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The history of the District presented below has been collected from numerous sources (listed at the end). Please feel free to forward any information, photographs or links to district@mpcsd.org.The first school built by Menlo Park City Elementary School District was Central Elementary School, on El Camino Real (on the site of the now closed Cadillac dealership). In 1916 the San Mateo County Library opened a branch library in the Central School on El Camino Real in Menlo Park. It contained 50 books and was presided over by Hanna Burke, a teacher at the school.
The PTA was formed on March 18, 1924. A janitor at Central School was stripping paint by using turpentine and lighting it on fire (not a procedure used anymore!), and caused significant damage to the campus. After the fire, the campus was condemned for children and was used as the District Office. Rather than rebuild, the District Office was moved to the Encinal campus and the Central School campus was sold.Originally, all the schools in the district were K-8. Laurel School was located on a different property on Laurel Street. Also, the District had a 5th school in operation -- Fremont Elementary School.At one time, District enrollment had risen to 2,400 (with class sizes of 35), but by the early 80s enrollment again dropped to a low of 1100 and Fremont School was closed down and leased to the city. At that time the schools were reconfigured as Laurel K-3 which fed into Encinal 4-8, and Oak Knoll K-4 which fed into Hillview 5-8. Enrollment had dipped so low that there was discussion underway about closing Laurel School.The low enrollment situation and the impending closure of Laurel School contributed to the District's entertaining the idea of annexing the Willows area of Menlo Park, which was at that time part of the Ravenswood School District. In 1982, voters approved annexation of the Willows, and the first class of children from the Willows entered Menlo Park schools in 1984. Because there were more children east of El Camino than there was classroom space available, Willows children were bused over to Oak Knoll and Hillview.
Creation of Hillview Middle SchoolAt the same time, the national report on middle schools, “Caught In The Middle”, advocated a specialized curriculum for 6-8 graders and sparked interest in a 6-8 middle school configuration. The first discussion of creating a single middle school in the District occurred in 1985, but opposition to change led the Superintendent away from the middle school recommendation, and she tried to implement the program recommendations of “Caught In The Middle” into the existing configuration.Initially, the newly annexed families that were bused across town were delighted to be in the Menlo Park schools. But as new families moved into the Willows, pressure mounted for Willows children to attend a school closer to home. This pressure to redistribute enrollment helped spark renewed interest in the idea of turning Hillview into a central 6-8 middle school, and in February of 1988 the Board endorsed that direction. At that meeting the Board voted to delay implementation of the plan until September, 1989 to give parents/staff time to make the transition smoother. Some parents who were against the change used the time to continue to oppose it, using that November’s election as a campaign focus. Two new board members were elected in the November 1988, in large measure by people who thought they would defeat the middle school idea. But after the election, one of the newly elected members joined the rest of the board in endorsing the Hillview proposal, and 1989 became the first year Hillview served 6th-8th graders. 1990 was the first year that 5th graders from Oak Knoll and from Encinal came together to begin the new school.
Closing Fremont SchoolRising enrollment led the Board to reconsider configuration options in the '91-'92 school year including the possibility of reopening the Fremont School. There was even discussion of splitting up Hillview again, but by this time there was substantial support for Hillview as a central middle school, and the earlier concerns about children from the east side having to cross El Camino had dissipated. The Board decided to maintain the existing configuration and began planning for a bond measure. Fremont School was deemed too small to operate cost effectively, and the Board felt it would be too expensive to bring it to compliance with modern ADA and educational standards.The Board made the choice between allowing the City of Menlo Park to continue leasing Fremont, knowing that at the end of the contract, the City would take ownership of the school or eliminating plans for a new Multi-Purpose room from Hillview. The superintendent felt that if enrollment continued to rise that Encinal school had ample room to expand. So the Board voted to let go of the Fremont School in favor of expanding the facilities at the other four campuses.FacilitiesThe schools campuses were originally constructed between 1948 and 1959. Several additional classroom and facility conversions were made in the '60s and '70s.Encinal School sits on 10 acres in Atherton on the corner of Middlefield Road and Encinal Avenue. The property was purchased in 1947 and began planning an eight room school on the 4 acres that were initially purchased. This construction and site purchasing was planned around a "pay-as-you-go" financing program. However, during the late fall 1947 and the early Spring of 1948, it became apparent that the district was going to continue to grow and that a "pay as you go" financing program would not suffice to meet future needs, and so a Bond Building Program was begun.
Since 1948, four Bond issues and two special tax issues were placed on the ballot. In addition the district borrowed over three quarters of a million dollars from the State of California to assist in meeting the needs.
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Menlo Park was originally the home of the Muwekma Ohlone Indians. At that time they spoke a variety of languages, the Ohlone languages, belonging to the Coastanoan sub-family of the Utian language family. The Spaniards called these native dwellers "Coastanoans", or Coast-dwellers. The Ohlone lived off the land peacefully, gathering nuts, berries and fish from both the ocean and the bay. Because of the abundance of food they never developed a need for agriculture. Evidence of their civilization is still being unearthed on the Filoli estate in Woodside, and along San Francisquito Creek. Click here to learn more of the Ohlone from their tribal website.Spanish settlement came to this area in 1769 when the exploration party led by Don Gaspar de Portola camped near “El Palo Alto" (a tall redwood tree at the north end of the city near the San Francisquito Creek) after their discovery of San Francisco Bay. The colonization of the “Peninsula” began after the expedition of Juan Bautista De Anza passed through what is now Menlo Park on his way to establishing Mission Dolores and the Presidio of San Francisco in 1776.
The mission padres, explorers, military personnel, travelers and settlers were granted huge portions of land by the Spanish (and after 1822) the Mexican governments. The largest land grant on the Peninsula was the 35,260 acres Rancho de las Pulgas, awarded to presidio comandante Don Jose Dario Arguello in 1795 by Governor Diego de Borica. It extended from San Mateo Creek to San Francisquito Creek, and from San Francisco Bay to Cañada Road in Woodside. The Arguello family obtained legal title to their lands in 1853 and later subdivided them.
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In 1854 Menlo Park received its official name when two Irishmen, Dennis J. Oliver and D. C. McGlynn, whose wives were sisters, purchased 1,700 acres (some sources say it was 640 acres) bordering County Road, now El Camino Real, and built two houses with a common entrance. Across the drive, they erected a huge wooden gate with tall arches on which the name of their estate was printed in foot-high letters: “MENLO PARK”, with the date, August 1854. The men named their new homes after their old, in Menlough on Lough Corrib, County Galway, Ireland. No one knows whether they abbreviated the name to "Menlo" because the space on the arch precluded the longer version, because it was their way of Americanizing the name or because they just couldn't spell. When the railroad came through in 1863, the station had no name, it was just the end of the line, but it needed a designation. A railroad official looked over at the gates and decided that “MENLO PARK” would be appropriate, and so the name was officially adopted. This station is now California State Landmark No. 955, the oldest California station in continuous operation. (from city website)The gates stood on the west side of El Camino Real, about 500 feet from Santa Cruz Avenue until they were destroyed by a motorist in 1922.
For people to the north and south of San Francisquito Creek, May 1861 was a landmark--groundbreaking for the railroad. On Oct. 18, 1863, the first train traveled from San Francisco to Mayfield along the San Francisco and San Jose Railway. The line was bought by the Southern Pacific in 1868.
The railroad provided wealthy San Francisco barons faster transportation to their country homes--a round-trip ticket from Menlo Park to San Francisco cost $2.50 and a one-way ride took 80 minutes, compared to the stagecoach, which took four hours from Redwood City to San Francisco.
