Each autumn, the return to school asks children to cross a threshold between the known and the unknown, and the communities that receive them most wisely are those that understand this passage is as much emotional as it is academic. This year, in Los Angeles, Oklahoma, and Oregon, educators and families found distinct but kindred answers to the same quiet question: how do we make a child feel they belong? Their answers — older students offering steady companionship, neighbors pedaling together through morning streets, a building raised as a public declaration of worth — remind us that the arch