History
The Berkeley Unified School District was formed in 1936 by the merger of the city's elementary and high school districts. [1]
District administrative offices were originally (in the late 19th century) at or near the Kellogg School (above Shattuck Avenue between Center Street and Allston Way).
In 1927, a two-story administration building was completed at 2325 Milvia Street (at the corner of Durant Avenue, across from the grounds of Berkeley High School). Designated a seismic hazard after the 1933 Long Beach earthquake, it was put to non-school purposes beginning in 1940 [2] and was razed in 1946, the site becoming tennis courts for the high school. [3]
In January 1940, administrative offices were moved to 1414 Walnut Street, the original Garfield Jr. High, later University Elementary and the temporary site, after the 1923 fire, of Hillside Elementary.
In 1943, Ruth Acty was hired to teach kindergarten at Longfellow school and became the district's first African American teacher. [4]
In 1979, the district offices moved to the Old City Hall at 2134 Martin Luther King Way, and in 2012 to 2020 Bonar Street (originally Luther Burbank Junior High School, then Berkeley High School West Campus, and finally the Berkeley Adult School). [5]
Integration policy
During and following World War II, the African American population of Berkeley, as in the entire region, increased substantially. However, the practice of racial covenants in property title deeds, together with informal discrimination ("de facto"), had resulted in the black population being concentrated in certain sections of the city, primarily in the southwestern portions. Consequently, public schools serving those areas had a disproportionately high number of blacks while virtually no blacks attended the schools in other mostly white sections of the city. The only exception to this was Berkeley High School as it was, and remains, the only high school for the entire district.
Heightened local interest in the concerns and efforts of the civil rights movement, shared by many in the community, eventually led to the district adopting a school integration plan starting in the mid-1960s. The plan included the use of bussing to effect an integration of all the public schools in Berkeley. The first schools to be integrated under this plan were the junior high schools, Garfield and Willard, starting in the Fall of 1966. A third junior high school, Burbank, was closed, demolished and rebuilt (by 1968) as the high school's "West Campus", serving all the district's 9th-grade students.
Two years later, in the Fall of 1968, the elementary schools were integrated, utilizing the district's own expanded bus fleet.
Berkeley's integration plan, substantially modified, remains in place today. The Berkeley school district has evolved from a race-based to a geography-based integration plan. [6]
Governance
The school district is governed by the Berkeley Board of Education. It consists of five voting members (elected by the city's voters to four-year terms) and two non-voting student directors (elected by the district's high school students). [7]
The current five voting members are Ana Vasudeo, Ka'Dijah Brown, Jennifer Shanoski, Mike Chang, and Jen Corn. [8] In the 2024 election, Laura Babitt lost reelection and was replaced by Corn. Vasudeo was reelected. [9]
The current superintendent is Enikia Ford Morthel. [10]
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