The "School With No Name" will be christened soon.
The school inside the Salt Lake Community Shelter and Resource Center has for 10 years been known by what it didn't have: a name.No more. Tuesday night, the Salt Lake City School Board approved naming the school after Marilyn Treshow, its first full-time teacher who died unexpectedly in May. She was 49.
"I'm really glad, not only for me, but for the kids. I think it's the right thing to do," Treshow's husband, Richard Keene, said of the school's new name. "Active compassion: that was really her life. She worked hard at it."
Keene recently retired as an evaluation and assessment specialist for the Utah State Office of Education. Treshow also worked there as a homeless children specialist.
Treshow's name on the school is aimed at instilling in students a sense of belonging, said Maun Alston, director of the Salt Lake Community Shelter and Resource Center.
"We send our children out into the community as much as we can and, you know what kids say to each other, `Where do you live? Where do you go to school?' Besides being a nice way to honor the memory of Marilyn Treshow, this will help the children take pride in the school," Alston said.
The school board enthusiastically approved the new name.
"This is a wonderful way to honor Marilyn Treshow in all she's done for the school," said board president Karen Derrick. "This will provide the children of the school with a feeling that they do belong."
Marilyn Treshow Elementary School is to be dedicated in October, Alston said.
Treshow was a tireless believer in the shelter school and the children it educated. The "School With No Name" was the first of its kind in the country.
The school was pioneered by the Salt Lake School District in the mid-1980s under federal mandate that all homeless children receive an education. It began in a trailer under the 400 South viaduct. When the new homeless shelter was built in 1988, Alston said, it was Treshow who pushed for the school to be within the facility.
Those humble beginnings have grown. The school, which during one year served 140 homeless children, was featured in 1987 on the the "Today" show on NBC. Treshow's efforts also were chronicled in the Feb. 1, 1988, issue of People magazine.
Now, "Nobody Don't Love Nobody," the story of the school written by teacher Stacey Bess, may be made into a movie, and a copy was sent to every teacher in America by an Ohio philanthropist.
Treshow was also a co-founder of the Homeless Children's Foundation, which provides child care for homeless children.