Created in 1958, Ravenswood High School served the East Palo Alto area of San Mateo County California until its closure in 1976. During its lifetime, East Palo Alto was the low income area in the shadow of its more affluent neighbors Menlo Park, Atherton and Palo Alto. The city of Palo Alto, while adjacent and sharing the same zip code is a completely different city in a different county (Santa Clara County). Ravenswood was part of the Sequoia Union High School District which serves the southern San Mateo County cities of Belmont, Redwood City, San Carlos, and Woodside.
During the early 1960s, the enrollment in the school increased from initially less than 800 to over 1,200 students. With white flight, 60 percent of the student population was African American. The next decade continued this trend. Almost a decade after Brown v. Board of Education decision, the conditions at the school drew the attention of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In the early 1970s, the school board instituted a district wide bussing program to increase the diversity of all its high schools. This was successful for a few years, but by the mid-70's volunteer students wishing to attend Ravenswood became harder to find. Enrollment declined and facing the financial burden of keeping the school alive, Ravenswood was closed in 1976. The location was demolished in 1995 to make room for the Gateway 101 Shopping Center.
Read more about Ravenswood High School: See Also
Famous quotes containing the words high school, high and/or school:
“There were metal detectors on the staff-room doors and Hernandez usually had a drawer full of push-daggers, nunchuks, stun-guns, knucks, boot-knives, and whatever else the detectors had picked up. Like Friday morning at a South Miami high school.”
—William Gibson (b. 1948)
“I think it’s one of the scars in our culture that we have too high an opinion of ourselves. We align ourselves with the angels instead of the higher primates.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)
“Dissonance between family and school, therefore, is not only inevitable in a changing society; it also helps to make children more malleable and responsive to a changing world. By the same token, one could say that absolute homogeneity between family and school would reflect a static, authoritarian society and discourage creative, adaptive development in children.”
—Sara Lawrence Lightfoot (20th century)