June 13, 2001

Jack London Elementary? Has a ring to it!

It's probably a little late to get involved in the renaming of several Pacifica schools, but I wish the school board had asked the community for suggestions. Everybody is smarter than anybody, most of the time. I hear they're renaming Pacific Manor School as Ocean Shore School. That's a good name, and appropriate. The Ocean Shore RR track used to pass through what's now the school yard.

I've real mixed feelings about renaming Sharp Park School for Ingrid Lacy. I love the idea of an Ingrid Lacy School. She was a great teacher, an inspiration, a real asset to the district and the city. I just hate to give up the name Sharp Park School. For one thing, Sharp Park School honors not only the community in which it was located but a pioneer couple, George and Honora Sharp, whose ranch was given as parkland to the city of San Francisco. George Sharp was a Forty Niner, and a prominent San Francisco attorney. The golf course carved out of their ranch became the central focus of the entire northern Coastside, to the point that the old subdivisions of Salada Beach and Brighton Beach combined and were renamed Sharp Park in 1935, only three years after the opening of the golf course. When Sharp Park School opened 51 years ago, the name of San Pedro School, after the Mexican land grant Rancho San Pedro, was lost.

The new name suggested for the former San Andreas School, "Sunset Ridge", is so bad it's ludicrous. It wouldn't even make a good name for a shopping center or a wine label. As a school name it's hideously out of place. It has absolutely no roots. It might as well have been called the blah blah school. Only the bland leading the bland could have come up with such a plain jello name.

I can think of a dozen names with more character and local connections. My own favorite would be "Jack London" School. The literary giant, the man who wrote Call of the Wild and so many other rip-roaring adventures during his brief life, actually lived in what is now Pacifica. He was seven years old. 1883 was definitely not his best year. His memories were of "the bleak, sad coast." The older kids would beat up the teacher, so the story goes, and the teacher would lash out at the younger kids in turn. The San Pedro School London attended was somewhere near what became San Andreas or Fairmont School. He had to hike up from his father's 75 acre leased potato farm. I've never been able to pin down the location except that it was within a particular 160 acre parcel, but it was either in or close to what became the Fairmont subdivisions.

If the school district doesn't accept London, there's Francisco Sanchez, Grace McCarthy, Henry Harrison McCloskey, Jean Fassler, or Bob Siebert. Sanchez doesn't currently have his name on a local school. The Sanchez Art Center and Sanchez Adobe are inadequate as memorials to the man who once owned almost all of what became Pacifica. Grace McCarthy has only a vista point. She deserves more. McCloskey built the castle. Jean Fassler, our first mayor, deserves recognition. Bob Siebert, a teacher locally for so many years, surely deserves a monument for his contributions to local schools.

But Sunset Ridge? That's a mortuary or a cookie cutter subdivision, not a school.

Paul Azevedo's e-mail address is thereactor@earthlink.net