History
College Prep was founded in September 1960, sited in a small, 19th-century clapboard house in the Claremont district of Oakland and Berkeley, California. The school was founded by Ruth Willis and Mary Harley Jenks. Jenks, a UC Berkeley graduate and former head of the Bentley School, wanted to create a school in the Bay Area that valued "high standards of scholarship and conduct." Unlike many university-preparatory schools, College Prep does not have a proper name, as the founders thought the name's directness reflected a straightforward, "unambiguous" approach to education. The five-room schoolhouse was built on recently constructed cement block structure and held just eight classrooms.
Because the school was non-profit, its limited enrollment and small size was not economical – furthermore, the small campus precluded expansion in the arts and athletics. The school's Board of Trustees determined that expanded enrollment and a larger campus was necessary, but did not want to sacrifice what they saw as an "intimate" and "intense" environment, that only a small campus could provide. In the early seventies, enrollment pressures began to increase as College Prep's reputation grew, and as a result of increasing discontent with California public schools (See: U.S. education crisis). In 1982 the Board began to plan a move to a larger campus, and it purchased sixteen portable wooden classroom buildings from the Oakland Unified School District placed on a six-acre parcel of land on Broadway Avenue. Many of these buildings are still in use today.
College Prep celebrated its fiftieth anniversary in 2010. To commemorate the event, decorative street-post banners were affixed at the Rockridge BART station. To celebrate, a special edition of the KALW radio show West Coast Live was broadcast from the College Prep campus, with guests, journalist Anna Quindlen and novelist Roddy Doyle. An "All-Alumni Reunion" was held in April, and a community-wide celebration was held in September.
Read more about this topic: The College Preparatory School
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