The systematization of the educational experience of the Institute Cerro del Sur ICES and its institutional educational project "School-Community" is an approach to its origins and the context in which it began its work in the early 1980s. The intention of developing a popular education proposal within the figure of a formal educational center has always been a pedagogical debate. There are those who consider it to be a deep contradiction, since popular education was born as a counter-proposal to the traditional school, since its intentions and dynamics are different. In this way, during the experience, tensions have been produced, not only within the proposal but also in the project environments and in some theoretical analyzes that have taken care of looking at our project. For us it has been a challenge to open the school not only physically, but also from the different social, political, economic and cultural dynamics that affect the life of the school and outside of it. The present systematization exposes some elements that generated strong tensions within the project and with local and district authorities; We assume these tensions as part of the contradictions inherent to what they question, denounce and propose in the face of their work as a political and pedagogical action. On the other hand, it is a simple tribute to the memory of its founders: Father Mario Peresson and Evaristo Bernate Castellanos, popular educators who gave their whole lives because education was liberating and emancipatory.