Halls of Learning : . . . to an Enlarged 2-Room School for 27 Children

It took 111 years, but San Diego County’s last remaining one-room schoolhouse finally grew up Thursday. Now it’s got two--count ‘em, two--classrooms.

That’s not all. Spencer Valley School, situated halfway between Santa Ysabel and Julian, even has a brand new multipurpose auditorium, an art studio, a computer lab that can handle six students and, finally, a pair of bathrooms right there next to the classrooms instead of down by the creek.

So you can understand all the fanfare, speeches, singing and celebrating Thursday morning. The whole student body gathered for a historic photograph--around a single picnic table. The school has an enrollment of 27, kindergarten through sixth grade, and on Thursday a lot of them wore their Sunday best.

A parent spoke eloquently about how the Spencer Valley School has jumped from the 19th Century to the 21st Century--what with those computers and all--bypassing the 20th Century altogether.

A kindergarten teacher simply cried. Tears of joy, she said, because she was convinced Spencer Valley would retain the intimate educational romance of the good old days while enjoying some new amenities--like elbow room.

The kids sat patiently through the rhetoric and let off some steam climbing the live oaks, playing in the tree house out back, and snitching seconds on the cookies and cake.

And so it went in the hills below Julian, where even a little progress is big news.

Like a Family

“The concept of the one-room schoolhouse is of kids getting together, playing together and learning together, with the older kids helping the younger kids, as a community, a family. We’ll still be doing that. It’s just that now, we’ve got two classrooms to do it in,” said Jane Wingrove, who, as the Spencer Valley school district’s superintendent and principal, now has an office of her own instead of sharing what was little more than a closet in the old place with her secretary.

The expansion cost about $560,000, paid for by state school construction funds, and it seemed to solidify Spencer Valley as a school district for keeps. Over the years, the district has weathered criticism that it is obsolete and the children simply should be absorbed by the larger school district up the hill in Julian.

The original one-room schoolhouse was razed in 1905 and a new, 800-square-foot classroom was built; it was renovated in 1975 to meet state earthquake standards, but not at the expense of its belfry.

Architect Art Decker said the challenge of the expansion was to add about 5,400 square feet to the school without having the new additions overwhelm its historical centerpiece.

To that end, Decker designed not one large add-on but four separate, smaller pods, revolving around a courtyard and connected by covered walkways, with the oldest classroom holding the place of honor at the front.

He maintained the architectural integrity of the old schoolhouse by calling for hardwood floors, double-hung windows with wood frames, paneled doors and exterior wood siding on the new buildings. There’s a working pot-bellied stove in Wingrove’s office, near a roll-top desk.

“It was a balancing act, to retain the flavor of the old school while providing for educational needs,” Decker said.

No Longer Cramped

School board member Tom Helmantoler told students and parents: “Today marks the passage of an era, from time past to present to the future, all at once. There no longer will be a one-room school, and that’s probably for the better.”

He noted that the old place was awfully cramped: The fire marshal would have a fit when all those people crammed in that one classroom for the Christmas pageant, and the kids grew restless on rainy and snowy days when they couldn’t go outside and were stuck in that same, cramped room. Now, they’ve at least got the multipurpose room, or can retreat to the reading loft in the new classroom.

To those who thought the loss of the one-room schoolhouse was a desecration, Helmantoler said, “The one-room atmosphere, that family feeling, isn’t going to end simply because we have a nicer facility.”

Parent Peter Bergstrom noted, “We have the heart and soul of a 19th-Century school and, with resources and technology, have transcended the 20th Century . . . and have created a model of a 21st-Century school.”

Wingrove boasted that, with the new-and-improved features coupled with its existing and enviable student-teacher ratio (two credentialed teachers, two teacher aides and specialists in music, art, science and computers, all for just 27 students) a lot of education is being generated in the little school.

Will parents move to the area to take advantage of Spencer Valley, and ruin the very advantages they hoped to tap?

“Well, we have room now for 50 students--75 if we had to convert the art room--but I don’t expect everyone to be moving up to the hills,” Wingrove said.

Anne Ritchie Farley, who graduated from Spencer Valley in 1925 and whose four children and five grandchildren also have graduated from the school, beamed at the new facility. She said she was on “Cloud Nine.”

Louis Juch, 88, who graduated from Spencer Valley in 1912 and remembers hauling wood and water for his older brother, who was a teacher at the school, said he wasn’t shedding any tears over the expansion.

“I’m not complaining,” Juch said. “We’ve always got to be thinking ahead. And the rate this school’s been growing, this auditorium will probably last us a few years.”