Westminster School District | |
---|---|
Address | |
14121 Cedarwood Street , Orange County , California , 92683United States | |
Coordinates | 33°45′27″N117°59′40″W / 33.7574°N 117.9945°W |
District information | |
Type | Public |
Grades | Pre-K through 8th |
Established | 1872 |
President | Jeremy Khalaf [1] |
Vice-president | Khanh Nguyen [1] |
Superintendent | Gunn Marie Hansen, Ph.D. [2] |
Asst. superintendent(s) | Rich Montgomery [3] |
Business administrator | Manuel Cardoso Jr. [4] |
Director of education | Richard J. Noblett, Ed.D. [5] |
Schools | 17 [6]
|
NCES District ID | 0642150 [6] |
Students and staff | |
Enrollment | 9,338 (2016-17) [6] |
Teachers | 394.06 FTE [6] |
Student–teacher ratio | 23.7 [6] |
Other information | |
Website | www |
Location of district office (blue map pin) within Orange County (shown in orange) |
The Westminster School District (WSD) is an elementary school district in Orange County, California, established in 1872 and headquartered in Westminster. [7] It operates schools in Westminster, Garden Grove, Huntington Beach, and Midway City. [8]
It operates elementary and middle schools. High school students attend schools in the Huntington Beach Union High School District as well as in the Garden Grove Unified School District. [9]
Racial segregation and discrimination against Mexican-American students by the school district resulted in a 1947 federal court case, Mendez v. Westminster, which ordered desegregation of the district's schools, so that Mexican and non-Mexican children attended the same schools. The plaintiffs had argued that Mexican-Americans were white and therefore should be allowed to attend the schools reserved for white children. The courts ruled that even if the students were not white, public schools "must be open to all children by unified school association regardless of lineage", except when segregation was explicitly authorized by state law. [10]
An important precursor to the desegregation of schools across the nation, the Westminster School District was the defendant in the groundbreaking litigation Mendez v. Westminster. Five Mexican-American families sued on behalf of thousands of students who were forced to attend substandard schools within the district. Ultimately, the court ordered the school district to allow students of Mexican descent to attend schools that had been previously reserved for only white students. [12]
The case proved to be an important training-ground for Brown v. Board of Education . Thurgood Marshall authored an amicus curiae brief on behalf of the NAACP in favor of integration and later argued the merits before the Supreme Court in Brown. After the Mendez case, Governor Earl Warren led the call for full integration of California public schools. Additionally, the untimely death of Chief Justice Vinson during the Court's recess and the ascendancy of Earl Warren to the position of Chief Justice made the favorable ruling in Brown possible.
In 2015, Westminster School District became the first school district in the State of California to offer a Vietnamese-English Dual Immersion Program. [13] [14] The program was first proposed in 2014 by Board Member Jamison Power, whose wife is Vietnamese-American. [15] [16] The program was implemented by the district's first minority Superintendent, Dr. Marian Kim-Phelps [17] and the Director of the Office of Language Acquisition, Dr. Renae Bryant, after the board consisting of Jamison Power, Mary Mangold, Amy Walsh, Dave Bridgewaters, and Penny Loomer unanimously approved moving forward with implementing the program. In 2017, the program received the prestigious California School Boards Association Golden Bell award. [18]
Orange County is a county located in the Los Angeles metropolitan area in Southern California, United States. As of the 2020 census, the population was 3,186,989, making it the third-most-populous county in California, the sixth-most-populous in the United States, and more populous than 19 American states and Washington, D.C. Although largely suburban, it is the second-most-densely-populated county in the state behind San Francisco County. The county's three most-populous cities are Anaheim, Santa Ana, and Irvine, each of which has a population exceeding 300,000. Santa Ana is also the county seat. Six cities in Orange County are on the Pacific coast: Seal Beach, Huntington Beach, Newport Beach, Laguna Beach, Dana Point, and San Clemente.
Fountain Valley is a suburban city in Orange County, California. The population was 57,047 at the 2020 census.
Garden Grove is a city in northern Orange County, California, United States. The population was 171,949 at the 2020 census. State Route 22, also known as the Garden Grove Freeway, passes through the city in an east–west direction. The western portion of the city is known as West Garden Grove.
Seal Beach is a coastal city in Orange County, California, United States. As of the 2020 census, the population was 25,242, up from 24,168 at the 2010 census.
Westminster is a city in western Orange County, California, United States. Westminster was founded in 1870 by Rev. Lemuel Webber as a Presbyterian temperance colony and was incorporated in 1957.
Mendez, et al v. Westminister [sic] School District of Orange County, et al, 64 F.Supp. 544, aff'd, 161 F.2d 774, was a 1947 federal court case that challenged Mexican remedial schools in four districts in Orange County, California. In its ruling, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in an en banc decision, held that the forced segregation of Mexican American students into separate "Mexican schools" was unconstitutional because as US District Court Judge Paul J. McCormick stated, "The evidence clearly shows that Spanish-speaking children are retarded in learning English by lack of exposure to its use because of segregation, and that commingling of the entire student body instills and develops a common cultural attitude among the school children which is imperative for the perpetuation of American institutions and ideals."
The Garden Grove Unified School District (GGUSD) is the 14th-largest school district in California as well as the third largest school district in Orange County. It includes boundaries in Anaheim, Cypress, Fountain Valley, Garden Grove, Santa Ana, Stanton, and Westminster.
Midway City is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) that forms part of the county land controlled by Orange County, California. The only area in Orange County that incorporates its chamber of commerce and homeowners association to act in concert like a city council, the area mostly is surrounded by Westminster with Huntington Beach bordering it on the southwest. Midway City was so named because it is horizontally midway between Seal Beach, to the west, and Santa Ana, to the east. The 2010 census listed the population as 8,485.
California's 46th congressional district is a congressional district in the U.S. state of California.
Sylvia Mendez is an American civil rights activist and retired nurse. At age eight, she played an instrumental role in the Mendez v. Westminster case, the landmark desegregation case of 1946. The case successfully ended de jure segregation in California and paved the way for integration and the American civil rights movement.
The Lemon Grove Case, commonly known as the Lemon Grove Incident, was the United States' first successful school desegregation case. The incident occurred in 1930 and 1931 in Lemon Grove, California, where the local school board attempted to build a separate school for children of Mexican origin. On March 30, 1931, the San Diego County Superior Court ruled that the local school board's attempt to segregate 75 Mexican and Mexican American elementary school children was a violation of California state laws because ethnic Mexicans were considered White under the state's Education Code. Although often overlooked in the history of school desegregation, the Lemon Grove Case is increasingly heralded as the first victory over segregative educational practices and as a testimony to the Mexican immigrant parents who effectively utilized the U.S. legal system to protect their children's rights.
Mendez vs. Westminster: For All the Children/Para Todos los Niños is a 2003 American documentary film written, directed, and produced by Sandra Robbie. The film features Sylvia Mendez, Robert L. Carter, and others.
California's 36th senatorial district is one of 40 California State Senate districts. It is currently represented by Vacant of.
Ocean View School District is a Pre-K to 8 grade elementary and middle school district located in Orange County, California. The Ocean View School District operates preschools, elementary and middle schools campuses in Huntington Beach, Fountain Valley, Midway City and Westminster.
Felicitas Gómez Martínez de Méndez was a Puerto Rican activist in the American civil rights movement. In 1946, Méndez and her husband, Gonzalo, led an educational civil rights battle that changed California and set an important legal precedent for ending de jure segregation in the United States. Their landmark desegregation case, known as Mendez v. Westminster, paved the way for meaningful integration and public-school reform.
Matthew Harper served as the 59th Mayor of Huntington Beach, California (2013-2014). Harper was elected to three terms to the Huntington Beach Union High School District Board of Trustees (1998-2010), one term to the Huntington Beach City Council (2010-2014) and two terms to the California State Assembly (2014-2018).
The Little Saigon district straddling the cities of Garden Grove and Westminster in Orange County, California is the largest Little Saigon in the United States. Saigon is the former name of the capital of the former South Vietnam, where a large number of first-generation Vietnamese immigrants originate.
Tyler Diep is a Vietnamese-American politician who served one term in the California State Assembly. Formerly a Republican, he represented the 72nd Assembly District, which encompasses parts of northern coastal Orange County which includes the cities of Huntington Beach, Garden Grove, Westminster, Fountain Valley, Seal Beach, Los Alamitos, and the unincorporated areas of Midway City and Rossmoor.
The Lydia D. Killefer School in Orange, California, was constructed in 1931 and listed in 2015 on the National Register of Historic Places administered by the National Park Service. The National Park Service notes the school's significance under Criterion A "as an example of institutional development associated with the early twentieth century growth of the Cypress Street Barrio in Orange". Killefer School also is noted by the National Park Service as significant under Criterion C (Architecture) as a rare extant "example of a Spanish Colonial Revival schoolhouse in Southern California" which survived the 1933 Long Beach earthquake.
14121 Cedarwood Street, Westminster, CA 92683