Cubberley Community Center is a community center in Palo Alto, California that is housed on the campus of the former Cubberley High School, which opened in the fall of 1956 and closed in 1979 as a result of budget cuts from California Proposition 13. Cubberley High School, perhaps best known as the setting of Ron Jones' teaching experiment The Third Wave, was one of three public high schools in Palo Alto in the 1960s and 1970s, along with Gunn High School and Palo Alto High School, both of which are still open. The high school was named after Ellwood P. Cubberley, an influential authority in the development of institutionalized education.
Now home to local interest organizations including a ballroom dancing club, wildlife rescue organization, and a Chinese reading room for Palo Alto's large Asian minority, the Cubberley Community Center (known as simply "Cubberley" to locals) has become a prime community area for residents in southern Palo Alto.
The Friends of the Palo Alto Library hold their used book sales at Cubberley on the second Saturday of every month and the following Sunday, filling three entire rooms.
Cubberley also once hosted rock shows by local bands and touring artists including Buffalo Springfield, Santana, William Penn and His Pals, Cake, Third Eye Blind, blink-182, Daniel Tsai Band, and Frank Black.
Another major tenant is an extension campus for Foothill College.
The land actually belongs to the Palo Alto Unified School District (PAUSD), and is leased to the City of Palo Alto.
The site boasts a track, a grassy school "amphitheater," and a gym, now used as sites for public running, recreation, and community athletics respectively.
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—Michael Lewis (late 20th century)
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—John Donne (1572–1631)