Campbell, California Since 1999
City Beat
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The Campbell school district is really all over the map (By Moryt Milo) Families living in Campbell might be found scratching their heads when it comes to where their children go to elementary school. Some send their offspring to schools in the Campbell Union School District (CUSD), while others go to school in the Cambrian or Moreland school districts. Some of the schools are located in Campbell, and some are located in San Jose. But the rationale behind where a 21st-century Campbell child is educated goes back to the mid-1800s, when Campbell was a sprawling community of orchards and ranches. "The boundaries for our school districts were laid out when this was a rural area, before there were cities and cities were incorporated," says Moreland School District Superintendent Jim Ritchie. "So the city you live in and the school you go to don't have any relationship to each other." Many of today's school districts were established along the property boundaries of early valley settlers and haven't changed much in more than 100 years. Moreland School District - the oldest California rural school district still in operation - began operating a school in 1851.Through the efforts of community teacher Samuel Rogers, it became a formally defined district in 1853. Rogers helped the local farmers establish a school district on Zechariah Moreland's property. Moreland offered to the community his home as a school for $250. Today, all the Moreland schools - kindergarten through eighth grade - are located in San Jose, yet Campbell families that live in the neighborhoods along San Tomas Aquino Road and Campbell Avenue send their children to Moreland schools. "Cities grow up and go through annexation and their boundaries change," Ritchie says. "Over time all of that has taken place and it made things topsy-turvy." It also creates a sense of confusion when trying to understand how a Campbell resident ends up in a San Jose school. But people need to think back to the days when communities were centered on families who owed huge spreads of land for ranching and farming. "There were a lot less people back then, and maybe a farmer owned 200 acres of land, and the boundaries were drawn around his property," says Susan Carrig, a senior research analyst with the Santa Clara County Office of Education. "In those days, this farmer or rancher may have been considered a Campbell resident until cities and counties drew their own boundaries." Many of these early farmers were also catalysts in helping to establish various school districts. Lewis Casey donated part of his property on his ranch to help establish the Cambrian School District in 1863. During those early years, there were no elementary schools in Campbell - Campbell did not establish a school district until 1888 - so many Campbell farmers and ranchers sent their children to Cambrian schools. More than a century later, families living in the Pruneyard/Dry Creek area of Campbell are often surprised to discover their homes are still located in the Cambrian School District, which is San Jose, not Campbell. "As communities continued to encroach, it was not contiguous with school districts," says Cambrian Superintendent Barry Groves. "In some cases, the boundary lines go through the middle of a house. Wherever the family sleeps, that's the school district they are in." Groves also points out that the old roads that once served as boundaries gave way to highways and freeways, making original boundaries look like a jigsaw puzzle on modern maps. Campbell is in a unique county, with an abundance of school districts compared to other Northern California counties, Carrig says. Only Los Angeles County has more school districts than Santa Clara County. "I think it has to do with local control and some districts being fiercely proud," she says. It's why districts like Montebello, with its one school in Cupertino, only have 42 students, while CUSD - with its 13 schools stretching through Campbell, San Jose, Saratoga and Los Gatos - has 7,526 students, she says. In the early years of Campbell's history, local farmers and ranchers established a number of small school districts to serve the local children. With the Moreland and Cambrian school districts already operating, the San Tomas School District was established in 1885 on land settled by Jonathan and Eliza Parr. The family owned 3,000 acres of land in the San Tomas School District. After the school district began operating, students who went to Cambrian but lived closer to San Tomas relocated into the newer district. Another early district was the Hamilton School District, established in 1855. Landowner Zeri Hamilton offered his property to help start the district. Others, such as Union School District, started in 1863, and Meridian School District, founded in 1897, were also started as surrounding landowners wanted local children to be taught in nearby schools. But the cornerstone of all the districts was the Campbell School District, established in 1888 on 15 acres owned by Edward Parr at Winchester Avenue between Cherry Lane and Rincon Avenue. In 1917, the Campbell and San Tomas school districts began working together under the umbrella of the Campbell-San Tomas Union District. As enrollment in the smaller districts continued to grow, the board of trustees in the Campbell-San Tomas District wanted to improve facilities and the quality of education. In 1921, the trustees brought a $155,000 bond initiative before the community to build a new grammar school that would benefit children throughout the local districts. Voters approved the bond in 1921, and in the fall, the Hamilton, San Tomas and Meridian school boards voted to officially join with Campbell to form the Campbell Union School District. "Whenever people see the word 'union' in a school district name, it means the consolidation of districts," says Larry Schirey, Santa Clara County Office of Education field representative. The CUSD continued to rapidly grow, with a major spurt occurring during the 1950s. "At one time America thought every square mile of neighborhood needed an elementary school and every six miles needed to have a high school," Ritchie says. The theory made sense during the 1950s to mid-1960s, when enrollment peaked in the CUSD at 11,760 students. By then, six elementary schools had been built to accommodate its bulging population. As its elementary schools grew, so did the demand for high schools within the CUSD boundaries. In the early years, the main school for higher education was Campbell High School, established in 1900 through a bond issue passed by residents whose children were part of the Campbell, San Tomas, Cambrian and Hamilton school districts. Through the next three decades, students from Campbell, Willow Glen, San Jose, Sunol and Almaden Valley attended Campbell High School. "The little school districts were all chartered before the communities were big enough to have their own high school," Ritchie says, "and as a result had a central high school district that grew up to serve a number of communities." As additional elementary schools fed graduating students into the Campbell Union High School District (CUHSD), the district added Camden High School, which was built at the intersection of Camden and Union avenues in 1955. This high school was quickly followed with six more within 11 years - Del Mar, Blackford, Leigh, Westmont, Branham and Prospect - to support students in the CUSD elementary schools who lived in Campbell, San Jose, Los Gatos, Saratoga, Santa Clara, Monte Sereno and unincorporated county pockets, says CUHSD Superintendent Rhonda Farber. The post-World War II era saw an explosion of students entering the ninth through twelve grades, but between 1975 and 1983, the number of students entering elementary schools radically dropped off. By 1985, enrollment had dropped by 50 percent - to 5,500 students - Carrig says, and CUSD closed eight of its 16 elementary schools. The CUHSD voted to shut the doors of Campbell and Camden high schools. As schools were closed, students were relocated to other schools within the district. "The boundaries were only changed internally," Farber says. The boundaries throughout the district's times of expansion and reduction stayed the same, and as communities continue to grow, the confusion will probably persist, superintendents and county officials say, especially for new families moving into Campbell. Ritchie says the rule for all families to remember is a simple one: moving to Campbell doesn't necessarily mean going to Campbell schools. For information about school districts and locating a school's district by a home address, log onto www.sccoe.org and click on Resources for Families. |
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