Old Schools Like McFadden Don’t Fade Away

The old McFadden Elementary School in Placentia, closed 24 years ago by declining enrollment, was steeped in tradition.

Former student Arlene Olea fondly recalls the folklorico dancing, with students entertaining the whole city at Cinco de Mayo. School was a family affair. You walked there not just with brothers and sisters, but cousins who lived in the same neighborhood.

Maybe now, Olea said, new traditions will spring up there. The neighborhood is finally getting its old school back--except it will be brand new.

City leaders, under heavy community pressure, this month sold back more than half of 12-acre McFadden Park in Placentia’s southwest corner to the Placentia-Yorba Linda School District for $3.5 million. Decades ago, the district had sold the land to the city to create a park. But now, the district will build a new elementary school there by 2003, right where much of the old school was torn down.

That will mean no more bus rides for nearly 800 schoolchildren in the area.

“Parents feel more secure knowing their children are within walking distance,” Olea said.

Although the community is celebrating the recent sale, making it happen was a long, sometimes heated process.

Negotiations between the city and school district took more than two years. Two members of the City Council fought the idea, and others were reluctant.

Council member Constance Underhill had two objections: With the city’s amount of open space already limited, she didn’t think Placentia should part with any parkland. She also felt that because the McFadden Park neighborhood is 99% Latino, the school wouldn’t be as diverse as others in the district.

“It’s going to be a barrio school,” she said. “I don’t think that’s what anyone wants.”

But some area school supporters had a ready answer to the barrio concern.

“So what?” said Santiago Segovia, who spoke at public hearings on behalf of the school plan. “It was a barrio school before. What matters is, it’s going to be the neighborhood’s school.”

Placentia Mayor Chris Lowe said the “barrio” concern bothered him too. But the public hearings convinced him, Lowe said.

“This is what the people here want. They deserve a school in their own backyard.”

Now, students who live in the area are bused to Rio Vista Elementary in Anaheim and John O. Tynes Elementary in central Placentia.

“Because of the language barrier,” said Olea, “a lot of parents don’t go to open houses at those schools, or participate in their activities. If they could just walk on over, they’re more likely to get involved.”

Olea spoke in Spanish directly to neighborhood students at a recent ceremony to celebrate the land deal. The ceremony took place on the asphalt basketball court, where part of the school once stood. In fact, said school board member Carol Downey, who once taught at McFadden, “I’m standing right where my third-grade classroom used to be.”

It was always a school with great traditions and a great spirit, Downey said.

Before it was McFadden, it was known as La Jolla Elementary, named for La Jolla Street, on its southern border. It first opened its doors in 1929.

Dolores Reyna, now 79, was among its first students.

“We came to school barefoot because nobody could afford shoes,” she said. “But we had this giant shoe at the school and we’d play a game we loved, the Old Woman and the Shoe.”

After it became McFadden in the 1960s, the school hosted three nights of Cinco de Mayo performances that were an annual sellout and one of the city’s main events.

Olea, part of four generations in her family to attend there, later joined the school’s staff. She saw a definite change--not in spirit, but in demographics. Enrollment was decreasing rapidly.

“People in the neighborhood bought their houses and stayed,” she explained. “But their children moved out once grown and raised their own families elsewhere.”

In the past decade, the demographics turned full circle. New neighborhood apartment developments bulge with school-age children--who have no neighborhood school to attend.

Community leaders began pushing to bring back McFadden, and the school board recognized that the area would produce a permanent crop of new students each year.

School officials knew it wouldn’t be easy to build a school there. Relations between the school district and the City Council have sometimes been contentious. When McFadden was closed in 1977, for example, the school wanted to sell the property to the highest bidder. But the city demanded to exercise its legal first right of refusal. The city bought the property from the school district for $300,000.

As expected, the City Council was dismayed to hear the school board wanted the property back. Underhill was the leading opponent, along with former mayor Michael Maertzweiler.

But Maertzweiler retired last year, and Underhill ultimately joined the rest in a compromise to sell back 7 1/2 acres.

“I wanted the school district to tear down some of the old housing around here to build a school; that way, we could keep our park,” Underhill said. “But once it became clear the school board wouldn’t look anywhere else, I changed my vote. We’ll have to see how it works out.”

The city will move a Head Start program and the city’s Human Services Department off the school property to the other side of the park. Whenever school is not in session, the school district has agreed to let the public use ball fields, which will remain on the school side. The public will still have access to Oberle Gymnasium on the school side, which the school board agrees to upgrade.

Councilman Norman Z. Eckenrode also regrets giving up open space, but said, “It’s what the neighborhood wants that counts.”

But Eckenrode, the only council member around when the school closed in 1977, said the city shouldn’t be seen as the bad guy just because it was tough in negotiations.

“The school district would have sold to whomever had the most money,” Eckenrode said. “If it weren’t for us, this place might be a chemical factory today.”