Howard C. Reiche Community School

The Howard C. Reiche Community School is a K–5 elementary school in the West End of Portland, Maine. Currently there is no principal.The school building was constructed in the 1970s. Buildings in a four-block area were demolished to make room for the school, which was built according to an open-plan design. The two-story building, occupying, was designed for 371 students. It was designed by Portland architect Wilbur R. Ingalls, Jr., the school was the main elementary school for English as an additional language (ESL) students in the Portland Public Schools. ESL instruction began at Reiche in 1981 in response to an influx of Asian immigrants in the school's neighborhood after Portland's designation in 1980 as a refugee resettlement city. there were 515 students in the school, of whom 60 percent were from ethnic or linguistic minority groups and of whom 88 percent received free or reduced-price lunches. The students spoke 27 different languages other than English in their homes, including Arabic, Spanish, Somali, Khmer, Vietnamese, Serbo-Croatian, and Acholi.