inspires kids who may have hated learning to finish high school, go to college and do meaningful things with their lives. It’s the perfect combination of school and pure love.”

Davidson loves the changes she sees students make within the week. “My favorite thing is to see the sixth graders who [were] so reluctant to come to Outdoor School in the first place, sad [at the end of the week] that they had to leave it so soon,” she said.

Larson also recognizes the changes that Outdoor School inspires in students.

“In one short week I have seen so many sixth graders do things they said they’d never do that first Sunday night,” she said. “To see them go outside of their bubble and thrive in such a unique environment is amazing for me to see, and that is what keeps me going back.”

That’s also why she says she couldn’t bear to see it cut from the budget. “I think the people that decide where our budget goes should come out to Outdoor School and see what a huge difference it makes in the lives of sixth graders and high schoolers,” Larson said.