History of Palo Alto's schools

Few things shape Palo Alto as much as its public schools. Families move here for them, house prices track them and school board meetings can draw bigger crowds than the City Council. The district's story is one of boom and bust: a frontier schoolhouse, a fast-growing college town, a postwar flood of children, a steep decline that closed a high school and a long climb back.

This page follows that story from the first classes in Mayfield to the district of 2026. Facts come from the Palo Alto Unified School District's own history, Wikipedia, local markers and our longer pages on people and schools. For today's schools and enrollment, see our guide to Palo Alto public schools.

Mayfield's first schools

Schooling here began in Mayfield, the roadhouse town that grew up along El Camino Real in the 1850s. A marker at the playing fields on Page Mill Road describes its first school as a two-room log cabin built in 1855 that the town soon outgrew. A second marker, placed in 1969 by the city and the Palo Alto Historical Association at Birch Street and Sherman Avenue, says that first school, nicknamed the Herring Box School, stood under a great live oak nearby. Two later schools went up on the same block.

The town's best school building came last. Construction of a new Mayfield grammar school began in 1923 on the site of today's playing fields. The marker calls it "Mayfield's finest public building." Designed by Henry C. Smith in the Spanish Colonial style, it served as an elementary school until 1966 and housed other programs until it was torn down in 1982. Our page on Mayfield covers the town.

The 1893 schoolhouse

Palo Alto itself was barely a town when parents demanded a school. The district gives March 20, 1893, as its founding date. That September its first school opened with two teachers and 70 pupils in a temporary two-room schoolhouse that, according to PaloAltoHistory.org, residents built in four days.

Anna Zschokke, a widow who had arrived with three children, led the push. She lobbied for the first schoolhouse, served as a school trustee and paid for an early high school building. Local histories call her the Mother of the Palo Alto schools. Our page on Anna Zschokke tells her story.

A high school for the town

Palo Alto High School traces its roots to 1894, when it opened as a private school with three teachers, 24 students and tuition of $6 a month in two upstairs rooms of the Channing Avenue Grammar School. The main steps after that:

1. About 1897: Zschokke mortgages her home to fund a three-room high school at 524 Forest Avenue near Cowper Street.
2. 1900: Voters approve a bond and a new building rises at Channing Avenue and Webster Street, where the Channing House retirement community stands today.
3. 1917: Voters approve a $200,000 bond for a new campus.
4. December 24, 1918: Staff, students and the school board march from Channing to the new campus at Embarcadero Road and El Camino Real.

The new school served more than one town. Walter Hays, as president of the Board of Education, helped Palo Alto, Mayfield and Stanford agree on a site for a union high school on land that came from Stanford. Sources give both December 1918 and 1919 for its opening. Our Paly page covers the campus and its traditions.

The postwar boom

After World War II the district could hardly build fast enough. Palo Alto's population went from 16,774 in 1940 to 52,287 in 1960. Superintendent Henry M. Gunn, who served from 1950 to 1961, oversaw growth from about 5,500 students to more than 14,000. The city's history page says Palo Alto opened elementary schools at a rate of about one a year in the 1950s.

• 1953: Wilbur Junior High opens. It is today's Jane Lathrop Stanford Middle School.
• 1956: Cubberley High School opens at 4000 Middlefield Road, named for Ellwood P. Cubberley, Stanford's first dean of education.
• 1960: Escondido Elementary opens near Stanford.
• 1964: Gunn High School opens on land bought from Stanford, with about 600 students. See our Gunn High School page.
• 1970: Nixon Elementary opens.

Enrollment peaked in 1967. The district gives a figure of 15,575 and Wikipedia gives 15,576. That year PAUSD ran 22 elementary schools, three junior highs and three high schools. Our page on postwar growth explains the tracts and annexations that filled them.

Decline and closures

The boom ended as fast as it began. The baby boom generation grew up and fewer children followed. Then Proposition 13 cut property tax revenue in 1978. The district responded by closing schools:

The Cubberley decision was the most bitter. The school board voted 3 to 2 on February 6, 1979, to close it. Supporters won a lower court ruling for a referendum, but an appeals court overturned it on May 30, 1979. About 950 students moved to Gunn or Paly that fall. Our Cubberley High School page explains why Cubberley closed rather than Gunn. In 1985 Wilbur merged with Jordan and took the name Jane Lathrop Stanford. By 1989 enrollment had fallen to 7,452 and the district ran 11 elementary schools, one middle school and two high schools.

The Tinsley program

While Palo Alto was closing schools, families next door were in court. Parents in the Ravenswood City School District, which serves East Palo Alto, sued surrounding districts in the 1970s in a case led by Margaret Tinsley. It was settled after almost ten years. PAUSD dates its Voluntary Transfer Program, known as the Tinsley Program, to 1986. Each year it places 60 new Ravenswood students, entering transitional kindergarten through second grade, in Palo Alto schools. Our page on African American history covers the case and its roots.

The rebound

From the 1990s enrollment climbed again and the district reopened what it had closed. Jordan reopened in 1991. Barron Park Elementary, the district's twelfth elementary school, opened in September 1998. Terman reopened in 2001 as the third middle school. Hoover Elementary, founded in 1974, moved into a rebuilt campus on January 22, 2026.

The district also reckoned with names. David Starr Jordan and Lewis Terman, both honored on middle schools, had promoted eugenics. In March 2017 the board voted to drop their names. On March 27, 2018, it voted 5 to 0 for new ones, effective in 2018 to 2019. Jordan became Frank S. Greene Jr. Middle School and Terman became Ellen Fletcher Middle School.

The district in 2026

PAUSD now runs 12 elementary schools, three middle schools and three high schools for more than 10,200 students, along with an adult school and a hospital school. The third high school, Palo Alto Middle College High School, opened in fall 2024 on the Foothill College campus. The old Cubberley campus is shared by the city and the district and plans to rebuild it are under discussion. See our page on the Cubberley Community Center.

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