School Founder Isabelle P. Buckley Dies : Introduced a New Concept of Discipline and Self-Expression

Isabelle P. Buckley, who 53 years ago started a nine-pupil preschool in Beverly Hills predicated on seemingly opposite concepts of discipline and self-expression and then developed it into the 20-acre, 750-student Buckley School in Sherman Oaks, died Wednesday at her home in that San Fernando Valley community.

She was 85 at her death and president emerita of the nonprofit, co-educational school, which had been praised for its academic excellence by President Reagan and former California Gov. Edmund G. (Pat) Brown.

Born in Michigan, Mrs. Buckley studied education in Australia and France, where she found that children had become literate by age 5. She returned to this country and settled in Los Angeles, becoming increasingly concerned over what she perceived as educational practices that minimized those early opportunities.

In 1933, when she herself was a young mother, she went door to door talking to neighbor parents about starting a private school devoted to such virtues as performance and creativity. Her original enrollment was nine toddlers (including one of her own), which she placed in a small bungalow on Doheny Drive in Beverly Hills, where she sought to imbue in them a zest for learning, a capacity to work and an ability to think for themselves.

Morning Prayers

Today those precepts are taught to students ranging in age from 2 through high school. Such celebrities as Robert Young, Charles Bronson, Paul Newman, Telly Savalas and countless other affluent parents have opted to send their boys and girls to the school where students say morning prayers, dress in uniforms and learn about “moral responsibility.”

Over the years, she was honored by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, the Los Angeles City Council, city Human Relations Commission and the state Senate and Assembly. In 1969, she was chosen a Los Angeles Times Woman of the Year, shortly after she opened a $3-million campus on Stansbury Avenue in Sherman Oaks.

Wrote Column

She was the author of “Guide to a Child’s World” and “College Begins at Two” and wrote an education column for the New York Herald Tribune Syndicate from 1961 to 1965.

A memorial Mass will be said Monday at 1 p.m. at St. Francis de Sales Church in Sherman Oaks. A widow, Mrs. Buckley is survived by a son, daughter, seven grandchildren and one great-grandchild. In lieu of flowers, the family asked contributions be made to a scholarship fund at the Buckley School.