The Cubberley Closing

Sometimes in politics it seems that you just can’t win.  Some political decisions are such that no matter what’s decided, somebody’s going home unhappy.  On the national level this has been the case for years with unpopular base closings.  As the U.S. military began to downsize at the end of the Cold War, committees in Congress shut down scores of bases, all while congressmen desperately maneuvered to keep their district off the list.  Other times, it’s what’s going in, not what’s coming out.  State prisons, toxic waste dumps, nuclear power plants, and other community “undesirables” all lead to political squabbling.  After all, some people have to sacrifice their backyard and whoever does may not have the same congressman for very long.

In 1979, the Palo Alto Unified School District Board faced such a political Catch-22.  There were three high schools in town and one of them was going to have to close — and it was pretty clear that whichever school was shut down would have a lot of angry parents, students and staff members holding a serious grudge.

A combination of factors saddled the School Board with such an unpalatable choice.  The first was the 1978 statewide passage of the mother of all ballot initiatives — Proposition 13.  The enactment of this “taxpayer’s revolt” reduced property taxes and placed a cap (that could only be overturned with a 2/3 majority) on future taxes.  And while the initiative may have been a harbinger of the revolution that put Reagan in the White House two years later, it also put wealthier school districts like PAUSD on precarious financial footing.  No longer able to rely on the affluent local tax base, the district was $2 million in the red by 1979 and in need of some quick cash.

At the same time that the district was hemorrhaging money, it was also losing students.  By 1979, Palo Alto had nearly a thousand fewer students than in 1973, as enrollment plummeted 30 percent between 1967 and 1979.  To Superintendent Newman Walker, these factors led to an obvious conclusion — one high school and a number of elementary schools would have to be closed.  And if this were the case, Walker argued that Cubberley would have to be that high school.  The argument went like this: Palo Alto Senior High School (affectionately known as “Paly”) and Henry M Gunn High School were both situated on land that had been originally obtained in “friendly condemnations” from Stanford University.  Walker reported to the School Board that if either of these schools closed, the land would revert back to Stanford for the original purchase price — $358,000 in the case of Gunn and just $26,000 in the case of Paly, which opened in 1918.

That argument carried the day, as the school board salivated over the $11 million that Walker said Cubberley’s 35 acres might fetch.  On February 6, 1979, as Cubberley defeated Gunn by a single point in varsity basketball on one end of town, Gunn won an even bigger one-point victory on the other.  In front of 600 persons and numerous television crews at Paly’s auditorium, the school board voted 3-2 to shut down Cubberley at the end of the school year.

However, things turned out to be a little more complicated than Walker had suggested.  Just before the school board’s final vote, the superintendent had to backtrack on a key point: Money obtained from a sale of Cubberley could only be put in the district’s general fund if the land were sold to a non-profit or public agency, otherwise the money would have to be used for far more limited “capital expenditures.” In addition, if Gunn were the school to be closed, it was reported that Stanford might not even want the land back.

Now Cubberley defenders saw an opportunity to make their case: Cubberley had a higher enrollment capacity than Gunn, a larger cafeteria, and the only equipped space to house classes for the acoustically handicapped and the educable mentally disabled.  They also pointed out that Cubberley had been around longer and had a more dynamic reputation as a school of innovation and excellence.  And both Cubberley and Gunn supporters broke out the tape measures to argue that their school was actually closer to the home of the average Palo Alto high schooler.

Debate persisted even as Cubberley’s final graduates prepared to receive their diplomas in June. Supporters of Cubberley formed a group called Take Time to Plan which maintained that the district should reconsider closing any high schools.  They collected more than 6,000 signatures of those agreeing that the closure decision be put to a citywide vote.

Take Time to Plan took their fight to the courts and on March 30th convinced Santa Clara County superior court judge Stanley Evans that the school board’s action was subject to voter referendum. The judge ruled that because a school board’s decision was legislative rather than administrative, it could be put to a voter referendum, as stated in the state’s constitution.  The district was now faced with three choices: Appeal the decision, rescind the Cubberley closure, or put the whole question up for a costly and divisive citywide election.  No one was shocked when they decided to appeal.

They made the right move.  On May 30th, 1979, the California Court of Appeals overturned Judge Evans in a 3-0 ruling, siding with the district and maintaining that school board decisions were administrative, not legislative.  The fight to save Cubberley was effectively lost.

In the coming years as emotions calmed and students moved on, the board’s decision gained more respect.  In the fall of the 1979-80 school year, 950 former Cubberley students reported to school at either Gunn or Paly with a minimum of disruption.  Meanwhile, the old high school became the Cubberley Community Center, still leased today by the district to the city for more than $2.7 million annually.

Over the past 25 years, the center has been the home to an abundance of community classes and functions, including Foothill Community College, kung fu classes, private artist studios, L’Ecole de Danse, the Palo Alto Chamber Orchestra, and many more.  And many of those who fought the closing of Cubberley tooth and nail back in 1979 have come to believe it was the right decision after all.

In recent years, as school enrollment in the city has been on the rise again, suggestions to eventually reopen the high school and close the community center have ironically met strong resistance from those now loyal to the center.  Perhaps in the end the School Board’s decision to close Cubberley was actually a political winner — it just took a couple of decades for anyone to find out.