High Class: Evolution of Cupertino's Schools

by Cupertino Courier

ByAnne Ward Ernst In this third issue of the Courier's commemorative series, we explore the evolution of Cupertino's schools from their tiny beginnings as one-room schoolhouses. In those early days the schools' good standing was regional, but in this information age, the districts' quality education is drawing people from around the globe. --Editor

Ask a dozen people what has made the schools in Cupertino so good for so long, and one finds no single reason. Teachers and administrators, parents, the community and students have shared the journey.

It's difficult to pinpoint when the reputation for excellence began, but it happened before schools' performances were measured by academic test scores.

"We always knew the elementary schools had a great reputation, and they were the feeder schools for the high schools. It was well known way back. It's not just recent," says Fenton Hill.

Hill is a product of the system. He graduated from Fremont Union High School in 1940 and continued his relationship with the schools in a 34-year career at various schools in Cupertino as a teacher, coach, dean and principal.

The foundation for the schools' high level of achievement was established decades, if not a century, before the city's incorporation in 1955.

The four original schoolhouses were built on land donated by local families, beginning with Lincoln Elementary in 1865, San Antonio School in 1867, Collins School in 1869 and Doyle School in 1882.

Early settlers valued education and made it a priority, says Mary Lou Lyon, a Cupertino historian and educator.

"The people who moved here prized learning. One of the first things they would do was start a school. The early [settlers] came from across the country and from Italy and France and then pretty well after 1900 came the Yugoslavians," she says.

Evidence that community leaders placed a priority on learning came in 1917 when it was determined that the four original schools could no longer accommodate the community's needs for providing a diverse education. The four were consolidated into one--Cupertino Union School.

Enrollment was pretty much static in both districts (Cupertino Union School District and West Side Union High School District, now called Fremont Union High School District) until the post-war boom.

That's when soldiers returned home from World War II and went to college on the G.I. Bill.

At the time Hill attended high school, college was not a priority as it is now for students. Most of his classmates did not go on to college, he says.

One soldier who took advantage of the G.I. Bill was Sam Lawson, for whom the district's newest middle school is named.

Lawson's name carries a lot of weight in the discussion of Cupertino's elementary and middle schools' path to excellence.

He was hired in 1948 as Cupertino Union School's first male teacher, first coach and first physical education instructor. In short order he became an assistant principal, principal and then director of pupil personnel for the district, eventually returning to a principal's role. In his 33 years with the district, he developed a sports program from scratch, created a summer recreation program and hired countless teachers who would help shape the system and the students.

Some of the teachers he hired were friends from San Jose State College (San José State University today.) The school was mainly a teachers college then, and the people he hired held the same values as he did, says his widow Marilyn Lawson.

"Dad was able to hire some college friends and they were there in the beginning of everything that became part of the community," says Jay Lawson, Sam Lawson's son.

It was a small, burgeoning district where teachers were encouraged to include their spouses and children in school-related activities.

"It was like a family," says Dick Campbell.

Campbell was one of those college friends recruited by Lawson, who like Lawson, started his career as a physical education teacher and coach, ultimately being promoted to principal where he had the opportunity to do some hiring of his own.

But before Lawson, there was Darryl Sedgwick, the man who hired Lawson.

"I think [the reputation of the schools] goes back to Mr. Sedgwick," Jay Lawson says. "He hired my dad and my dad always spoke highly of him."

Marilyn Lawson gives a lot of credit to Sedgwick as well.

"It was a good school district before Sam came. [Sam] didn't build it," she says.

Sedgwick was hired in 1921 for the dual role of principal and superintendent of the newly formed Cupertino Union School. Coincidentally it was the year Lawson was born. It also was the same year West Side Union High School District, the precursor to Fremont Union High School District, was created.

The high school district today is made up of Fremont High School, which opened in 1925; Sunnyvale High School, which opened in 1956 (and closed in 1981); Cupertino High School, which opened in 1958; Homestead High School, which opened in 1962; Lynbrook High School, which opened in 1965 and Monta Vista High School, which opened in 1969.

Sedgwick was in charge as the district approached its largest growth spurt in the1950s and 1960s when the number of school sites peaked at 44.

Campbell recalls the 1960s as contributing another piece to the schools' level of excellence.

He says this was a time when teachers and staff had the "freedom to grow."

The district was hiring 110 teachers a year during this expansion period because the growth of the electronics industry was drawing people to the region.

"Quite often they were really bright capable people from across the country. Often [the women] moved with their husbands who moved with Lockheed. A lot of the original staff were female," Campbell says.

The electronics industry was not only attracting well-educated people, but it was pioneering products that today are mainstays of society.

In preparing for the Golden Jubilee Celebration for the city, Cindy McArthur, spokeswoman for Fremont Union High School District, found notes from a speech dated Sept. 10, 1959, believed to be spoken by A.C. Stevens Jr., who was the district's superintendent from 1944 to1966.

The speech contained foresight and insight into what would be needed to help the schools realize continuous achievement.

Addressing new teachers in the district the notes say:

"We feel that in this electronic age that many electronic devices have been created and more will be created to make it possible to go in some areas do a more effective teaching job. Of course, I am talking about the tape recorders in the language centers and about your overhead projectors, self-testing electronic devices which give the immediate results and all these other things. We do, however, realize with you that the only way people really learn is by good hard work under the leadership of inspiring teachers with warm and sincere personalities."

Though hired during the expansion years, Lyon says schools were not hiring just to fill positions.

"I'm not sure it was by default but quality attracted quality," Campbell says.

"They were fussy when they hired us. They tried to hire the very best. They could afford to get the very best," Lyon says.

Good salaries are another element that has contributed to Cupertino's notable success. The pay has tended to be higher than other districts. Fremont Union High School District's starting teacher's salaries are currently 13 percent higher than the starting salary of neighboring San Jose Unified School District.

It seemed important enough in 1959 to Superintendent Stevens to point out that salaries were higher in Cupertino:

"All of these employees... have salaries which compare very favorably with salaries in the better school districts in the United States."

Carolyn Sedgwick Leavitt worked as secretary to the board of education for Cupertino Union School District.

She says it was the board of education that gave its administrators permission to do what they wanted.

"They tried all kinds of new programs, and [the programs] worked. That was the way we were. There were a lot of people with a lot of brains and a lot of guts," she says.

Innovative teaching methods were given a try and those that didn't work were discontinued; others were successful.

Team-teaching is one innovation that was first tried when Campbell was a principal. A pair of sixth-grade teachers shared teaching duties between their classrooms. Campbell made it possible by cutting a hole between their separate classrooms, so they could easily move between the two. He said team-teaching is basically teaching to the strength of each teacher. For example if one teacher was strong in math, she would teach that subject to more than just her classroom.

"It evolved from me primarily because those two teachers came to me and asked for it. It wasn't like I looked at the curriculum and said, 'Hey let's try this.' They had a history of working well together," Campbell says.

Campbell's open approach was integrated throughout both districts. Lyon recalls being given the freedom to "close your door and teach."

That autonomy has been hampered by some state and federal guidelines, such as the No Child Left Behind Act, some teachers and administrators say.

"Now you have to teach to the tests," says one critic.

Government controls may have thrown water on the creative fire that once burned in Cupertino schools, but the level of excellence of its former students, such as Apple's co-founders and Homestead High School graduates, Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs, carries on as the districts continue to garner national and international recognition.

District Academic Performance Index scores have drawn the attention of many including the Asian culture where education is paramount.

Some say they have walked through airports in Japan or Taiwan and come across brochures highlighting Cupertino schools.

Carol Sakamoto grew up in Cupertino and now lives in East San Jose. Neighbors have told her of people saving their money to be able to afford to buy a home in pricey Cupertino just so they can get their children into one of the elementary schools by the third grade.

And longtime Cupertinian Joe Camarda says he knew a Chinese man who passed over available homes because the man was waiting to find a home in a neighborhood that would allow his son to go to a specific school in the district.

"Schools in general are a main focus [now] for families with children. Cupertino schools have a good reputation," says Mary Cassidy, a real estate agent.

Agents such as Cassidy use the schools' reputation as a marketing tool to attract buyers. Fliers and on-line listings tout Cupertino schools at the top of the ads, and homebuyers pay attention to those words.

The Cupertino community is economically well off, and some say that the schools have benefited from that affluence.

"Demographically this was never a poverty area. In the early days everyone was pretty much at the same level in the agrarian stages. There were rich people but there was never really a poverty area," says Gail Fretwell-Hugger.

Fretwell-Hugger has a long history with Cupertino and its schools. She was in the first graduating class of Cupertino High School in 1961, and her mother, Hazel Fretwell--a longtime member of the Cupertino Historical Society--was in Fremont High School's first graduating class. Fretwell-Hugger's daughters graduated from Cupertino schools also--one from Monta Vista and the other from Cupertino High School.

Absence of poverty meant there was a local well to tap when times were tough for the schools.

"Before the Jarvis-Gann Act [Prop. 13], we would go to the community whenever there was a need for a particular funding. The community was a major factor in the [development of the school system.] It isn't just a one-person thing. The whole school thing is an important partnership," Campbell says.

Marilyn Lawson agrees and believes that the community supported her husband, Sam Lawson, in his endeavors in such areas as bringing the sports programs to Cupertino schools.

"All he had was dirty ground and one ball. The parents helped to build a program," she says.

And that community support carries on with organizations such as the Cupertino Education Endowment Foundation and the Fremont Union High School Foundation, which seek to keep the level of education as high as ever while the districts are suffering from deep budget cuts.

Cupertino schools' reputation hit the international scene in the 1980s

The reputation of the Cupertino Union School District did not start in the 1980s but was nurtured and grew from a school district with seven schools in 1955 to 70 schools in the 1970s.

I had just completed my masters Degree at San Jose State in 1955 and I was one of the teachers hired by Darryl J. Sedgwick who was the first superintendent of the Cupertino district.

The teachers who taught during the 1950s, 60s and 70s worked from 7:30 a.m. until three hours after school was let out at 3 p.m.

Not only did the teachers teach all day but, without pay, they coached football, basketball, track and wrestling.

Most of the students' homework, projects and our lesson plans had to be done after dinner and sometimes on Saturday and Sunday.

In 1980 when I was teaching at Kennedy Junior High, a Chinese couple came into my science class and told me that they wanted their daughter to enroll in our school. During the 1980s newspaper articles began to appear in newspapers in Singapore, Taiwan, and Hong Kong about the wonderful Cupertino School District.

Now the majority of students at Kennedy Middle School are from Asia and India.

--Harlan Sethe