100-Year-Old School May Feel It’s Time to Move

After a century on the same plot of land, the historic little red schoolhouse--or at least the students who use it--could soon move away from the traffic and trash trucks of California 126 to one of 10 more secluded sites identified by the school district.

With the expanded Toland Road Landfill around the corner and a truck weigh station proposed down the highway, Santa Clara School District officials have selected a variety of private and public plots, including two citrus orchards on Sycamore Road, an orchard on Boosey Road, as well as a site at the proposed Toland Park.

Still undecided is whether the district would relocate the one-room Santa Clara School or build a new campus elsewhere.

“We obviously want it off the highway because of the traffic and noise that the problem creates, but we want it to be accessible,” school Supt. Tamera McCracken said of the new site. The state’s Office of Public School Construction is expected to release a report this week appraising the plots of land and ranking them for the appropriateness of a school site.

Parents and school officials have expressed concern that students in the schoolhouse--on the outskirts of Santa Paula--could be unsafe, given the increased dust and traffic on the road.

Despite fierce opposition from farmers, residents and the school district, the nearby Toland Road Landfill began taking in more truckloads of trash last summer.

Residents and school officials say traffic could increase further if a proposed Caltrans truck weigh station is built about a quarter-mile from the school and a 25,000-home Newhall Ranch development proposed in nearby Los Angeles gets underway.

“The noise is a big factor, the traffic and being directly downhill from the landfill,” McCracken said. “We don’t know what kind of trash is being stored there. . . . This stuff has been there for many years and adding to it creates a safety issue.”

The school district has contacted Assemblyman Brooks Firestone (R-Los Olivos), whose district includes the site, for state assistance moving the building. It also plans to seek funding from Caltrans and the Ventura Regional Sanitation District, as well as the state and the community. The sanitation district runs the landfill.

With the traffic problems that a truck weigh station could cause, it’s conceivable that the school could obtain state money earmarked for traffic concerns, Firestone said.

“We just have to start peering in every corner of the state of California for funding in that $60-billion budget to find something,” Firestone said. “Nevertheless, there are various funds that we could perhaps find.”

Frontier families built the brick school 100 years ago. Today, the school provides a close-knit environment for the 34 kindergarten to sixth-grade students who come from the Santa Clara Valley.

The original school, built in 1879 across California 126, was a makeshift wooden structure that was moved once before being plopped at its present location at 20300 E. Telegraph Road. The brick structure was built in 1896.

The school, which recently celebrated its centennial, has come to represent more than just a structure made of brick and mortar.

“For people who live there, it’s more than just a school,” former school Trustee Shirley Diamond said. “When we had a centennial, it was so neat to see people in their 80s who had gone to [the] grammar school. It’s a focal point for the community.”