Fontana Unified School District's 60th Anniversary

[The blog below was published online in July 2016. Here's the announcement of the 60th anniversary celebration]

On May 10, 2017, the Fontana Unified School District held a 60th anniversary celebration at the district board room. Keynote speaker Michael Garcia spoke eloquently about the District's distinguished history. Pam Kaptain had put together a slide show projected on the big screen. Chef Gilbert and his crew provided the refreshments.

The festivities wouldn't have been complete without visiting dignitaries which included several past superintendents such as Cali Binks, Dr. Karen Harshman, Anthony Lardieri, and former board members Kathy Binks, Laura Abernathy Mancha, and Dr. Wayne Ruble . Musical entertainment was provided by this blog's author, Bob Palmer, who played his dulcimer.


front row: Visiting Dignitaries (all listed above in order) back row: FUSD School Board

Yummmm.

16 days prior to retiring from FUSD, Bob Palmer played his mountain dulcimer at the party.

Now, on with the blog.........

Fontana Unified School District Turns 60!

Fontana Herald newsclipping 1923 from Nelda Van Engen's 1988 Masters thesis

As per this 1923 agreement with the Chaffey Union High School District, the Fontana Schools would manage the elementary school and the junior high, and would bus the high schoolers twelve miles west to Chaffey High on the corner of Euclid and 5th in Ontario every day.

side note:

By 1952, the Chaffey Union High School District covered some 200 square miles drawing students from elementary school districts in Alta Loma, Cucamonga, Etiwanda, Guasti, Mt. Baldy, Mountain View, Ontario, Upland, and Fontana.

source: Nelda Van Engen's 1988 Masters thesis

The Fontana Unified School District in Fontana officially became unified by breaking away from the Chaffey Union High School District in Ontario on July 1, 1956. Why?

The first reason was because ever since 1923, Fontana Schools high school students were bused by Chaffey to Ontario. Before WWII, Fontana Schools provided 1/7th of the Chaffey High enrollment. That jumped to 1/4th during WWII and was 30% at the end of the war. In 1949, there were 780 students being bused every day to Chaffey in Ontario in a fleet of 15 buses at a cost of $45,000 annually.

The second reason to secede from the CUHSD was precious education-related bond issues which would arise from time to time, and Fontana residents watched as bond issues they had voted for pass and the funds split up by the CUHSD (and other entities).

The Fontana folks felt short-changed. An example is that the large Chaffey Union needed some bond monies for upgrading Upland High School (and a myriad of other expenditures) which left Fontana Schools holding an emptier bag than projected.

                                              source: Nelda Van Engen's CSUSB Masters thesis 1988

                                  source: Nelda Van Engen's CSUSB Masters thesis 1988

It is a little hard to read, but the general consensus in 1949 was
-------"What are we getting out of this?" "We have double-sessions
and substandard facilities. We're getting the short end of the
   stick."
-------"Let's see if this bond issue passes. We'll build us a new high
school and tell Chaffey we're backing out of the Union HS
deal."

Unfortunately, that 1949 bond issue failed.

The Fontana Schools FINALLY made the break from Chaffey on July 1, 1956.

The first mention of a USD in the San Bernardino Sun was on December 17, 1954. Here is the clip that finally got the divorce rolling:

Chapter 1: 1956 at-a-glance

Take a Trip Down Memory Lane

Before we expound on the scintillating story of how FUSD became unified, we'll set the stage by illustrating the environment of the mid-fifties.

Technically, July 1st was a Sunday sixty years ago. The fledgling district probably popped the corks on the champagne the following day, Monday July 2nd.
The weather was 83 degrees that day.

Were the students hot? No. The one junior high and the seven elementary schools were off for the summer.

          How Did You Get to the new F.U.S.D. in July 1956?

If you wanted to visit any of the Fontana Unified School District schools on Monday July 2, 1956,
did you get off the I-10 freeway at Sierra and go north? Nope. Here's the story:

What were the prices like?

What was going on in 1956?

Chapter 2: Starting from the Beginning of the Township

Just like in the movies, we need to have a FLASHBACK to the earliest days in Fontana before we get to the unification year of 1956. How about starting with 1893?

The Rosena Unified School District
There's no such thing, but we could've been! The area known as Fontana today was christened ROSENA a long time before any one-room schoolhouses could be built.

Los Angeles Herald April 6, 1893

Los Angeles Herald April 6, 1893

This map shows the whole valley originally designated Rosena. A cartographer left the Rosena name in place and wrote (now Fontana). Notice the area in the northwest called Grapeland.
That is Etiwanda today.

                                              map courtesy of Fontana History Room at the Lewis Library

Notice the name in the southwest corner of the map? Declezville? Huh? That was a little rock quarry town down by where Southridge is today. In fact, Fontana Schools used to have a school for Mexican children called Declez School. [It was quite common in those days to segregate such populations. Communities such as Ontario, (one of the first), Riverside, Lemon Grove, San Dimas, Cucamonga, and Santa Ana among many others had "Mexican" schools.]
                                            source: Cal State Masters thesis by Nelda Van Engen 1988

What's in a name? Rosena? Orange Park? Something else?
The Rosena name stuck for a while, then somebody wanted to name the area Orange Park. Here's the article explaining why they'd better stay with Rosena:

                                                                   Los Angeles Herald June 18, 1893

                 The railway already had Orange, California on its stops,
                        so let's stick with ROSENA.

Need more proof that Rosena actually existed? Check out this cute, little crime report from
February 2, 1911:

Hold the phone! Somebody had the sour idea of naming the area LEMONIS in keeping with a citrus theme. The article below was dated April 1893 and the one above in which they decided to stay with Rosena was June 1883.

The Daily Courier April 14, 1893

The West Rialto school house
(on the corner of Foothill and Locust)
Is this where the "township" of Fontana sent its schoolkids?

Unfortunately, these are undated pictures.

Chapter III of "The History of Rialto",1976, by Martha G. Stoebe showed that the West Rialto school above was part of a new West Rialto school district which formed out of the downtown Rialto Brooke District in 1892. "During the next few years, the school had as many as 40 pupils, but people began to move away because of a lack of water, and by 1901, there was only one child left in the school." The West Rialto District lapsed.

Apparently, the old school was revived, somewhat, but little is known of how many pupils and teachers there were prior to the opening of the Sierra-Seville school in 1913.

Below is a poem published May 29, 1898. It's not written about the grand old lady pictured above who sat silent and dusty after Fontana opened Sierra-Seville school in 1913, but it's a fitting tribute.

It came to pass that the good folks of West Rialto wanted to become part of the township. That's why the Sierra-Seville school pictures are emblazoned with Fontana Heights.

All the confusion about names and the official switch from Rosena to FONTANA ended in 1913 when Azarial Blanchard Miller (A.B. Miller, (1878-1941) of the Fontana Company renamed the bustling township "Fontana".
The party for the new city was held Saturday June 7, 1913 on the corner of Sierra and Arrow with 4,000 people attending. Mrs. Eliza Blanchard Miller, A.B. Miller's mother, struck the base of a flagpole with a bottle of Fontana's own grape juice and said,
" I christen thee Fontana."

The Fontana township's first school

San Bernardino Sun September 28, 1913

Below is the new school house on the corner of Sierra and Seville where the Fontana City Hall is now located. Built for $18,000,
the school operated from 1913 to 1953.

                                        photo courtesy of Fontana History Room at the Lewis Library



     Here is the artist's rendering of the proposed school.


author's note: There was nothing in this research which mentioned a name change from Fontana Heights
                          to Sierra-Seville, but there it is in big, raised letters.

The architect was Irving J. Gill (1870-1936) who was renowned in the San Diego area for designing concrete buildings such as this one. Take a few minutes sometime and search Irving J. Gill and go straight to IMAGES to see a lot of his work. He sure liked his arches!

side note:
Later in this history, there is mention that the Fontana Schools had gotten so overcrowded with limited space that classes were actually held on the long walkway behind those arches!

The Demise of Sierra-Seville School
The Sierra-Seville school was deemed "unsafe" in the event of an earthquake and ceased operations as a school in 1953. The next year, two Fontana families named Jeckel and Mow jointly traded their ten-acre orange grove lot on Oleander Avenue south of Arrow for a controlling interest in the new city hall site where Sierra-Seville was located. The result was that the Fontana Schools' sixth elementary, Oleander, was able to be built in 1955. Oleander was the last school to be built before the dissolution of the UNION. The UNION. The UNION. The UNION.

Chapter 3: The Union

Union? What Union?

In the 1919 article below, a discussion was held regarding the high school component to bring in teachers from surrounding districts and possibly form a "union" HS district. This arrangement was under the auspices of San Bernardino Schools which had Colton and Rialto. As Fontana Schools grew, it was eventually necessary to bus the high schoolers to another location. Would it be San Bernardino? The key to this article is in paragraph four in which Fontana Schools might be joining with San Bernardino, Bloomington, and Rialto.

San Bernardino Sun June 3, 1919

Did this idea of a union high school district to the east become reality? No.
Fontana Schools wound up being part of the Chaffey Union High School District in Ontario.
From a pamphlet obtained from the archives of Chaffey High School entitled
"High School Education in the Fontana Area" put out by the Chaffey Union High School District, here are two pages explaining the history from 1921 to 1923. Notice section 3 which states that Chaffey will provide transportation for Fontana high schoolers.

Page two of the pamphlet followed the one above and mentioned that Chaffey will provide bus transportation for the Fontana Schools high schoolers.

Chaffey Union HIGH SCHOOL District was such a good idea to the Chaffey folks that they proposed a Chaffey JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL District on February 5, 1929, but the idea was shot down by the California Education Code which said "that particular cooperative elementary and secondary relationship" wasn't permitted. Sounds like a big power grab, doesn't it?

Speaking of grabbing, here is a story of the Fontana Schools looking toward the future and knowing they would need more land.

Better Grab It While You Can

Dateline: January 26, 1923

By 1923, Fontana Schools was in cahoots with the Chaffey Union High School District in Ontario

Fontana Schools petitioned the San Bernardino County Schools for a boundary change with next-door Bloomington that would have annexed a plot of land worth $500,000. County super Ida Collins objected. A February 4th article in the Sun announced that Bloomington had petitioned to stop Fontana from the egregious land grab. How did it turn out? In a 4:1 vote, the county supes voted to give a $200,000 assessed parcel to Fontana which affected not only Bloomington School District, but Colton Unified, too. The property went to Fontana Schools and the Chaffey Union High School District.

Fontana eventually won the argument and the
Bloomington area was annexed.

Chapter 4: The Important Issue of Bussing Early Fontana School Busses

Fontana Schools bused students to schools, of course.

(left) Check out the NOT FONTANA picture of a school bus in motion in New Mexico.

With its "trolley" style roof, doesn't it look like the Fontana Schools bus featured below?

It must have been quite a ride!

This vintage, undated picture featured in a San Bernardino Sun retrospective back on August 16, 1959.
The bus was actually air conditioned.....when the students rolled up the canvasses which covered the windows. Research indicates that this old bus might be a Ford model AA.
What about the two guys on the far right wearing "Smoky" hats? Were those bus driver uniforms?
Side note: look how much ivy has covered the wall since the school was built in 1913.

Several newspaper articles from the 20's and 30's list extensive BUS ROUTES around the valley and the times students will be picked up.
In addition to the primary and intermediate grades needing a ride to school from outlying areas of the township, the high school-age students were bussed every day twelve miles west to Ontario (more on that later). Here is a picture of one of the early buses.
Look closely: it's actually marked Fontana Schools.

                                                 photo courtesy of Fontana History Room at the Lewis Library

      Take a few minutes for some levity. The column below ran in the newspaper March 31, 1957.
It caught the watchful eyes of the wire services and went VIRAL before going viral was even a "thing".  In newspaper parlance, the story had "legs".
      The same article was printed in Hazelton, PA, Greenwood, SC, Port Angeles, WA, Hammond, IN, Kingston, NY, Fairbanks, AK, East Liverpool, OH, Alamagordo, NM, Garden City, KS, Janesville, WI, Sedalia, MO, Hagerstown, MD, Decatur, IL, Bryan, TX, and Atchison, KS.

San Bernardino Sun March 31, 1957

Are we through with the buses? Not quite.

When Fontana High School opened for the 1952-53 school year with 725 students, certain buildings were not ready for occupancy due to a steel shortage and a work slowdown. Officials toyed with the idea of holding classrooms in canvas tents but opted to put ten buses on the lot to serve as classrooms!

San Bernardino Sun September 14, 1953

Here's an undated picture of a Chaffey bus, probably from the 1940s. It's easy to imagine that a Fontana Schools bus would be similar.

Chapter 5: The Superintendents of Fontana Schools

Who Ran the Show in the Earliest Days? The Preunification Superintendents

Frank Fanning was born in 1874 in Arkansas, moved to Norwalk, CA, and married Rose Andrews in 1897. He was a teacher in Norwalk in 1897. In 1905, he was listed as Professor Frank Fanning in Ontario Schools. In 1921, Professor Fanning and his wife were listed as living in Calexico.
He came to Fontana Schools (listed in the paper as June 6, 1925. In an article in the San Bernardino Sun June 20, 1926, San Bernardino County Schools Superintendent Ida M. Collins wrote that the Fontana Schools were no longer "rural" schools and needed a superintendent. Frank Fanning got the job. In July 1927, he was picked to be the principal of the new Fontana Junior High which opened the following year. Like most of Fontana Schools' supers, Mr. Fanning was quite active. He was in Rotary, was superintendent of a vacation bible school, sat on the board of the Knights of Columbus, and later became a "precinct 5 judge". He retired in 1928. In his 1935 obituary, his wife, Rose, (1897-1942), was listed as one of Fontana's "pioneers". The couple had no children.

The picture above of Mr. Fanning was cropped from a group photo taken with fellow teachers at Fontana Junior High. Luckily, he was standing on the far right of the photo which facilitated the cropping. That photo is courtesy of the Fontana History Room at the Lewis Library. Here's another pic cropped from a 1926 Fontana Rotary Club group photo.

side note: It's interesting that Fontana Schools actually had a superintendent who was born only nine years after the Civil War.

In early 1925, William Ward Leis was a principal at Lark Ellen school in Covina.

He came to Fontana Schools August 27, 1927. By May 31. 1928, he was principal of Fontana Junior High. On October 31, 1928 was one of six teachers to get a lifetime teaching diplomas. He was appointed principal as well as superintendent of Fontana Schools September 9, 1928. It's a long story, but Mr. Leis resigned suddenly May 3, 1930. The resignation was effective July 31, 1930.

The San Bernardino Sun article said that the board of three trustees and Mr. Ward resigned "after apparently being at direct odds with a large group in the community." Honestly, the article doesn't say any more than that!

By 1932, Mr. Ward was working for the Pasadena School system, got his doctorate in 1960, and retired in Pasadena in 1968.

Again, like all the supers, Mr. Leis was a busy bee. He started a rabbit raising club, served as a beauty contest manager, sat on a committee to start Spanish language courses. He and his wife, Susan, had three children. The first was born in July 1927 just before they came to Fontana.

Sadly, his wife died before he did, passing away in 1968.

This author is deeply indebted to Ward W. Leis' son, Donald, who drove all the way out to Fontana to deliver two pictures of his father taken around the time he was our superintendent. Prior to that, the Fontana Unified School District archives didn't have a picture of Mr. Ward W. Leis.

Taking over for Ward W. Leis in 1930 was
Richard Gerald Mitchell.

Mr. Mitchell taught elementary school in Santa Ana before going to Ontario. His father was a superintendent of public schools in Orange County. Mr. Mitchell got his BA from UCLA an his MA from U.C. Berkeley. Dr. Merton E. Hill, principal at Chaffey in Ontario recommended Mr. Mitchell to the Fontana officials. An article dated October 1, 1930 lists him as superintendent, but doesn't say he also taught school like Fanning and Leis did. He and his wife, Marguerite, had a baby boy named Gerald in 1936 and a girl named Carol in 1937. A newspaper article dated June 13, 1939 announced that a successor was coming to Fontana (John Allen Fitz) because Mr. Mitchell was moving to Beverly Hills to be an assistant principal. The family was listed as living in Beverly Hills in 1940 and had moved to Honolulu, Hawaii in 1953. Sadly, his wife preceded him in death in July 1990.

R.G. Mitchell died in Newport Beach on April 1, 2001 at the age of 99.

The longest-serving preunification superintendent going eleven years from 1939 to 1950 was John Allen Fitz. He was born in 1908 in Iowa and died June 12, 1982 at the age of 74.

From Iowa, the family moved out to Orange County where Mr. Fitz graduated from Santa Ana College in 1928. His father, Stephen Fitz, was a county superintendent in Orange County and has a middle school named after him. John Allen Fitz went to Berkeley for his BA in 1930. His first teaching job was in Santa Barbara and later was a science teacher at the high school in Red Bluff in 1936. He married his wife, Helen, in the mid-1930s and had two daughters and a son. Also in the 30's, Mr. Fitz was curriculum supervisor at El Centro Schools in Imperial County. He got his MA from University of California in 1939 shortly before coming to Fontana. When he arrived, he quickly joined the Rotary and was on the board of the Chamber of Commerce, and worked with the Boy Scouts. Mr. Fitz almost always was referred to by all three names.

In addition to being superintendent, he was principal of the branch high school. The branch high school? Yes. It was over at Chaffey in Ontario. The ONLY picture (above) of John Allen Fitz was in a group photo in a 1942 yearbook of the Chaffey teachers who were assigned to the Fontana high schoolers who were bussed twelve miles to Chaffey every day.

Are you ready for this from August 31, 1941?

Overcrowding at Fontana Schools in 1943? Check this out:

How about this quirky little article from January 16, 1946 ........and she wasn't even texting

In addition to his many other activities, John and his wife, Helen, were members of a square dance club called the "Merry Whirls" which met weekly at Redwood Elementary.

Superintendent Fitz resigned in 1950 to get his PhD at Denver University in Colorado in 1955.

Dr. Fitz later went on to work for the U.S. State Department working with educational entities in Ethiopia, Iran, and Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe).

[side note: a post-unification superintendent from the 1960s, Dr. Denzil E. Widel, who won't be profiled in this blog, also worked for the State Department. While still assistant superintendent in 1959, he went on sabbatical for two years to work as a special education advisor in Turkey].

[editor's note: The search for any photos of John Allen Fitz led me to believe that he was a "phantom". In eleven years as superintendent, there were no pictures in the local newspapers. Chamber of Commerce and Rotary had none. An exhaustive search of the yearbooks and alumni associations of the schools he attended (Santa Ana College, Berkeley, USC, Denver University) as well as the various schools at which he worked before coming to Fontana yielded nothing. Mr. Fitz is featured in three "family trees" on Ancestry.com which fail to have pictures, as well. This author finally went over to Chaffey High in Ontario and plowed through almost a dozen yearbooks to find only one picture from 1942.]

There is another picture of A.J. Willhoit currently on the FUSD website, but this pic is from 1950 when he was appointed superintendent.

A.J. must have really liked the moniker "A.J." because in dozens of newspaper references, including his 2007 obituary, there was no record of what the A.J. stood for. The missing puzzle piece came in 1966 when he unsuccessfully ran for City Council, and his name legally had to be spelled out for the voters:
Amos Jesse Willhoit. He later ran for Mayor in 1982 coming in fourth place.
As it turns out, Amos Jesse Willhoit was a JUNIOR. To date, no recorded listing of his name has listed him as jr.

A.J. Willhoit, Jr. was born in Tennessee. He had a wife named Winnabel who was a native of Alberquerque. She preceded him in death in 1998.

What little information we have on him is that by 1949, he was assistant superintendent under John Allen Fitz. Also in 1949, he was commander of the American Legion 262 and was working on the National Living War Memorial. He accepted the appointment to superintendent August 2, 1950.

On A.J.'s watch on July 30, 1950, the Fontana Schools purchased three lots in town for a total of $45,900 which were to become Randall-Pepper, North Tamarind, and South Tamarind schools.

Here's something else that came out on A.J. Willhoit's watch October 25, 1950

The lack of adequate space and constant overcrowding in the 1940s and early 1950s was quite a problem. This archive has a newspaper clipping which states that after three schools listed below were opened, it was the first time since before World War II that there wasn't some sort of double sessions and/or combination classes in the Fontana Schools.

Notice in the list below that the schools couldn't even wait until the next

school year started in September.

A.J. Willhoit went on to be an assistant superintendent under Roland Ingraham in 1961, and was principal of the Adult School in 1978. He was assistant principal of Fontana High in 1980 at the time he retired from FUSD. By February 1981, he had gotten his doctorate.

Dr. Willhoit died in Fontana on August 24, 2007.

Side Note: Strange historical record-keeping is afoot in this retrospective. In dozens of newspaper articles collected, there is yet to be found a "farewell John Allen Fitz" column after his eleven years of dedicated service to Fontana Schools. Likewise, there's no "Welcome A.J. Willhoit" when Mr. Willhoit took the helm.
More? Okay.
After the July 1956 UNIFICATION, new Superintendent Ferd J. Kiesel suddenly appears in print without any formal notice in the daily papers that he had been appointed and/or officially welcomed.

Chapter 6: The Growth of Schools

In 1942, Fontana Schools was broken up into two "zones",
A and B with "A" being north of the LR 26 "freeway"
and "B" in the south.

Fontana Schools 1913 to 1956 At-a-Glance

Let's take a closer look at the schools in both Zone A and Zone B

In case you were wondering, the first Fontana school which

opened after the 1956 unification was Poplar in January 1957.

The 1929 entry above re: Declez says that the site
needed its own page.

side note: The Fontana Schools bought the Declez school from Fontana Farms
                   in a bond issue deal that was passed March 13, 1927. That is when Declez was
                   moved off the hog farm and relocated to Slover near Live Oak.

......and finally, the South Fontana schools
         (Zone B) story concludes

             Pre-unification schools north of the LR 26 in Zone A
1928 Fontana Jr. High principal was Frank Fanning, also Fontana Schools' first Superintendent.
1947 Randall School's first principal was Minnie Nightwine (b: 2-3-1890 d: 9-15-72) who had
   been principal at South Fontana back in 1936. Randall was renamed West Randall in 1951.
1950 Redwood School's first principal was Helen Gross. She came to the Fontana Schools from
Needles in 1941. [Ancestry.com didn't have birth/death info on her].
1951 East Randall's first principal was Minnie Nightwine (formerly of West Randall) East Randall
         soon became Randall-Pepper.
         North Tamarind's first principal was Talmadge Herbert (b: 2-27-20 d: 4-4-09) who later
    went to Randall-Pepper then on to Fontana Middle in 1967. In 1968, he was an assistant
    superintendent at the D.O. and retired in July 1982.
South Tamarind's first principal was Randall Canfield (b: 9-9-22 d:12-21-82) who later
    went to Oleander in 1964 1955
1952 Fontana High's first principal was Ernest Camfield.

1955 Oleander's first principal was Jerl Lisonbee (b:11-13-21 d: 2-18-12) who later went to
         North Tamarind in 1964 when the Fontana Schools implemented a policy of rotating principals
   to various school sites.

Remember: When the three schools opened in December 1951, it was the first time since before WWII that Fontana Schools didn't need "double sessions"!

Almost all of these new schools had extracurricular clubs and organizations such as Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, Brownie troops, BobbySox girls baseball teams, and adult Square Dance clubs.

Chapter 7: Overcrowding

Regarding chopping-up Fontana Junior High's auditorium and cafeteria to make room for other things, a new designated District Office was finished in July 1949 at the north end of the campus and included a new cafeteria for the junior high. Here it is:

Chapter 8: The End of the Union

When the Fontana Schools wanted to separate from the Chaffey Union High School District, it wasn't a simple matter of texting them and announcing a pending divorce. The matter had to be cleared by the Fontana voters, the school board, the county school board, the state school board and anyone else who wanted to stick their finger in the pie.

As a summation of this 60th anniversary blog, here are the headlines and a few explanatory notes of the events which led up to the Fontana Unified School District's official separation on July 1, 1956. [The actual articles from the San Bernardino Sun will be placed on file at the District Office