Editor’s Note: This is the second article in a two-part series featuring the history of the Lisbon schools of the Freeport and Pocket areas.

 With the 1909 opening of the Lower Lisbon School in the Pocket, the area’s students had a much improved learning environment than they had in the converted barn school building.

The Upper Lisbon School is shown in this c. 1890 photograph. / Photo courtesy of PHCS

This new, larger, one-room school was a bona fide school structure, as it included such regular school building features as windows, individual desks and a wood stove.

The new school was constructed near the site of the old barn structure school building, but closer to Riverside Road.

On the exterior of the building, above the doorway, was a sign reading “Lisbon School.”

This sign still exists today and was for many years on display at the Sacramento History Museum in Old Sacramento.

Hundreds of children were educated in the school, because the greater number of children in the Pocket lived on farms in this area.

Among the teachers of the Lower Lisbon School were: Lilly Jones (1909-1912), Mrs. Lombardi (1916), Miss Marianna (1916), Hattie Williams (1918), Gladys Lynch (1919-1920), Mabel Wakefield (1921-about 1928), Emma James (1929), Mrs. Wilson and Mrs. Jorgensen.

Because moisture from the canal created a health and safety issue at the Lower Lisbon School, the school was condemned and closed in 1928. This structure was demolished in the early to mid-1940s.

Following the closure of the Lower Lisbon School, the school’s children were transferred to an existing Japanese school, which was located on the Frank and Jack Lewis ranch in the central Pocket area.

Schoolchildren gather in front of the Upper Lisbon School in 1929. / Photo courtesy of PHCS

The school building belonged to the Japanese community and served as a Japanese language school.

This Lower Lisbon School site was rented on a monthly basis from the Japanese.

The two schools were able to coexist in this structure since the Japanese school was only in operation on Saturdays and Sundays.

The Lower Lisbon School held its classes in the Japanese school building until 1945, when it merged with the Sutter School District – later the Sutter Union School District.

Upper Lisbon School 

As previously mentioned, the Lower Lisbon School was not the only Lisbon School in the Pocket area.

Two decades prior the construction of the Lower Lisbon School, the one-room Upper Lisbon School was constructed on the Nevis ranch, where Park Riviera Way joins Riverside Boulevard, just south of where Elks Lodge, No. 6 sits today.

The school was built due to the fact that there was no school between Pimentel’s Ingleside Café (presently The Trap bar) at today’s 43rd Avenue and Riverside Boulevard and the bend on Pocket Road, about a quarter of a mile past today’s Portuguese Hall.

Mrs. Hoschner stands with her students in front of the Upper Lisbon School in this 1928 photograph. / Photo courtesy of PHCS

Providing instruction at the Upper Lisbon School were its teachers: Mrs. Hoschner (1928), Emma James (1931-1934), Mildred Fernandez (1934-1940), Dorothy Sweeney, Inez Applegate, Julia McMahon, Brizady Giannoni, Mrs. Lombardi, Eleanor Harkness and Mrs. Seamore.

Dolores Greenslate, who serves as the Pocket historian of the Portuguese Historical and Cultural Society, remembers attending catechism classes at the Upper Lisbon School in 1929.

“I attended the catechism classes necessary for first communion in the Upper Lisbon School in the St. Mary Church (St. Maria Church), next to the Portuguese Hall,” Greenslate said. “My mother bought me a beautiful white dress and also a little crown for my first communion. I felt like a little bride. The doorway to the school was up what I though was steep stairs and I had never been in such a big schoolroom.”

Both the Upper and Lower Lisbon schools closed at the same time in 1945 to merge with the Sutter School District.

Shortly after its closure, the Upper Lisbon School building was purchased by the local Portuguese lodge and relocated behind the St. Mary Catholic Church, next to the Portuguese Hall, to be used as a clubhouse and meeting place for religious classes.

The old school building was demolished, along with the old Portuguese Hall, in 1967.

Lisbon Elementary School at 7555 South Land Park Drive is shown in this 1989 photograph. The school was closed last year. / Photo courtesy of PHCS

When the Portuguese Historical and Cultural Society was formed in 1979, one of its early efforts was to have the next elementary school built in the Pocket area be named Lisbon School, as a memorial to the area’s Portuguese pioneers.

On Oct. 28, 1989, the society’s wish was granted with the gala dedication ceremony of Lisbon Elementary School at 7555 South Land Park Drive.

With the decline of families with small children in the area, however, the school was forced to close last year and the school’s children were transferred to other elementary schools in the surrounding areas. Today, the facility serves children of the Hmong community as the Yav Pem Suab Academy, a public charter school.

Greenslate said that unfortunately for the legacy of Portuguese in the Pocket area, the probability of having another Lisbon School in the area does not seem promising.

“The Portuguese culture and presence is fading in this area, where Portuguese pioneers chose to make their homes (and livings) in farming and dairying,” Greenslate said. “It doesn’t seem like there will ever be another Lisbon School (in the Pocket area). The only solace we have is in observing street names and visiting our Portuguese community park and the present Portuguese Hall and St. Mary Church.”

In 2005, Vince Xiong was confronted with an alarming statistic from concerned parents: children of Hmong descent were graduating from college at a lower rate than they were dropping out of high school. Instead of simply dismissing the statistics, Xiong and associates set out to find out why. Five years later, a school is in place that hopes to flip those statistics around.

School breaks are shorter and school days are longer at Yav Pem Suab Academy. / Valley Community Newspapers, Danny Kam

Xiong, now the principal of the Yav Pem Suab Academy charter school in Sacramento, detailed some of the concerns raised by parents over the last few years. The main barrier to learning for the children was the long summer break, according to Xiong.

“The kids would spend the year learning, then they would have almost three months off at home and forget a lot of what they learned,” Xiong said. “The first two and a half months of the following year was spent re-teaching what they studied the year before.”

The initial reasoning for such a long break was for farmers who needed their children home during the summer months to help with the harvest. With that tradition all but out the window, the school went ahead and made a change.

The academy, which opened Monday, has remedied the problem by making schooldays longer and the summer break shorter. The children attend classes from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Thursday. Kindergarten runs from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. The summer break has been shortened from three months down to one month. In addition to the regular curriculum of English, math, science and social studies, students will take part in a class called Hmong language development.

The school has a large Hmong enrollment, and the goal is to make all children, not just Hmong, competent in speaking, reading and writing the l

Kindergartener William Vang pays close attention to his teacher, Chue Lo, at the Yav Pem Suab Academy. Students at the charter school will study the Hmong language, in addition to their studies in English, math, science and social studies. / Valley Community Newspapers photo, Danny Kam

anguage. The Hmong community, which was largely skeptical that such a program would actually be installed, has been calling up the school to ask about enrollment to the point that some grades are filled to capacity.

“We have a year one capacity of 300 students,” Xiong said. “Next year we will have a capacity of 360 and our goal is to have 420 students in year three.”

The Hmong language is especially difficult to learn for people who have never heard nor spoken the language, said Xiong.

“It’s difficult to learn because it is a tonal language,” he said. “There are eight different tones that they need to learn and listen for.” Because it is a tonal language, saying the correct sounds in a different tone can mean something entirely different.

Another way in which the school plans to make learning easier for its students is by letting them touch, taste, hear, smell and see what they are going to be learning about in the form of frequent field trips.

“Most of the Hmong students are descendants of Laos and Thailand,” Xiong said. “They can learn in their vocabulary books how to say apple, but in Laos there is no such thing as an apple. They don’t know what it is, what it tastes like, what it smells like.”

Dream. Believe. Inspire. Achieve. Principal Vince Xiong hard at work in the office that was only a dream not too long ago. Xiong and leaders of the Hmong community worked for five years to establish the Yav Pem Suab Academy. / Valley Community Newspapers photo, Danny Kam

To remedy this situation, the kindergarten class will take a trip to Apple Hill this year prior to their unit on plants. They will also visit a number of flower farms. When they start their unit on ‘my community,’ the class will travel to the local library, a fire station and a police station.

All grade levels will take part in field trips of their own. First graders will travel to the train museum and the Sacramento Zoo; second graders will visit places with butterflies and will dig for fossils at another site; third grade will visit a strawberry farm in Vacaville, the Exploratorium in San Francisco and the ocean in Bodega Bay; fourth grade plans to go on airplane rides to Lake Tahoe, Indian reservations and the Monterey Bay Aquarium; Xiong didn’t have the fifth grade trip schedule at hand during the interview, but the sixth graders will visit the UC Davis agricultural department and the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum in San Jose.

With the longer schooldays, shorter summer, language development and hands-on field trips, the school is looking to make sure the information given to students is easy to retain. And if early trends are any indication, filling up to 420 students in year three should be no problem at all.

The Yav Pem Suab Academy is located at 7555 South Land Park Drive at Lisbon Elementary School. The school is free of charge and those wanting more information about enrollment can call the school at (916) 433-5057.

benn@valcomnews.com