Ravenswood High School (East Palo Alto)
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Ravenswood High School was a public high school located in
East Palo Alto East Palo Alto (abbreviated E.P.A.) is a city in San Mateo County, California, United States. As of the 2020 census, the population of East Palo Alto was 30,034. It is situated on the San Francisco Peninsula, roughly halfway between the cities of ...
,
California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...
, United States. Opened in 1958, it served the East Palo Alto area of
San Mateo County San Mateo County ( ), officially the County of San Mateo, is a county located in the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 764,442. Redwood City is the county seat, and the third most populated city following Daly ...
until its closure in 1976. In 1958 its enrollment was 629 students. During the existence of Ravenswood, East Palo Alto was the low-income area in the shadow of its more affluent neighbors Menlo Park, Atherton and
Palo Alto Palo Alto (; Spanish for "tall stick") is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a coastal redwood tree known as El Palo Alto. The city was es ...
. The city of Palo Alto, while adjacent and sharing the same zip code, is a completely different city in
Santa Clara County Santa Clara County, officially the County of Santa Clara, is the sixth-most populous county in the U.S. state of California, with a population of 1,936,259, as of the 2020 census. Santa Clara County and neighboring San Benito County together f ...
. Ravenswood was part of the
Sequoia Union High School District The Sequoia Union High School District is a public union school district in the San Francisco Bay Area, primarily serving the southern San Mateo County communities of Atherton, Belmont, East Palo Alto, Ladera, San Carlos, Menlo Park, Portol ...
, which also serves the southern San Mateo County cities of Belmont,
Redwood City Redwood City is a city on the San Francisco Peninsula in Northern California's Bay Area, approximately south of San Francisco, and northwest of San Jose. Redwood City's history spans its earliest inhabitation by the Ohlone people to being a po ...
, San Carlos, and Woodside.


History

The school opened in 1958 with 629 students. By 1964 enrollment had risen to 1,285. However,
white flight White flight or white exodus is the sudden or gradual large-scale migration of white people from areas becoming more racially or ethnoculturally diverse. Starting in the 1950s and 1960s, the terms became popular in the United States. They refer ...
from the city of East Palo Alto led to a rapid increase in the percentage of
African American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...
students during the 1960s; both the
Congress of Racial Equality The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) is an African-American civil rights organization in the United States that played a pivotal role for African Americans in the civil rights movement. Founded in 1942, its stated mission is "to bring about ...
and the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is a civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909 as an interracial endeavor to advance justice for African Americans by a group including W. E. ...
expressed concern about ''de facto'' segregation. Starting in 1965, a group called Mothers for Equal Education demonstrated for the school to be closed and East Palo Alto students sent to majority-white schools, believing that that would give them a better education; for two years, up to 200 students lived with families in Palo Alto or Los Altos in order to attend school there, in a covert program called the "Sneak-out". By 1970 enrollment had fallen to 781, 64% black. In 1968, A sit in was organized a group name "Students for Higher Education". In the sit in, they called for classes in Black history and certain teachers deemed as "racist" to be fired. The sit in was Captained by Charles Boulding (Student Body President) and Odia Chiles who later became Mayor of East Palo Alto. In 1968 the district had adopted a voluntary transfer program that essentially legalized the Sneak-out; in 1971 it introduced a voluntary busing program to reduce segregation in all its high schools, and also sought to make Ravenswood a magnet school, introducing an experimental curriculum including three- to six-week "mini-cycle" courses in subjects such as
scuba diving Scuba diving is a mode of underwater diving whereby divers use breathing equipment that is completely independent of a surface air supply. The name "scuba", an acronym for " Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus", was coined by Chr ...
, pottery, photography, golf, and mountaineering, and academic advisement and "houses" based on
astrological sign In Western astrology, astrological signs are the twelve 30-degree sectors that make up Earth's 360-degree orbit around the Sun. The signs enumerate from the first day of spring, known as the First Point of Aries, which is the vernal equinox. ...
s. Enrollment briefly recovered but declined again, to 823 in 1974. Few parents were willing to bus their children to Ravenswood, and there was increasing racial tension in the district high schools, with race riots occurring at Ravenswood among others. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, East Palo Alto hosted Black Power summits, and local opinion changed as to the value of integrated education, with the leader of the Mothers, Gertrude Wilks, now advocating private black education as a refuge from racism. In 1976 the district closed Ravenswood High School because of low enrollment and financial constraints. The campus was demolished in 1995 to make room for the Gateway 101 Shopping Center. The closure of Ravenswood meant that the predominantly minority students of East Palo Alto were bused to other schools in the district, such as
Carlmont High School Carlmont High School is a public high school in Belmont, California, United States serving grades 9–12 as part of the Sequoia Union High School District. Carlmont is a California Distinguished School. Carlmont was founded in 1952 as "a sch ...
in Belmont; these were more distant than Palo Alto High School, which is in a different district and across the county line, and at the time were predominantly white. Another of the district's high schools,
Menlo-Atherton High School Menlo-Atherton High School (known as M-A to locals) is a four-year public charter secondary school located in Atherton, California. Menlo-Atherton is part of the Sequoia Union High School District.
in Atherton, is also closer to East Palo Alto. In July 2013 the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area, working with the law firm of Bingham McCutchen, submitted a report to the district school board asserting that bussing the East Palo Alto students to such schools as Carlmont rather than to Menlo-Atherton was a violation of their legal rights. In October that year, the district announced that it would make it easier for East Palo Alto students to attend Menlo-Atherton. In 1976, students published a book celebrating the school. The 1995 play ''
Circle in the Dirt ''Circle in the Dirt: El Pueblo de East Palo Alto'' is a 1995 play by Cherríe Moraga. It is set in East Palo Alto, California, a community in the San Francisco Bay Area. ''Circle in the Dirt'' and the 1996 play ''Watsonville (play), Watsonville'' ...
'' by
Cherríe Moraga Cherríe Moraga (born September 25, 1952) is a Chicana writer, feminist activist, poet, essayist, and playwright. She is part of the faculty at the University of California, Santa Barbara in the Department of English. Moraga is also a founding m ...
examines mid-1990s gentrification in East Palo Alto and parts of the play recount the closure of Ravenswood and the long-lasting cultural impact of that closure on the community. In 2002, it was memorialized in a mural created by the Mural, Music and the Arts Project at the Boys and Girls Club of the Peninsula in East Palo Alto, called ''Remembering Ravenswood: East Palo Alto's Educational Sacrifice''.


Notable people


Alumni

* Nate Branch, member of the Harlem Globetrotters *
Rudy Law Rudy Karl Law (born October 7, 1956) is an American former professional baseball outfielder. He played seven seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB) from 1978 to 1986 for the Los Angeles Dodgers, Chicago White Sox, and Kansas City Royals. In 1983, ...
, outfielder for
Los Angeles Dodgers The Los Angeles Dodgers are an American professional baseball team based in Los Angeles. The Dodgers compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the National League (NL) West division. Established in 1883 in the city of Brooklyn ...
and
Chicago White Sox The Chicago White Sox are an American professional baseball team based in Chicago. The White Sox compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) Central division. The team is owned by Jerry Reinsdorf, and ...
* Mike McCurry (Class of 1972), White House press secretary * Joseph E. Prince (Class of 1972),
Cal Poly Mustangs The Cal Poly Mustangs are the athletic teams representing California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, California. The university fields twenty-one teams and compete in NCAA Division I; they are primarily members of the Big West ...
sprinter


Faculty

*
Tommie Smith Tommie C. Smith (born June 6, 1944) is an American former track and field athlete and former wide receiver in the American Football League. At the 1968 Summer Olympics, Smith, aged 24, won the 200-meter sprint finals and gold medal in 19.83&nb ...
, track coach


See also

*
List of closed secondary schools in California This is a list of closed secondary schools in California. There was a noticeable increase in closures starting about 1979, the year following the passage of Proposition 13. A change in funding changed the financial situation for these school dis ...


References


Further reading

* {{authority control Defunct schools in California Educational institutions disestablished in 1976 High schools in San Mateo County, California 1958 establishments in California 1976 disestablishments in California