Excerpt by Truthful James- by Lisa Robinson
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This school year celebrates the sesquicentennial of the Boulder Creek School District, which was formed at the board of supervisors meeting on Monday December 21, 1868. This is a continuation of the story printed in the Santa Cruz Mountain Bulletin October 2018 edition. In a June 1890 election, a $4000 bond measure for a new school building passed, and the building was opened in 1891. The hand-some new grammar school was built on the present elementary school site. It contained four rooms and was crowned with a cupola containing the school bell.Nearly the entire population of Boulder Creek was present at the opening gala. The contractor, Mr. Anthony J. Meany, arrived from Santa Cruz on the train, which was greeted with music by the Boulder Band and cheering pupils. They formed a procession to the school house where Mr. Meany handed the keys to trustee George Dennison. The school rooms were decorated with evergreens and the bell was rung joyfully. After the gala, Henry Middleton gave a banquet in honor of the event at the Boulder Creek Hotel. In 1906, construction of the Boulder Creek Union High School on the hill next to the grammar school was completed. The new school building was designed by renowned Watsonville architect, William H. Weeks. The school boasted three large recitation rooms furnished with tablet arm chairs rather than desks, physics, chemistry, and physical geography laboratories, a dark room, a study room, and a library of 400 volumes. Among the usual subjects taught were Latin and bookkeeping. In 1922, the board of trustees, having long felt that the grammar school building was inadequate, sought and received the endorsement of the parent teacher association and improvement club for a new building. Many in the community however thought that the attractive 1890s building could be “fixed up.” In 1923, the building’s shortcomings were highlighted: Fire escape from the second story to the ground only a wooden ladder; the grounds so dangerous that children were liable to stumble or fall; no sanitary drinking fountains; no fire extinguishers; the school room without American flags displayed; and a vacant room containing waste paper that would be a fine fire starter. Three times a bond election was called to ascertain the “full sentiment of the community.” It wasn’t until the third election that the new building won the vote.In 1924, construction was completed and the Boulder Creek Union School District formed. The new elementary school would serve not just Boulder Creek, but the communities of Bear Creek, Two Bar (Dougherty), Sequoia, and the adjacent agricultural communities, whose school districts had been merged with the union district. In addition to the new elementary school, the Boulder Creek Union School District also included a junior high school and the Boulder Creek Union High School, which, in addition to the districts served by the elementary school, also served the Ben Lomond and Alba school districts. The Sentinel reported “the district can well afford to entertain a feeling of pride when it recalls the fact that for the school year of 1924-25 there is not a community in the State of California that can offer more than Boulder Creek can, in the way of educational advantages.”