Oak Knoll School: Fifty years of learning Oak Knoll School: Fifty years of learning (May 22, 2002)

'It was the center of our community,' says Jim MacKenzie, who 'opened' the school as a first-grader. His five siblings also went there.

By Marjorie Mader

Almanac Staff Writer

Jim MacKenzie clearly remembers when Oak Knoll School opened on Oak Knoll Lane in Menlo Park.

"I lost my playground and gained a school," he says, recalling how he and his friends had played on the open land, owned by Stanford University, that became the site of his neighborhood elementary school.

Jim, now an economics and psychology teacher at Menlo-Atherton High School, helped open Oak Knoll as a first-grader in September 1951.

The MacKenzie home was one of the first to be built on Oak Knoll Lane, which leads to the school. His grandfather, Almon Roth, controller at Stanford University, picked out the site where Jim's parents, Dr. Alec and Miriam MacKenzie, built their home in 1949. An added enticement for them, besides the heritage oaks, was news that an elementary school would soon be built nearby on the 8.9-acre site.

All six MacKenzie children -- David, the oldest, Jim, then Alexandra, Bill, Duncan and Donald -- went to Oak Knoll School.

Miriam MacKenzie, their mother, volunteered at the school and presided over the PTA. Dr. Alec MacKenzie was "team physician" for Oak Knoll's extensive sports program.
Buying the site

To acquire the Oak Knoll site, the Menlo Park City School District filed a condemnation suit in 1951 for the 8.9 acres, essentially the site of the gingerbread Victorian house, known as Cedro Cottage, and its gardens. This information comes from the article, "The Cottage by the Creek," featured in the Stanford Historical Society's spring 1985 newsletter, "Sandstone and Tile," written by Peter C. Allen. Mr. Allen, author of "Stanford: From the Foothills to the Bay," was university editor emeritus and a charter member of the Stanford Historical Society. The article's subhead reads: "Mrs. Stanford and Leland Junior loved it [the cottage]. And so did a succession of faculty and staff residents until 'progress' overran it in 1952."

The school district paid $39,228 for the site, according to records in the Menlo Park district's business office.
Early days

Records are sketchy about the early days, but some information about the school's past has been gleaned from school yearbooks.

When the school opened in 1951, there were 260 students, nine classrooms, a kindergarten room and a multi-purpose room, according to Richard Johnson, the first principal, who served in that capacity through 1963.

When completed as a K-8 school, the planned capacity would be 560 students. The first eighth-grade class graduated in 1958.

Ten years later in his principal's message in the school's 1961-62 yearbook, "The Mighty Oak," Mr. Johnson wrote: "This year we saw the completion of the opening of our final buildings to be built at Oak Knoll. These were our library, science room and music-art room." A total of 483 students were in classes, from kindergarten through eighth-grade, and the number of classrooms had grown to 18.
Great times

Jim MacKenzie remembers kids having "a great time" at Oak Knoll School. "It was the center for our community, and the parents valued education."

Kids would play on the school grounds after school and on weekends, and stage water balloon fights on the basketball courts, he says.

The school fielded lots of sports teams. The Menlo Park Recreation Department ran the athletic program, but the teams played on the school grounds.

The Cub Scout troop met at Oak Knoll, and Jim's father was the troop doctor.

A big event at Oak Knoll, recalls Jim, was the annual Halloween carnival, when a large number of booths were set up. The entire community turned out, many in costume, for the event that included a cakewalk. "I always wanted to win my mother's cake, but never did," he says with disappointment.

Jim remembers the lower grades as being "mostly socialization, but we learned a lot from the marvelous and nurturing teachers."

Longtime teacher Lillian Garner was exceptional, Jim recalls, and science teacher Howard Berger was inspirational.

Upon graduating from Oak Knoll in 1959, Jim says, he felt well prepared to enter Menlo-Atherton High School.

At that time, all three Menlo Park K-8 schools (Oak Knoll, Encinal and Hillview) graduated their eighth-graders at a joint ceremony in the old Burgess gym.
Change in focus

By the late 1970s, Oak Knoll's focus had changed to put more emphasis on academics, says Jim. "Expectations for children changed," agrees his wife, Jan Hanbery MacKenzie, who volunteered at the school as a parent when the MacKenzie children, Kenneth and Jean, went there in the 1970s.

Mrs. MacKenzie joined the school's faculty as a speech and language specialist in January 1986, shortly after Marilyn Franklin became Oak Knoll's sixth principal.

"Oak Knoll has a reputation as being a good place for children with special needs," says Mrs. MacKenzie, crediting Mrs. Franklin's developmental philosophy and her ability to help build teacher skills.

Librarian Jo Ann Arneson remembers that when she started working in the Menlo Park district in 1966, Oak Knoll was a K-8 school. She came to Oak Knoll in 1975 as a resource teacher and recalls with pleasure her work in the Learning Center, housed in the carpeted multi-use room, where small groups of students could choose activities in reading, math, language arts, art and computers after they had completed their classroom work. "It's important for children to learn how to make choices," says Ms. Arneson.
Ups and downs

Oak Knoll's enrollment has fluctuated widely over the years, from 462 students in grades K-4 in 1971 to a low of 246 students in 1981, when district trustees worried about closing a school. But from there Oak Knoll's enrollment kept growing, reaching its peak of 671 in 1996. (By 1989-90, fifth grade has been moved back to Oak Knoll as part of a reorganization that created a district-wide middle school at Hillview School.) Today, 619 students are enrolled at Oak Knoll.
Funding crisis

Proposition 13, passed by state voters in 1978, fundamentally changed how public schools were funded and hit hard at Oak Knoll, says Ms. Arneson. Art, music and enrichment programs got the axe as the district scrambled to keep the basic academic program intact. Parents organized the Menlo Park Lyceum with a variety of after-school enrichment classes to fill in the gap.

Now the enrichment programs are returning to the schools. Today all schools have specialists in art and music, a librarian, as well as a nurse and physical education teacher.

Funds to expand and strengthen programs have come from voter support of recent parcel tax measures and annual grants from the nonprofit Menlo Park-Atherton Education Foundation.

Voter support of a $22 million school bond measure in 1995 has enabled the district to update its schools by building or renovating classrooms, libraries and administration buildings.
Times change

Oak Knoll was mostly an all-white school until the late 1980s. Parents were listed as Mr. and Mrs. on class lists; there weren't any hyphenated names. Most mothers stayed at home, raised their children and volunteered at school.

Oak Knoll gained diversity, beginning in 1988, under the Tinsley transfer program, the result of a court settlement aimed at increasing racial integration of schools in the Sequoia Union High School District. Under the program, some students from the Ravenswood City School District, which is based in East Palo Alto, have voluntarily entered Oak Knoll each year as kindergartners and first-graders.
Teachers, volunteers

Teaching quality and high standards are Oak Knoll hallmarks, says Tony Yob, a student there from 1976 to 1980. Five years ago he returned as a teacher because, he says, he wanted to work with "such beautiful, professional and dedicated teachers."

Strong volunteer commitment is another school constant, says Mary Rudolph, a former PTA president and a member of the anniversary celebration committee. "Women who worked before having children now transfer some of their organizational and management skills to volunteer work at the school," she says.

Looking back, Jim MacKenzie calls it "amazing" that he "saw the real birth of Oak Knoll, the middle years, the deterioration of the physical plant, and now the renaissance.

E-mail Marjorie Mader at mmader@AlmanacNews.com