Welcome to Oleander Elementary's
60th Anniversary Blog!
What?! We had to report for school in 97 degree heat with NO AIRCONDITIONING?
[The above actual almanac information for this day and year was for Ontario, but Fontana was pretty close]
WHAT'S ALL THIS ABOUT 1955?
Let's focus on the WednesdaySeptember 14, 1955 date.
Dwight D. Eisenhower was in the White House, Rosa Parks was soon to make history three months later. There were 48 stars on our flag. Disneyland had just opened the previous July 17th, and...........
Oleander Elementary in Fontana, California was just getting started!
Was Oleander one of the schools in Fontana Unified School District? No! It was in an entity known as Fontana Elementary School District which had five other elementaries. The only high school in town was under the auspices of the Chaffey Union High School District. In fact, Fontana Unified didn't officially get its start until July 1, 1956.
The five other elementaries and their opening years were:
1. West Randall 1947
2. Redwood 1950 Why open so many schools
3. North Tamarind 1951 in such a short time frame?
4 Randall-Pepper 1951 The post WWII Baby Boom!
5. South Tamarind 1951
6. Oleander 1955
2. Redwood 1950 Why open so many schools
3. North Tamarind 1951 in such a short time frame?
4 Randall-Pepper 1951 The post WWII Baby Boom!
5. South Tamarind 1951
6. Oleander 1955
A side note about "unit" from the newspaper
article above: Not only did Fontana Schools
refer to schools as "units", they also referred
to them as "plants". Jearl Lisonbee, our very
first principal was chosen for the Oleander
"plant".
So what about Jearl Lisonbee?
On April 10, 1964, the Fontana Unified School District announced a NEW principal rotation program! Randall Canfield from South Tamarind was to rotate over to Oleander the next school year.
Mr. Lisonbee was assigned to North Tamarind.
Oleander opened on September 14th that year, but......
Did you know that Oleander wasn't quite finished on opening day? The "blueprint" below shows the cafetorium, the office, and three classrooms. The classrooms were a revolutionary "cluster" design which was the first to be tried in San Bernardino County.
Notice rooms 21-24 and rooms 17-20 are not yet built.
More on this later: the LIBRARY was at the east end of the cafetorium.
Below is what we looked like by the end of 1956 with the extra two pods of four classrooms each.
What about the current 2015 pod of 5th grade/library rooms?
It wasn't built until 1993.
[It should be noted that the quadrangle just off the office (as shown) wasn't constructed until 1993]
Note: the cafetorium wasn't finished on Opening Day. The Fontana Schools had to truck-in any lunches that were served.
Most students, however, "brown-bagged" it back in those days.
Double Sessions
This clip from September 27, 1956 tells the story that most Fontana schools had been on "double sessions" in the third grade. The bottom of the article mentions the extra eight classrooms at Oleander and a new Poplar school were due to be completed.
A Vintage Look at the Classrooms
This picture from the Fontana History Room at the Lewis Library shows room 23 with vaulted ceilings before "drop" ceilings were installed in the mid-1980s to accomodate air conditioning ducts.
This is the closest picture we can get to what the classrooms looked like in 1955. [Looking out the window, that's room 19 across the way
which was converted last year to a second computer lab.]
How Did All This Get Started?
Let's take a longer stroll down Memory Lane to see how Oleander came about. It's a much different tale than other Fontana schools.
From the Fontana History Room at the Lewis Library, these are two pictures of the old Sierra-Seville school in Fontana Heights as the area was called before Fontana was incorporated.
The school ran from 1923 to 1953.
Why is this important?
We needed to stroll past Sierra-Seville in 1953 because when land was needed to build Oleander School, two families who lived in the 200 block of S. Oleander Ave. were given the option to trade their ten acres of orange groves for a piece of the action in the city's tearing down Sierra-Seville School and putting up a new City Hall. That's right, Fontana's City Hall on Sierra is where the old
Sierra-Seville School was.
Fred Mow and L.I. Jecker traded the lot near the corner of Oleander and Valencia for part interest in the new City Hall land.
Fred Mow and L.I. Jecker traded the lot near the corner of Oleander and Valencia for part interest in the new City Hall land.
Notice in the article that the plot was valued at $20,000.
Check out the very bottom of this news clipping
from March 5, 1953 when the city administrators
authorized the land deal with Messrs. Mow and Jecker.
What's All This About Orange Groves?
A quote from 2015-2016 Oleander Counselor James Knott, who went to Oleander from kindergarten to 6th grade:
"When I went here, there were orange groves as far as the eye can see. They went from Oleander over to Sierra, from the railroad tracks up to Arrow and beyond. The groves extended over to Citrus, too."
There has been a lot going on at Oleander down through the years.
Brownies and Cub Scouts at Oleander
The Brownie Troop in 1956 actually received their charter at Oleander. Below is a clipping of a field trip the group undertook in June 1956.
Square Dancers at Oleander? Are You Jivin' Me?
[this clipping is from 1961 when the Starlighters started]
[this clipping from April 1969 at an Oleander PTA meeting
shows that the Oleander Square Dancers club had started
the previous January].
[Notice that as recently as 1969, the cafeteria was still being referred to as the "cafetorium"].
Adult Square Dancing was all the rage back in the early and mid-1960s. In fact, Fontana Unified School District Superintendent John Allen Fitz (super from 1939-1950) was a square dancer with a group called the Merry Whirls all through the 1940s. Various square dance groups in the community often used school cafeterias for their weekly meetings. Oleander and Redwood are two former square dance club locations.
You Go, Girls! Softball at Oleander!
The Bobby Sox League used to meet Mondays through Saturday at a baseball diamond that was in the far northwest corner of the PE field where the portables are now.
This is not the actual diamond, but Oleander "old timers" said that behind the backstop's spectator bleachers was a large eucalyptus tree. Of course, this was a long time before the new apartments next door were built.
Adult School at Oleander 1-26-67 newspaper clip
Notice at the bottom of the article that our former principal, Jearl Lisonbee, who had been transferred to North Tamarind in 1964, is listed as "adult school principal".
Sheep Shearing at Oleander?
When the Future Farmers of America club from Fontana High came in 1978, they put on a real sheep-shearing demonstration.
The Library Was Where?
When the "cafetorium" was built, the far east end of the room was Oleander's library. At the end of the serving windows today, you can see the wall "closet" which held a removable partition. In 1967, local artist Xavier Lopez painted a mural depicting literary characters and scenes. Long after the library had moved to its current location, the mural had fallen into disrepair and was painted over. Below is the before and after picture of where the mural used to be.
 |
New! In the summer of 2016, the mural artist's son, Xavier Lopez, Jr. sent us a color picture of the mural as it looked just before it was finished in 1967. It isn't a full view of the finished mural, but it's the best we can do. At the bottom of the picture, there is 8' tall plywood put up as a temporary shelter for the artist's ladders, buckets, etc. Check out the little, white banner with red writing which says "Once Upon a Time".[Special thanks to Mr. Palmer's daughter, Anne, who "photo-shopped" the image to make it sharper and brighter.]While we're on the subject of the library, did you know it moved around the campus three times?! Here's the story: |
Google Earth® images of Oleander 1994-2014
Oleander's Perennial Neighbor
The original 10 acre lot from 1955 to construct Oleander went AROUND this 1934 house at 8612 Oleander. The aerial view is plainly seen in the color picture above from Google Earth®
The write-up on Zillow.com says the old house has an "unfinished basement". What's a basement?
It should be noted that in the discussion of Mssrs. Mow and Jecker, although Oleander's lot was orange groves all around this house, they weren't the ones who lived there back in 1955. Both families lived in the 200 S. Oleander block down by Valley Way.
Flag Drill at Oleander
Right outside rooms 23/24 in November 1960, the 4th and 5th grade students had a Flag Drill in honor of Veterans Day, but read the fine print! The kids were marching with 48-star flags!
After the ceremony, the old flags were collected and
NEW 50-star flags were distributed by the
Daughters of the American Revolution.
Also from 1960........awwww.
You can do the math. This lad would be turning 60 this year!
[clipping from April 1960. Oleander probably had a "luau" in honor of Hawaii's new statehood.]
Below are three pictures with explanatory captions from an October 31, 1962 San Bernardino Sun write-up in which the headline read: "Kids Don't Run Out of Questions". The actual text and pictures took up almost a half page.
above: Fourth graders studying the scientific method
Third graders investigating Fontana History
Second graders working on phonics and spelling lessons
From February 1963, Oleander was spotlighted in the San Bernardino Sun for pioneering CCTV (closed circuit television) in the classroom. Oleander was the first school to try this new technique
in fifth and sixth grade classrooms.
This article was from February 14, 1963. The two below were from February 16.
Second grade students rehearsing for a music and arts Festival in May 1963
Below: from February 27, 1963, various grade-level students are working
on a developmental reading improvement program
Mr. Meredith teaches a herpetology lesson holding a 7-foot boa constrictor.
His class also has an alligator, some crayfish, and a raccoon.
(February 27, 1963)
A Phone Call to Behind the "Iron Curtain"
From early April 1963, 400 spectators watched a
phone call being made to Hungary.
From April 21, 1964, let's see a phonic lesson for first graders!
Below is "An Enchanting Tale" from June 2, 1966 in which students ranging from grades
two through sixth are rehearsing "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" to be put on at
Fontana Junior High the next night.
Below is a clipping from March 14, 1967 telling that students from Mr. Roberts' sixth grade class got to hear "Sounds from the Past" on an antique Victrola and an Edison Standard cylinder machine.
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