La fiebre del oro de California todavía estaba en sus inicios cuando los californianos se sentaron a escribir su constitución estatal en 1849, e incluso en esos días rudos y turbulentos de la frontera, la educación pública estaba en el primer plano de la mente de todos.
What followed in the wake of the subsequent population explosions in the Golden State was the proliferation of tiny, one-room schools, each forming a separate school district and generally governed by a three-man board of education. Hundreds of them dotted the countryside.
Con el tiempo, estos pequeños distritos escolares, aunque nominalmente supervisados por superintendentes de educación de condado y juntas escolares de condado, se volvieron ferozmente independientes, y en gran medida, las políticas educativas y los asuntos de personal quedaron a merced de los caprichos y la fantasía de las juntas escolares locales.
By 1893, more than 3,500 school districts had sprouted up in California. Twenty-seven of them were in Madera County alone. Old timers will remember names like Arcola, Alpha, Berenda, Dennis, Spring Valley, Webster, La Vina, Mary’s Dale, Hanover, Fresno Flats, Eastin, Daulton — just to name a few of Madera County’s “little slice of public schools.”
As the number of school districts continued to climb, the average number of students served by these districts began to fall. More and more one-room school districts were serving fewer and fewer children.
Further, while each school had a head teacher or principal, the real administration of these school districts lay in the hands of the laymen on the tiny school boards. It was micro-management par excellence.
That’s why, by 1935, the state began to question the need for so many independent school districts.
Throughout the next ten years, officials in Sacramento tried to woo school districts into consolidating. Thus some local school districts began to absorb their neighbors. In Madera County, Eastin and Arcola school districts merged into Eastin-Arcola, Gambetta and Knowles joined Raymond, and Willow Creek became part of Spring Valley. By 1945, the number of school districts statewide had been reduced to 2,568, but that figure was still too high by state standards, so officials got serious.
The state legislature created a Commission on School Districts which was able to reduce the number of school districts to 2,111 before its commission expired in 1949. After that, the responsibility for school district organization fell to the State Board of Education and individual counties. By July 1, 1964, the total number of elementary and high school districts stood at 1,325. Then came Assembly Bill 145.
This legislation, introduced by Jesse (Big Daddy) Unruh, provided a mandate for unification. It made it clear that it was the intent of the state that unified school districts should be the ultimate form of school district organization in California. Each county committee on district organization was given until Sept. 15, 1964, to submit a master plan for its county to “consist of either a system of unified school districts or of such organization as would constitute an intermediate step to unification.”
That’s what prompted Madera County to hold that watershed election of 1965 which eliminated ten school districts in and around Madera and created in their stead one unified school district.
In 1965, Madera Elementary was the largest K-8 school district in the county. It was surrounded by eight smaller school districts: Alpha, Berenda, Dixieland, Eastin-Arcola, Howard, LaVina, Ripperdan and Webster. All of these independent elementary school districts comprised the equally independent Madera Union High School District.
In May the voters went to the polls before the state could act on their behalf. The mood was set by an editorial in the Madera Tribune on May 24, 1965.
“The Daily Tribune is not so naive as to believe that unification can be forestalled by a no vote… It is clearly the intent of the state legislature to have unification here and elsewhere in the state. Legislation currently pending before the legislature would take the matter out of the hands of the voters, and unification would be done in Sacramento, not here by the decision of the voters and taxpayers of the affected districts.”
Thus the local paper recommended that “support should be given to the unification proposal which is to be voted upon Tuesday.”
On May 25, 1965, Madera’s historic unification vote was taken, but only a handful of the electorate turned out. 870 citizens voted in favor of the measure while 697 dissented. Madera Unified School District was created by a margin of 173 votes; less than 20 percent of the registered voters decided this pivotal election!
On a district by district basis, only Madera Elementary, Howard, and Dixieland districts voted in favor of unification. Alpha, Berenda, Eastin-Arcola, LaVina, Ripperdan and Webster turned thumbs down on the proposal even though it carried a $25 per student inducement from the state for a “yes” vote.
The new unified district was organized on June 10, 1965. Its first board consisted of president Boyd Givens, clerk Jack Desmond, and trustees John Sordi, Buck Melikian, Wayne Fulton, Paul Martin, and Dr. John Stasulat. They in turn hired Madera Elementary Superintendent Duane Furman as their first schools chief and chose Madera Union High School superintendent Rinaldo Wren as Furman’s assistant. Fred Nilsen, also from Madera Union High School, was hired as the unified school district’s first business manager.
Madera Union High School District and the 9 elementary districts within its boundaries continued to do business for another year, and then they passed out of existence on July 1, 1966. In their place stood one unified school district, MUSD — one seven-man school board, one superintendent, and one administrative team.
So now, 60 years later, Madera Unified School District celebrates its Diamond Jubilee. Happy Birthday.