By William C.  Shelton

(The opinions and views expressed in the commentaries of The Somerville News belong solely to the authors of those commentaries and do not reflect the views or opinions of The Somerville News, its staff or publishers.)

The migration to Somerville of people who make their living as professionals continues to increase. The city now has more residents per capita with advanced academic degrees than any Massachusetts municipality other than Cambridge.

A majority still follows the pattern of remaining unengaged in community life, leaving when their children reach school age, and selling their homes at prices that only other well-paid professionals can afford. But a growing segment is committed to raising their families here and giving of themselves to their community.

In Old Somerville, there were many different ways by which people got to know each other—extended families, close-knit neighborhoods, churches, unions, fraternal organizations, benevolent associations, political party groups, civic organizations, and others. But many of these institutions that nourished community no longer exist.

So now, newcomers’ engagement with the community most often begins with their kids. They involve themselves in coaching youth sports, creating playgroups, and working to improve schools.

Through these activities, they form relationships with people who have grown up here. And by pursuing shared objectives, they gradually become acquainted with broader Somerville issues, and some begin to participate in the city’s political life.

When Carrie Normand met her husband, he was working in a biotech startup. They thought that their tenure in Somerville would be temporary, but when they got married, they bought a house here.

The neighbors—mostly Somerville natives—were welcoming. As Carrie says, “people looked out for each other.”

Newcomer professionals who don’t leave town when their kids reach school age often enroll them in the Brown School or the Choice Program. Brown has a strong academic reputation and the highest test scores in the city.

The Choice program, located in the Healy School, uses project-based, rather than traditional, teaching methods. It aims to teach critical thinking instead of just imparting knowledge. By most criteria, it achieves academic excellence.

When Carrie and her husband David opted for the Choice program, they discovered that Healy students were segregated into three tracks: a traditional school curriculum, special needs education, and Choice.

Enrollment in the more traditional track was mostly neighborhood kids, including those who live in the Mystic housing projects. Enrollment in the Choice track was mostly newcomer kids. And because their parents had formed a nonprofit organization to raise funds for the Choice program, Choice had access to richer resources.

Carrie felt that this deprived her kids of getting to know peers from diverse backgrounds. With others, she advocated for the unification of the tracks, which the School Committee approved in June 2010.

She subsequently served on the committee that produced the unification plan. Conflicts were common, and the process required participants to look at them through each other’s eyes. In working together, many formed lasting bonds.

Carrie and David have chosen not just to live in Somerville, but to be Somervillians. She says, “we’ll be living here until we ‘re too old to drive.”

Maren and Michael Chiu wanted to live near the Red Line because Michael was an MIT graduate student. Like Carrie and David, they came to love their neighborhood and their neighbors. They decided to put down roots here.

In earlier times, large extended families and vibrant neighborhoods ensured both that kids would learn to interact and to develop language skills from their earliest years, and that moms would not be isolated. The needs remain, even if the institutions don’t.

So Maren volunteered to facilitate playgroups organized by the Somerville Family Network, wherein kids play, converse, learn crafts, sing, and share books together. These groups are also an opportunity for Old Somerville, New Somerville, and immigrant parents to get to know each other.

When winter comes and preschoolers are confined by weather, they can get a little stir crazy, making their caregivers a little crazy as well. Five years ago, Maren and some of her playgroup friends raised funds and rented a gym two mornings per week at the Boys and Girls Club.

She says, “we could have paid $20 per hour for our kids to go to Gymboree, but we’d rather do it in our community, with out own neighbors.” Today, the winter play-space is conducted at the YMCA.

Its organizers have applied some of the funds that they’ve raised to supporting new kids’ programs at the library. These programs are free, and organizers ask for a voluntary $1 contribution from playgroup and winter play-space participants.

Maren’s kids have aged out of these programs, but she continues to participate and recruit other volunteers.

David Zraket has also lived in Somerville since he was in graduate school. He says, “We knew from the get-go that Somerville was where we wanted to raise our kids, and I’ve never been one to stand on the sidelines.”

Indeed, as soon as his older son came of age, David brought him to play T ball. The next year, David signed up for little-league coaching. He feels fortunate that the coach whom he was assigned to assist was Sean Sullivan, a Somerville native. He learned an enormous amount from Sean, both about coaching, and about Somerville.

Sean coaches little league and soccer and is about to start coaching Pop Warner football. He tells me that the motto he applies to all endeavors is “Try hard, learn a lot, and have fun.” A small minority of newcomers forgets that little league coaching is about the kids; they focus too much on winning. But he says that David had the right attitude.

After coaching for a few years, David was elected to the Little League Board of Directors, where he’s learned a lot from what he calls the “tribal knowledge” of guys who grew up here. As with almost any organization, tensions are inevitable. But they don’t tend to fall along old-timer/newcomer lines. David says, “We’re guys. We yell at each other and then we go out for a beer.”

I wanted to tell you about Alec Resnick who, upon graduating from MIT, started Sprout & Co., an innovative educational organization for Somerville kids of all ages. But I’m running out of space, and Sprout is so interesting that it’s worth a column by itself.

Alec, Carrie, Maren, and David are a few of the newcomer professionals who have chosen to give of themselves to our community. Even as we benefit from their contributions, we continue to lose families who comprise the fabric of our community.

Next time, I want to look at whether there’s anything that we can do to keep them here. Until then, try hard, learn a lot, and have fun.