SHOCKS TO THE SYSTEM: THE POLITICS OF DECISION MAKING IN SANFRANCISCO PUBLIC SCHOOLS

A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE SCHOOL OF EDUCATION

AND THE COMMITTEE ON GRADUATE STUDIES OF

STANFORD UNIVERSITY IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR

THE DEGREEE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSPHY

Michael Dunson May 2010

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/us/

This dissertation is online at: http://purl.stanford.edu/cj379jt8818

© 2010 by Michael Leon Dunson. All Rights Reserved.

Re-distributed by Stanford University under license with the author.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

ii

I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequatein scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Joy Williamson, Primary Adviser

I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequatein scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

David Labaree, Co-Adviser

I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequatein scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Samuel Wineburg

Approved for the Stanford University Committee on Graduate Studies.

Patricia J. Gumport, Vice Provost Graduate Education

This signature page was generated electronically upon submission of this dissertation in electronic format. An original signed hard copy of the signature page is on file inUniversity Archives.

iii

iv

ABSTRACT

I trace the history of two education policies in San Francisco that flared into

public controversy during the onset of a major crisis. The first controversy, which

transpired in the wake of the 1906 Earthquake, involved the San Francisco Board of

Education’s attempt to segregate Japanese students. The second was the drive for

school construction during the Great Depression. School officials and other political

actors resiliently pursued their agendas even when faced with the turmoil caused by

the crises. Politics did not subside; in fact, politics gave meaning to chaos. Two

generalizations help to explain this finding. First, political actors searched for

opportunities in crisis. When crises radically altered the physical and material

infrastructure of the school department, people seized whatever resources they could

to achieve their goals. Second, crises forced political actors to adjust their rhetoric by

adapting their language to fit the circumstances. Prior to the earthquake and

depression, political actors attempted to sway the public in their favor by defining the

core values involved in segregation and school construction. The crises generated a

new set of values. Political actors adjusted their rhetoric by integrating new values

into the old political discourse.

v

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Earning a Ph.D. brings many personal accolades, but this accomplishment was

a true community effort. Without the help and support of numerous people, I would

not have completed the degree. I begin with special thanks to the Stanford University

Teacher Education Program (STEP). From the beginning, STEP supported me

financially, intellectually, and emotionally. In particular Ruth Ann Costanzo, your

support and understanding helped me work through some difficult times. And Rachel,

I’m not going to try to summarize in one sentence all you’ve done for me. You’re

amazing.

The history of education family is an amazing collection of brilliant scholars

and genuinely wonderful people. Larry Cuban, Leah Gordon, Jack Schneider, thank

you for all your support. Lori, we came in together and that’s how we’re leaving. It

was great to have you as a partner. To David Tyack and Elisabeth Hansot, thank you

so much for your mentorship and friendship. I cherish our lunches and conversations.

One reason I’m excited to stay in the Bay Area is that we will be able to spend more

time together.

I want to send a special thank you to the Stanford IT staff, Debbie, Chris, Paul,

and Tom. You four are awesome. To Tami Suzuki and the archivists at the San

Francisco Public Library History Room, you helped make research a pleasant

experience. You all do a great job.

Most graduate students are lucky to have an amazing advisor; I was blessed

with two, David Labaree and Joy Williamson. David, you never gave up on me. You

vi

trained me and patiently let me grow into a better writer and researcher. Joy, you

brought me to Stanford and encouraged me every step of the way. I am so thankful to

have you as a mentor and as a friend. And Sam Wineburg, you pretty much adopted

me as an advisee. When my aunt passed away and I wanted to quit the program, I

called and you answered. Thank you all. I’m a better scholar, teacher, and person

because of you.

I am blessed with an amazing collection of friends and family. My first

reading group: Django, Laurie, and Heather. We’ve all made it through. Nathalie,

Ross, and Jeanette, you adopted me into the family and helped make the Bay Area feel

like home. To the Ashby crew: You opened your doors to me. Thank you so much.

Heather, you’re a spark of life. Cullen and Jay, I would not have survived the first

four years without you. The support, jokes, and encouragement gave me a way to

escape the stress. Adrian and Carl, my guys. I can’t wait to come home and watch a

game (graduate school stress free) with y’all. Wes, Simone, Camden, and Jacobi.

You have no idea how much I relied on you. On many occasions, I entered your home

stress out and depressed, but each time, I left with my spirits up and recharged. Thank

you so much.

Mr. and Mrs. Norment. You practically raised me. I love you both so much.

Dave and Mike, we’re at 30 years together. That’s crazy when you think about it.

We’ve been through it all. You two are my brothers. Coach you helped me become a

man. Todd thanks for the constant check-ins and support. You made sure I stayed

connected to home. Allen Temple: Ralph and Kathi, Reg, Willie, Mike and Judy.

From the first time we met, you embraced me and you haven’t let go yet. To class 5,

vii

your spirit, faith and fellowship guided me through the final stretch. To my 2003-

2007 BGSA crew, most especially Faruq, Christen, Jide, and Erica. You stayed with

me through the craziness and long silences. Thank You.

Salina, you’ve seen me at my best and worst; you have the full picture. I thank

you and IS for keeping me stable and giving me something to believe in beyond the

research. I love you dearly. To my aunts, uncles, and cousins, “It’s good to be a

Johnson.” My sister, Joy D., we’ve been through a lot over the last few years and

we’re still here. Love you so much. To my ladies, Carol, Shacole, and Sennice, you

are my heart. On my saddest days, thinking of you made me smile. Dad, thank you

for all your support and help. You keep pressing forward. Love you. Reg, my big

brother, my mentor, my role model. When I see you, I see mom: her strength, her

spirit. Love you with all my heart.

Over the course of this journey, much as changed. Many wonderful people

have entered my life; many I hold dear are no longer with me. Steve and Spankie,

even in spirit, I know you’re still fixing cars and painting graffiti. Joe, I still see your

smile and hear your laugh. Mr. Weiner, a survivor in every sense of the word (Karen

you are a beautiful person and you embody the spirit and strength of your father). Mr.

Buckley, thanks for the great times at Jones Beach.

Aunt Gloria, the perfect Godmother. You believed in me more than I believed

in myself. Mom, you and Aunt Gloria wanted to see me walk across the stage to

accept the degree. I know you are looking down on me. I’m fighting to be the man

that you raised, and even though I often fall short, I keep going because of you. I miss

you so much.

viii

CONTENTS

Introduction 1 The Politics of Segregation: Japanese Segregation and the “Great Calamity” 19 Politics of School Construction: Progressive Reform and the Great Depression 76 Conclusion 154 Bibliography 170

1

Introduction

Education and politics have historically made a volatile mixture. At the end of

the 19th century, politics were branded as the scourge of education. Americans

criticized school officials for letting politics corrupt their decision making. Decisions

ranging from school construction to hiring personnel were viewed as tainted by the

twin evils of politics and patronage. In response, educational reformers proclaimed

their intent to exorcize politics from the public schools. They vowed to create school

systems that rejected self-interested politicians and embraced rational experts.

Nationwide, reformers erected bureaucracies to shield education from the

vagaries of politics. Hierarchical systems of governance became the standard model

for decision making in urban school districts. Bureaucracies were designed to

establish boundaries and place constraints on participation. By restricting access,

reformers hoped to streamline the decision making process by putting experts in

charge and shunning laypersons. With experts making the decisions, reformers

presumed that research and science would replace politics as the mechanism for

deciding educational policy. Reformers were certain that a corporate model of

governance would transform urban school systems into rational, efficient, well-

managed enterprises.1

The reformers were widely successful. By the middle of the twentieth century,

they upheld bureaucracy as the preeminent model for urban school governance.

Political scientists Michael Kirst and Frederick Wirt explain that educational

bureaucracies established a uniform pattern of school governance across the country, a 1 David Tyack and Elisabeth Hansot, Managers of Virtue: Public School Leadership in America, 1820-1980, (New York: Basic Books, 1982).

2

pattern so prevalent that it resulted in the establishment of a separate system of

government. “Although few Americans realize it” state Kirst and Wirt, “the nation

long has maintained one government for schools—comprised mainly of local and state

boards of education and superintendents—and another for everything else.”2

The reformers, however, failed in one important aspect: while the rules of the

game changed, the politics continued. Although formal structures were supposed to

limit access to the decision making process, American citizens never relented their

right to participate. Schools remained the site of contentious battles, as interest groups

of various social classes, races, and religions continued to fight to control educational

policy. School boards and superintendents, the formal decision makers within the

bureaucracy, were responsible for converting demands into policy. Their decisions

were contingent on numerous factors that included the formal rules of the system, the

power and influence of various interest groups, the availability of resources, and in

general, the communities political will toward a particular policy. These were the

components of educational decision making. The contours of school politics were

shaped by the fluid interaction between the formal bureaucracy and interest groups, as

well as the fluctuating availability of resources.

Under normal conditions, decision making is messy. Educational leaders

struggle to function within a system that contains an array of divergent and conflicting

groups, each insisting their needs, more than anyone other group, are most urgent.

Superintendents and school boards face a steady stream of dilemmas requiring them to

make trade-offs in how resources are distributed. The range and variety of issues are 2 Mike Kirst and Frederick Wirt, The Political Dynamics of American Education, 3rd ed. (Richmond: McCutchan Publishing Corporation, 2005), 32.

3

vast. Problems can be limited to a specific classroom, or they can be systemic,

involving the entire teaching force or several schools across the district. But

regardless of the variety and scope of the issues, they can be classified as part of the

normal state of affairs; they are events that rightfully fall within the purview of the

superintendent and school board.3

My study examines the educational system, but with a twist. The focus of the

study is when the normal abruptly becomes abnormal, when educational policies are

altered by the onset of a major crisis. The study is guided by three questions. How is

decision making affected by a major shock, a shock that dramatically alters the

emotional and mental consciousness of the community? How do dramatic changes to

the flow of resources caused by the crises affect the way policies are enacted? Lastly,

how do people make sense of crisis and use their understandings to promote their

point of view on educational policy?

To address the questions, I present a historical study of educational politics in

San Francisco in the aftermath of the 1906 Earthquake and during the early years of

the Great Depression. This is not a comprehensive study of San Francisco schools

during each of these events. Instead, I trace the history of two longstanding policy

issues that flared into public controversy during each crisis, and I examine how the

crisis affected the decision making process. The first controversy, which transpired in

the wake of the 1906 Earthquake, involved the SFUSD’s attempt to segregate

Japanese students. The second was the drive for school construction during the Great

Depression.

3 Philip Cusick, The Education System: Its Nature and Logic, (New York: McGraw-Hill, inc., 1992).

4

In each case, I portray the school board as the central political actor. As the

official representatives of the bureaucracy, they were supposed to be the gatekeepers

of the decision making process, but their control over the process was never secure.

James March and Johan Olsen explain that bureaucratic organizations can be

simultaneously portrayed as coherent, autonomous political actors, as well as “arenas

for contending social forces.”4 Even with the establishment of centralized

bureaucracies, urban schools continued to be shaped by political conflict. As stated

earlier, reformers failed to achieve their main goal, which was to insulate schools from

politics and turn decision making into non-political process. Bureaucracies, however,

were not a wholly ineffectual buffer. While reformers failed to remove politics from

education, their bureaucracies set up mechanisms—formal rules and procedures—that

at least defined the boundaries between the formal organization of school governance

and the people and interest groups external to the decision making process. March and

Olsen argue that standard operating procedures do not completely insulate an

organization from its social context or from individuals driven by personal motives,

but the formal rules and structures of a bureaucracy can effectively bind together a

group of people into an organization that can defend itself against outside interests.

During the controversies over Japanese segregation and school construction, the

school board pursued a definitive course of action, but it constantly had to leverage its

powers against the demands of competing interest groups.

The main storyline of the thesis is that school officials and other political

actors resiliently pursued their agendas even when faced with the turmoil caused by 4 James March and Johan Olsen, “The New Institutionalism: Organizational Factors in Political Life,” 78, no. 3 (September 1984): 738.

5

the crises. Politics did not subside; in fact, politics gave meaning to chaos. Two

generalizations help to explain this finding. First, political actors searched for

opportunities in crisis. When crises radically altered the physical and material

infrastructure of the school department, people seized whatever resources they could

to achieve their goals. The shift in resources reconfigured the political environment

for one or several groups by changing their relationship to the bureaucracy. For some

groups, bureaucratic obstacles were removed as opportunities to control decision

making opened; and for others, opportunities closed as they encountered new

constraints on their power. Second, crises forced political actors to adjust their

rhetoric by adapting their language to fit the circumstances. Prior to the earthquake

and depression, political actors attempted to sway the public in their favor by defining

the core values involved in segregation and school construction. The crises generated

a new set of values. Political actors adjusted their rhetoric by integrating new values

into the old political discourse.

Educational Bureaucracy in San Francisco

Urban educational bureaucracy is central to both cases. Several scholars have

traced the demise of decentralized urban school systems and the rise of hierarchical

bureaucracies. Pioneering studies conducted by Joseph Cronin, Michael Katz, and

David Tyack examine the history of urban school governance at the turn of the

twentieth century. Each study focuses on reformers who grew concerned that urban

education was controlled by unqualified, unscrupulous men who made decisions based

on ideology and politics instead of scientific research. Cronin looks at the change

6

from ward-based to central school boards. Before the 1900s, school boards were

comprised of members elected by individual wards or neighborhoods throughout the

city. In a few cities, school boards grew to well over one hundred members, each

representing a particular constituency. After the turn of the century, school boards

were centralized and their size reduced, with members appointed by the mayor or

selected through citywide elections. The intent was to make board members

accountable to the entire city rather than specific neighborhoods. Katz and Tyack

study the same trend, but arrive at different motives. Katz argues that bureaucracy

was used by the elite to strip the working class of their power to influence educational

policy. Tyack acknowledges the class tension, but argues that the growing size and

complexity of urban schools necessitated action to make school governance more

efficient and manageable. He argues the reformers mistakenly assumed there was a

one-size-fits-all solution to the complexity of problems facing urban schools.

In San Francisco, during the first thirty years of the twentieth century, the

school board gradually evolved into the bureaucratic model. Beginning in the late

1800s, San Francisco’s board of education underwent several changes to its formal

structure. Prior to 1872, the city was divided into twelve wards and each ward elected

one representative to serve on the school board. The superintendent was selected

through city-wide elections. Reformers viewed the ward-based election system as

corrupt. They argued the ward system was flawed because school officials were

chosen based on politics instead of merit. School board members and teachers were

selected because they were loyal to whatever faction controlled a particular ward

instead of their qualifications for the job. Patronage was the rule of the day. In 1872,

7

San Francisco ended the practice of independent elections within each ward; the

twelve school board members, along with the superintendent, were elected at-large.

The reforms of 1872 reduced the influence individual wards and neighborhoods could

have on educational policy.

In 1898, a movement to reform the structure of municipal government would

have important consequences for the school department. Nationwide, municipal

reforms during the 1890s were guided by the idea that cities should adapt a corporate

style of governance. Reformers believe the corporate model would eliminate

corruption rampant throughout the city. In San Francisco, reformers influenced by the

idea of the corporate model re-wrote the city charter. A feature of the new charter was

to increase the power of the mayor by giving him the authority to select directors of

city departments instead of having them elected directly by the people. One of his

new responsibilities would be to appoint the school board. His appointment would

then have to be ratified by the people, but citizens would no longer directly choose

their representatives. A provision in the charter made the school board less accessible

to the people by reducing the number of board members from twelve to four. The

smaller board was supposed to represent the city and not the partisan interests of

neighborhoods or political factions. To avoid partisan politics, the charter include a

provision that stated, “The board shall never be so constituted as to consist of more

than two members of the same political party.”5 Leaders of the charter movement

trusted that the mayor would appoint a board comprised of men and women of high

standing and character, people who were beyond the corrupting influence of politics.

5 Charter of the City and County of San Francisco, art 7. chapter 1.

8

The charter did not alter the selection process for the superintendent. He continued to

be chosen through direct vote of the people. The new charter, adopted in 1900,

initiated the process of creating a school board modeled after corporate management.

In 1901, Ellwood P. Cubberley, a leading progressive educational reformer, praised

the charter as a good start. He reported that under the new charter the school

department was more efficient and modern in its operation and practices. But he

warned that the charter was severely flawed because it created two systems of

leadership: a school board beholden to the mayor and a superintendent beholden to the

people.6 The superintendent was the key to establishing a corporate model of city

governance. It was crucial that he be the technical expert for the school board, much

like a chief executive was the technical expert for the board of directors of a company.

Without such, Cubberley and others predicted the school department would be

hampered by disharmony between the superintendent and board of education. Such

was the structure of governance that presided over the Japanese segregation

controversy.

This “dual-headed” system, with a publicly elected superintendent and

appointed school board, persisted until 1923. But from the beginning, progressive

reformers were skeptical of the new charter. Criticism continued until it reached a

high point around 1914, when a report was released that condemned the school

department for being disorganized and inefficient. A group of citizens organized and

commissioned a federal survey on the school department. The survey, known as the

Claxton Report, found that San Francisco lacked the administrative capacity to 6 Elwood P. Cubberley, “The School Situation in San Francisco,” Educational Review 21 (January-May 1901), 364-381.

9

manage effectively a large urban bureaucracy. The report recommended several

reforms including a change to the overall structure of governance. Spurred by the

report, prominent citizens led a movement to amend the city charter. Amendment 37

proposed radical changes to the structure of the school district. Under the amendment,

the board of education would be expanded from four to seven people and their term of

office increased from four to seven years. The most dramatic change was that the

superintendent would be appointed by the school board instead of elected by the

people. By making the superintendent an appointee of the school board, reformers

wanted the superintendent to be accountable to the board of education, just as the

board of education was accountable to the mayor. Furthermore, reformers assumed

the board of education would select a superintendent based on merit and not

personality or political savvy. In a city wide election, it was more likely the people

would vote for a good politician instead of a competent educational leader. In 1920

the amendment was passed and the following year a new school board—including two

incumbents from the previous board—was appointed by the mayor. In 1923, the

previously elected superintendent completed his term of office and the new

superintendent was selected by the board. It was the first time in sixty-eight years that

San Francisco had an appointed superintendent.7 These reforms culminated the

movement to establish a corporate model of governance in San Francisco. The

bureaucracy was in place. It was hierarchically structured with the school board on

7 Victor Shrader, “Ethnic Politics, Religion, and the Public School of San Francisco, 1849-1933” (PhD diss., Stanford University, 1974), 123-133; Lee Dolson, “The Administration of the San Francisco Public Schools” (PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1964), 406-422.

10

top as directors of the department and the superintendent acting as their executive

officer.

As far as the school board’s powers and responsibilities, those will be defined

in detail as they relate to each case. In general, the school board, as a formal

governing body, functioned in between two different political contexts and each

furnished a different set of powers and constraints. The school board was first and

foremost a state institution. As stated in San Francisco’s charter, “The Board of

Education of the City and County of San Francisco is a creature of the legislature and

has such powers as have been conferred upon it.”8 Education was the responsibility of

the state of California and school boards were controlled by the rules laid out in the

state constitution. In addition to state law, the school board was subject to the

authority was the city charter. The charter detailed the day to day operations of the

school department. It also defined the school board’s relationship to the city

administration and other municipal agencies.

Beyond the formal rules and procedures dictated by state and local laws, the

school board was a central actor in San Francisco politics. They worked with and

against the city administration, local interest groups, and other municipal departments.

During the controversies over Japanese segregation and school construction, the

school board had to perform a balancing act between their role as a state institution,

their official duties as a municipal department, and their local status as a political

organization. The school board’s authority fluctuated depending on how well they

manipulated the powers and constraints established by state and local laws as well as

8 Charter of the City and County of San Francisco, art. 7, chapter. 3.

11

their ability to adjust to changes within the local political environment. Japanese

segregation and school construction showcase how the school board attempted to

manage these different political contexts and how the 1906 Earthquake and Great

Depression provided opportunities for actions that were previously ineffectual. The

following section provides an overview of each case and an introduction to the main

characters and factors involved in the controversies.

Segregation and School Construction

Japanese segregation and school construction were troublesome policy issues

in San Francisco for more than a decade before the earthquake and Great Depression,

respectively. In each case, the school board struggled to enact their policy agendas

under the formal protocols of decision making. Local interest groups, who functioned

outside the bureaucracy, vied for attention, calling for segregation and school

construction to be resolved in accordance with their goals. The political impact of

earthquake and depression was revealed as everyone involved adapted their strategies

and rhetoric to reflect the context established by the crises. In different ways, the

earthquake and depression dramatically expanded the policy issues beyond San

Francisco’s boarders by severely altering resources within the city and by introducing

new political actors and resources from the federal level. Local actors—including the

school board and interest groups—remained stalwart toward their goals, but they had

to adjust to a new set of constraints and opportunities created by the crises and by the

federal government’s involvement.

12

In the controversy over Japanese segregation, most historians downplay the

school board and superintendent. Historians typically frame the case as a moment

when race and labor politics clashed with federal policy. Members of the school board

are cast as pawns used by San Francisco’s powerful labor union, which, at the time,

controlled the city government. I describe a different school board, a more active and

autonomous school board than other scholars present.

The controversy began on October 11, 1906 when the San Francisco Board of

Education passed a resolution to expel Japanese students who attended school with

white children. Japanese children were ordered to enroll in the Chinese School, a

school established exclusively to segregate Chinese students. What started as a local

decision would explode into an international incident. The statistics belie the

magnitude of the controversy. Of the 24,549 students enrolled in the SFUSD, only

ninety-three were Japanese. When expelled, the Japanese balked, refusing to attend

the Chinese school. They enlisted the service of the Japanese consul, and with the

backing of Japan’s national government, they fought to rescind the school board’s

order. The Japanese consul appealed to the federal government, asking the

Whitehouse to intervene on behalf of the expelled Japanese students. President

Theodore Roosevelt agreed and demanded that the school board readmit the Japanese

into the public schools. The controversy continued for approximately five months,

until February 15, 1907, when the San Francisco school board and the governments of

the United States and Japan settled on the Gentlemen’s Agreement. As a provision of

the settlement, the school board conceded its position and agreed to integrate white

13

and Japanese students, while Japan agreed to restrict emigration of its nationals to

America.

Historian Roger Daniels argues that the school board passed the resolution

because they were under mounting pressure from anti-Asian labor politicians. Daniels

explains that school segregation was a first step to labor’s main goal which was to ban

Japanese immigrants from entering the country. The school board makes a brief

appearance in his narrative—only to expel the Japanese students—as he devotes most

of the chapter to President Roosevelt and actions taken by his administration.9 Charles

Wollenberg portrays the case as an example of how non-white people responded to

laws that were enacted to consolidate their subordinate status. The civil rights angle

classifies the Japanese with other groups who attempted to fight discrimination in

court. This case is extraordinary because no other non-white group who suffered

discrimination could rally the support of a mother country that was an international

power, but law suits were a common tactic used by non-whites, and this case

represents an odd, but nonetheless relevant example. Like Daniels, Wollenberg drops

the school board from the story after the resolution and focuses on the White House as

well as the federal court case that was initiated to resolve the matter.10 Thomas Bailey

wrote the definitive text of the event. Bailey gets right to the point. The first

sentence of his book reads “Our story is one of race prejudice.”11 To prove his thesis,

Bailey considers the various claims articulated by the school board to justify their 9 Roger Daniels, Pride and Prejudice: The Anti-Japanese Movement in California and the Struggle for Japanese Exclusion (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1962), 31-45. 10 Charles Wollenberg, All Deliberate Speed: Segregation and Exclusion in California Schools, 1855-1975 (Berkeley: University of California, 1976), 48-68. 11 Thomas Bailey, Theodore Roosevelt and The Japanese-American Crises: An Account of the International Complications Arising from the Race Problem of the Pacific Coast (Stanford: Stanford university Press, 1934), 1.

14

decision, and one by one, he debunks them all by arguing the claims were either half-

truths or outright lies. After dismissing several explanations, the one left standing was

race prejudice.

All three historians tell a similar story. They argue that race prejudice and

labor politics were the most important factors influencing the school board’s decision

to segregate the Japanese. I argue there is a story yet told, a story that makes the

school board a central player, an independent actor instead of a mere pawn. I view the

school board as a group trying to deal with numerous demands hurled at them from

competing interest groups. While race and class explain the board’s motives, the

constructs do not address the school board’s ability and inability to act. I reinterpret

the board as a legitimate political actor struggling to negotiate the constraints imposed

by bureaucratic procedures. The earthquake and fire served as a powerful context that

influenced the school board’s options for acting on their desire to segregate Japanese

students. At the same time, the school board had to factor the effects of the disaster

into their reasons for segregating the Japanese.

The 1906 Earthquake sowed the seeds for the controversy over school

construction. At the time of the earthquake and fire, most schools were one to three-

story wooden structures that if set ablaze would quickly be engulfed in flames. As

early as 1908, San Franciscans called for the so-called fire traps to be renovated to

make them safe for school children. Clamor against school facilities increased during

the 1920s when people complained that several schools were overcrowded and in poor

condition. School board members, city officials and local interest groups generally

agreed that the school department had not recovered from the damage of 1906 and

15

they initiated a massive program to build new schools. In the drive to build schools,

there emerge a number of groups who disagreed about the processes and goals of

school construction. When the national economy declined between 1929 and 1931,

the politics of school construction were entrenched and hostile. The school board

competed against other interest groups to control the goals and processes involved in

the building program.

Several scholars have examined the effect of the Great Depression on schools.

David Tyack, Robert Lowe, and Elisabeth Hansot argue that public education

remained remarkably consistent during the Depression. They describe the depression

as a “short-term dislocation” and the history of public school as “long term

continuity.”12 With the trauma caused by the depression, schools districts, for the

most part, maintained their funding, systems of governance, and public support.

Jeffrey Mirel and Dorothy Shipps present a different story. Both argue the depression

was a drastic turning point in educational politics. In Mirel’s history of Detroit, he

pays close attention to the flow of resources. When depression, war, and other

catastrophic events alter the availability of resources, school politics change. Mirel

shows how the depression brought about the collapse of an educational coalition that

controlled the school district throughout the 1920s.13 Shipps tells a similar story in

Chicago. At the onset of the depression, Shipps argues the economic downturn

disrupted longstanding policies and set in motion a fifty year period in which a

12 David Tyack, Robert Lowe, Elisabeth Hansot, Public Schools in Hard Times: The Great Depression and Recent Years (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984), 190. 13 Jeff Mirel, The Rise and Fall of an Urban School System: Detroit, 1907-81 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press), xii, 89-137.

16

democratic political machine dominated the city.14 My story traces the history of the

building program and examines how the depression acted as a “short term

dislocation,” but as Mirel and Shipps suggest, resources play an important part in the

story. When resources fluctuate, so do the political alliances. Similar to the

earthquake and fire, the Great Depression became a powerful context in which various

political actors had to adjust their strategies and rhetoric to account for radical changes

in the availability of resources. Even within a slumping economy, the school board, as

well as their allies and rivals, stayed alert to take advantage of opportunities they could

use to advance their plans.

Beyond the Local Context: Federal and State Involvement

The relationship between the bureaucracy and its external environment forms

the narrative arc of both cases. In each case the bureaucracy, represented by the

school board, is the center piece of the story. As Philip Cusick argues in his book The

Education System, the bureaucracy is the foundation of the school system. Interest

groups circle the school board, poking and prodding to influence decision making, but

the formal roles, rules, and regulations of the bureaucracy give a sense of stability to

the decision making process. Cusick warns that stability should not be confused with

control. While the process of decision making is governed by a codified set of

procedures, the question of who controls of the process is uncertain.15

14 Dorothy Shipps, School Reform, Corporate Style: Chicago Style, 1880-2000 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2006), 49-52. 15 Cusick, The Education System.

17

One factor that weakens the control of local decision makers is increased

involvement from state and federal governments. Historically education has been a

local endeavor. While common school reform in the 1830s initiated a movement of

state oversight, local officials continued to control most of the decisions. According to

Mike Kirst and Frederick Wirt, district leaders continued to dictate educational policy

until the 1950s, when interference from state and federal authorities reduced local

control over educational policy. Kirst and Wirt considered the years between 1920

and 1950 to be a high point of local control, a period they refers to as the “golden era

of superintendents."16 After 1950, control shifted from local communities to state

legislatures and the nation’s capital.

David Cohen argues that federal and state policies make decision making

more confusing and unpredictable. Local school boards and superintendents have the

burden of coordinating a broad range of local, state, and federal policies and adapting

those policies to fit a particular context. Problems are exacerbated when local, state,

and federal policies conflict. Greater interdependence between local, state, and

federal officials, according to Cohen, does not lead to more harmony between the

three levels of government. Instead, the pace of decision making at the local level is

slowed down and complicated because district leaders have to align their policies with

those coming from federal and state officials.17

Elements of the above theories play out in the both cases. One theme

throughout the study was that San Francisco’s board of Education attempted to

16 Kirst and Wirt, The Political Dynamics, 27. 17 David Cohen, “Policy and Organization: the Impact of State and Federal Educational Policy on School Governance,” Harvard Educational Review 52 (November 1982), 474-99.

18

coordinate a cross section of local, state, and federal policies. While Kirst and Wirt

argue that local school officials maintained significant control until the 1950s, this

study examines the influence of state and federal involvement during an earlier period.

To resolve the problems of Japanese segregation and school construction, the school

board had to align its local agenda and powers with state laws. At different times, the

school board was able to use its role as a state institution to strengthen its position

against local interest groups. At other times, the supremacy of state law constrained

the school board’s power. Additionally, in each case, the federal government became

an important factor after the onset of the two crises. After the earthquake, the school

board had to defend their policy of segregation against the federal government’s

demand to rescind the order. In the midst of the Great Depression, the school board

had to reexamine their plan for school construction in light of federal money offered

through the New Deal. In each event, understanding who controlled decision making

defies a neat formula. Decision making was an unstable process, contingent on the

relationship between a formal set of procedures, an unpredictable unfolding of events,

as well as the tenacity and cunning of political actors.

What stands out, however, is the persistence of education politics regardless of

the circumstances. After each crisis, for all the groups involved, it was politics as

usual. That does not mean things stayed the same. Politics as usual meant that

political agendas conceived before the crises were adapted. All interest groups had to

revaluate their positions based on the crises and articulate a message that somehow

reconciled their agenda with the current conditions.

19

Chapter One The Politics of Segregation: Japanese Segregation and the “Great

Calamity” On October 11, 1906, the San Francisco board of education convened at 3pm

at Pine and Larkin Streets, their third headquarters since April 18th. On April 18th,

City Hall, their official meeting place, was destroyed in the earthquake and fire that

laid waste to most of the city. Besides possibly the location, nothing about the

meeting seemed out of the ordinary. Several weeks prior to the meeting, the board

announced it was accepting estimates from construction companies interested in

razing and reconstructing a school irreparably damaged by the earthquake. The

board’s first task on the 11th was to discuss bids received in response to the

announcement. Next, they instructed the secretary to tell unassigned teachers to be

ready to serve as emergency substitutes. The following two agenda items involved

teachers who requested leaves of absence and a principal who asked to be transferred

to another school. The board granted the teachers their leave and the principal his

transfer. Next, the board passed the following resolution: “That in accordance with

Article X, Section 1662 of the School Law of California, principals are hereby

directed to send all Chinese, Japanese, or Korean Children to the Oriental Public

School, situated on the south side of Clay Street, between Powell and Mason streets,

on and after Monday, October 15, 1906.” Following the resolution, the board

continued their meeting, transferring several janitors and granting a leave of absence

20

to “Mrs. L. Andrews, Janitress of the Jefferson Primary school.”1 Then, the meeting

adjourned.

The resolution to send all Asian students to the Oriental School was a routine

decision carried out in routine fashion. The next day, three of the local newspapers

reported the meeting with little fanfare. Each circular buried reports of the meeting

deep inside the paper, and between all three, the report of the resolution had its most

prominent position on page eleven. While the San Francisco Chronicle gave scant

attention to the board meeting, it was the only paper to warn the resolution “may

arouse protest.” The Chronicle reported that the Oriental School, which was built to

replace the Chinese School that burned in the fire, had a capacity of four hundred

students. “When the order of the Board is carried into effect” explained the article, “it

is probable that there will be a congestion of students. It is also possible the confusion

which will naturally ensue will arouse opposition from the consuls of the Japanese,

Corean [sic], and Chinese governments, and questions may arise which will call for an

inquiring by the department of state.”2 Events would show the Chronicle was

prescient in its prediction.

What began as a local decision would explode into an international incident.

From the boardroom at Pine and Larkin in San Francisco to the halls of Congress and

the White House in Washington D.C., local and federal officials would debate the

legality of Japanese segregation. Press from around the world would follow the story,

1San Francisco Unified School District, Minutes of the Board of Education (San Francisco, October 11, 1906). 2 San Francisco Chronicle, October 12, 1906; Thomas Bailey, Theodore Roosevelt and the Japanese-American crises; an account of the international complications arising from the race problem on the Pacific Coast (Stanford: Stanford University, 1934)

21

offering their perspective of the issue. In Great Britain, the press expressed faith that

America would resolve the issue without conflict; in France, they predicted war.3 It is

one of the more remarkable episodes of educational politics in American history.

When taking the earthquake and fire into account, the segregation controversy

can be divided into two acts. Act one begans with the resolution and ends with the

Metcalf report, which was written by the Secretary of Commerce and Labor, Victor

Metcalf, who was sent to investigate the matter by President Theodore Roosevelt.

During the first act, the disaster enabled the school board to circumvent legal and

political obstacles that prevented them from enforcing previous resolutions to

segregate the Japanese. For approximately three months, the school board and federal

authorities articulated competing viewpoints of the controversy. The earthquake and

fire were critical factors because both groups had to account for the disaster—or as

San Franciscans referred to it, the “great calamity”—in order to bolster their

arguments. In act two, the earthquake and fire was dropped from the discussion as the

plot shifts to Washington and direct negotiations began between the board of

education and President Roosevelt. While this chapter is mostly concerned with the

first act, I will give a brief sketch of the events in Washington to conclude the chapter.

Japan and the West

The period 1850 and 1906 were critical years in the histories of both Japan and

San Francisco. During this time, each locale underwent extraordinary change. Much

of the action that instigated the resolution was rooted in the growth and development

3 San Francisco Chronicle, October 12, 1906.

22

of Japan and San Francisco. In 1850, Japan and San Francisco were essentially

isolated areas devoid of modern technology. By 1906, San Francisco had transformed

into a booming metropolis, Japan, a world power. Japan modernized to fend off

encroaching western powers, but ironically, as Japan developed the capacity to defend

its borders, thousands of Japanese traveled west to find opportunities in the United

States. The following section recounts Japan’s rise as a modern power and the

establishment of a Japanese community in San Francisco.

Fifty-three years before the school board’s resolution, Commodore Matthew

Perry traveled to Japan to negotiate trade on behalf of the United States. The Japanese

government was aware of the peril it might face when dealing with the West. Before

Perry’s arrival, Japan saw how western powers forced the Chinese empire to comply

with unfair trade agreements. The Japanese heard rumors about the discrimination

Chinese nationals suffered overseas and interpreted that discrimination as an indicator

of China’s incapacity to demand better treatment for its people. Between 1854 and

1874, Japan experienced the menace first hand when they were coerced into signing

unequal treaties with several western powers. The treaties required Japan to surrender

control of its ports and to relinquish legal and political power within its own territory.

Western powers guaranteed their own rights in Japan, but denied the same privileges

to Japanese nationals who traveled to the United States and participating European

countries. Over the second half of the nineteenth century, Japan sought to advance its

23

position relative to the West. Their goal was to be a player and not a victim of

international politics; their plan was to westernize.4

Between 1868 and 1905 Japan embarked on a program of westernization. This

period, known as the Meiji Restoration, marked Japan’s entrance into modern,

international politics. The Meiji government paid European and American advisors to

come to Japan and introduce the most current technology. The government sent

Japanese students abroad, expecting them to return and form the basis of an

indigenous, academic community that would steer the countries economic and cultural

transformation. One of the most significant accomplishments of the Meiji period was

Japan’s diplomatic efforts too revise the unequal treaties. By acquiring the latest

technology and selectively adopting some aspects of western culture, Japan’s imperial

government wanted to prove that it deserved to be ranked with the elite western

powers. In July 1894 Japan’s foreign minister began formal treaty negotiations with

Great Britain that culminated with Japan being granted most favored nation status. In

November the United States signed a similar treaty. The new treaties restored Japan’s

sovereignty over its ports and promised that fair treatment of nationals traveling

abroad would be reciprocated. Over the next decade Japan strengthened its diplomatic

position on the battlefield. Japan demonstrated its military prowess by defeating

China in 1895 and decimating Russia’s navy a decade later. Russia’s defeat

challenged the notion that Europe held superiority over all non-white people. The

4Richard Storry, Japan and the Decline of the West in Asia, 1894-1943 (New York: ST. Martin’s Press, 1979), 14-32; Louis Perez, Japan Comes of Age: Mutsu Munemitsu and the Revision of Unequal Treaties (London: Associated University Presses, 1999), 47-63.

24

world was put on notice: Japan was a military power capable of not only defending its

homeland but also acting on its imperial ambitions.5

Increased diplomatic and military power was an intended consequence of the

Meiji period. One unexpected side-effect was that after 1884, the Meiji Restoration

also marked a period of accelerated emigration. Between 1868 and 1884, the

government maintained strict control over passports, which were rarely issued to

contract laborers. The Meiji government did not want laborers traveling overseas only

to suffer the same fate that befell the Chinese. Protecting the welfare of Japanese

immigrants was tantamount to safeguarding Japan’s international reputation. If

laborers were degraded abroad, they might cast shame on their homeland.

The Meiji government was forced to reconsider its emigration policy because

of its expensive modernization program. To pay the cost of modernizing, the

government imposed heavy taxes, causing financial hardship for many of its people.

One way families could relieve their tax burden was to have someone travel overseas

and send remittances. The government loosened its policies for granting passports to

contract labors, enabling thousands to relocate. Another factor that increased

emigration was the 1873 draft law, which could force males between the ages of

seventeen and forty into military service. Moving abroad became a viable option for

Japanese men who did not want to serve in the military. Thousands of Japanese

relocated to the United States and its territories. Initially, the majority went to Hawaii,

but thousands more would go to the mainland’s west coast. San Francisco became a

5 Richard Storry, Japan and the Decline, 53-86 ; Okazaki Hisahiko, From Uraga to San Francisco : A Century of Japanese diplomacy, 1853-1952 (Tokyo: Japan Echo, 2007), 49-64; Louis Perez, Japan Comes of Age, 154-175.

25

popular destination for many Japanese. Between 1850 and 1900, San Francisco, much

like Japan, underwent its own transformation that made it an attractive locale for

Japanese immigrants.6

Japanese in America

In the first half of the nineteenth century, San Francisco was a Mexican trading

post where a few businessmen from New England traded furs and other goods with

Mexicans. In the 1830s and early 1840s, Congress and the White House recognized

the potential value of San Francisco Bay. Leaders such as President Andrew Jackson

and Senators Daniel Webster and John C. Calhoun wanted to acquire the Bay Area,

with Calhoun predicting that San Francisco would become the “New York of the

Pacific.”7 In 1848, America defeated Mexico in the Mexican-American War and the

spoils of victory included San Francisco. In January 1848, one month before

America’s victory, gold was discovered in Coloma, California, approximately one

hundred and forty miles northeast of San Francisco. San Francisco became a port of

call for gold miners. Merchants established businesses to sell equipment and supplies

to the miners. Financial institutions were founded to provide merchants the capital to

establish their businesses. And the city was born. In 1869, San Francisco achieved

ascendancy over commerce and finance along the west coast when the transcontinental

railroad was completed. Although Oakland was the terminus, San Francisco was the

6 Roger Daniels, The Politics of Prejudice, the Anti-Japanese Movement in California and the Struggle for Japanese Exclusion (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1962), 1-15; Yuji Ichioka, The Issei: The World of the First Generation Japanese Immigrants, 1885-1924 (New York: Collier Macmillan Publishers, 1988), 7-56. 7 Cited in William Issel and Robert Cherney, San Francisco, 1865-1932: Politics, Power, and Urban Development (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 11.

26

main beneficiary. By 1880, San Francisco was the nerve-center for commerce and

finance from Seattle to Los Angeles and from China to New York City. San Francisco

assumed the mantle of being America’s gateway to the Pacific. In 1891, when the

Japanese began to arrive in significant numbers, San Francisco was the United States’

eighth largest city with a population of 298,997.

Before 1891, Japanese immigrants trickled into San Francisco. During the

1870s and early 1880s, San Francisco was home to fewer than a hundred Japanese

immigrants. By the 1890s a steady stream of Japanese came to American each year.

The majority of Japanese immigrants who came to America between 1891 and 1900

were men. The 1900 census tallied 1,791 Japanese in San Francisco of which 84%

were males. Most of them were single. The immigrants were young men and women

whose median ages were 24 and 25 respectively. Alexander Yamato in his

dissertation on the Japanese in San Francisco suggests that even with this group of

predominantly single men, Japanese immigrants began to establish families and lay

the foundation for a permanent community. Out of 1422 men only 15% were married.

But 58.1% of a total 222 Japanese women married.8

Japanese immigrants varied in their reasons for coming to America. Historian

Eiichiro Azuma divides the immigrants into three categories: mercantilists,

colonialists, and laborers. Mercantilists and colonialists came to America intent on

bringing glory to imperial Japan. Some of the first emigrants to leave Japan were

mercantilists. They were educated, middle-class merchants who wanted to expand

Japan’s empire by establishing business outposts across the world. Leaders in Japan 8 Alexander Yoshikazu Yamato, “Socioeconomic Changes Among Japanese Americans in the San Francisco bay Area” (PhD diss., University of California, Berkely, 1986), 181-182.

27

trusted this educated elite to remain loyal and conduct business to strengthen the

empire. In the early 1890s colonialists came to American on a mission to own land.

Azuma explains that this class of emigrant perceived America as a new frontier and

they wanted to claim land for the empire. He quotes Japanese youth who tell their

compatriots to go to American “…to create the second, new Japan…, which also helps

enhance the interest and prestige of the imperial government and our nation.”9 The

colonialist formed a class of entrepreneurs in America who took advantage of the

demand for Japanese labor. Many colonialists became boardinghouse owners and

labor contractors who acted as middle men between white employers and poor

Japanese immigrants.

Azuma describes the third class of immigrant as more self-serving than the

previous two. They were laborers who began moving to America in the mid 1890s.

Many of them left home to escape hardship endured in Japan. Most were poor rural

immigrants who suffered under the Meiji Restoration when they were forced to pay

exorbitant taxes. Others left to avoid the military draft. Azuma explains that some

were loyal to the empire while others were not. Those who fervently supported the

empire viewed their success as a show of strength for all Japanese people. For those

who did not, success in America was a sign of personal achievement. Japanese

leaders in Japan and America were not comfortable with the poor emigrants. They

expressed concern that the rural masses, unlike the educated mercantilist and colonists,

9 Eiichiro Azuma, Between Two Empires: Race, History, and Transnationalism in Japanese America (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 24. Claire Jean Kim offers a similar theory on the relationship between Asian immigrants and their homeland. See Claire Jean Kim, “The Racial Triangulation of Asian Americans,” in Asian Americans and Politics: Perspectives, Experiences, Prospects, ed. Gordon Chang (Stanford, Stanford University Press, 2001), 39-78.

28

did not have the intelligence and sophistication to remain loyal, dignified subjects of

the empire.10

The rural poor were drawn to America by stories of opportunity and success.

One man in particular was extremely persuasive. Katayama Sen left Japan and earned

a high school degree in San Francisco while he worked as a domestic servant. After

high school he attended Yale University. Katayama returned to Japan and published

magazines and other advertisements extolling San Francisco for the opportunities the

city offered to immigrants. He also helped to establish Christian missions to help

newcomers adjust to San Francisco. The missions provided room, board, and English

classes for new arrivals. The classes helped newcomers acclimate to their new

environment and become proficient enough in English to apply for work or enroll in

public school.

Katayama’s life was a dream for hundreds of emigrants. Their plans were to

study, return to Japan, and reap the benefits of a western education. When they

arrived, they divided their time between work and school. Like Katayama, their

primary occupation was domestic service. Japanese domestic servants were unique in

that they became known around the Bay Area as schoolboys. Schoolboys negotiated

specific terms of service with affluent San Franciscan homeowners. In most cases,

schoolboys were given room, board and a small stipend in exchange for doing chores

around the house. As part of the deal, they were allowed to work in the morning and

10 Azuma, Between Two Empires, 24-26.

29

evening and attend school during the day. Schoolboys would become the cornerstone

of San Francisco’s Japanese community. 11

Over the next two decades, schoolboys became part of San Francisco culture.

Newspapers, such as the San Francisco Chronicle, advertised their services. In the

situation section of the San Francisco Chronicle it was common to see postings such

as “Japanese young student wants half-day work in nice house; could cook, wait,

everything; speaks good English.”12 The title schoolboy, however, did not reflect the

actual experience of most domestic servants. By 1900, only a small percentage of

Japanese immigrants were schoolboys in the sense of domestic servants who also

attended school. Out of approximately 1,000 single males, only 2% were schoolboys.

Most domestic servants took classes offered in the Christian missions, but only a few

actually enrolled in public schools and for most of them, their education was brief.13

The majority left school to find gainful employment, but a few matriculated. This

small group of students would have a big impact on school policy. Their presence in

the public schools would play a major role in the segregation controversy.

Racial Hierarchy in San Francisco

In the 1890s, when the Japanese arrived in greater numbers, they represented a

hitch in San Francisco’s historic campaign to maintain a stratified but stable racial

hierarchy. When California was admitted to the union in 1850, one question white

Californians pondered was what to do with non-whites. Like the rest of America,

11 Ichioka, The Issei, 7-19. 12San Francisco Chronicle, February 10, 1905; Roger Daniels, Pride and Prejudice, 11. 13 Ichioka, The Issei, 7-19; Daniels, Pride and Prejudice,11; Yamoto, “Socioeconomic Change,” 179-182.

30

black people concerned white Californians, but it was the Chinese who would rouse

their ire, and the most rabid expressions of anti-Chinese sentiment came from San

Francisco. Between 1870 and 1906, labor, politics and race were closely associated in

San Francisco. Over this period, labor emerged as an integral player in municipal

politics and they would periodically form political parties capable of sweeping

elections to take control of city government. Without exception, politicians vying for

the labor vote spewed anti-Asian rhetoric and promised to support policies restricting

Asian immigration. In the late 1870s, the Workingman’s Party became the first

political party organized by labor to win the mayoralty. Their success was achieved in

part through a platform that championed banning Chinese immigration. It was the

Workingman’s Party leader, Dennis Kearny, who vociferously announced “the

Chinese must go.”14 The anti-Chinese movement, bolstered by the Workingman’s

Party, culminated in May 1882, when the United States Congress passed the Chinese-

exclusion Act, the first national law to exclude a particular ethnic group.

Initially, the Japanese were received with mixed reviews. Dennis Kearny was

quick to sound the alarm. He warned the Japanese were “another breed of Asiatic

slaves to fill up the gap made vacant by the Chinese who are shut out by our law.”15

“The Japanese must go” became his new slogan.16 But some employers disagreed, as

they viewed the Japanese favorably when compared to Chinese laborers. The

Japanese, for their part, tried to distinguish themselves from the Chinese. The

14 Roger Daniels, Asian Americans: Chinese and Japanese in the United States Since 1850 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1988), 111. 15 Daniels, Pride and Prejudice, 20. 16 Cited in Roger Daniels, Asian Americans: Chinese and Japanese in the United States Since 1850 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1988), 111.

31

Chinese, since their arrival, had virtually been cordoned off into Chinatown.17

Ironically, it was located in close vicinity to the downtown and financial district, so to

San Franciscans, it was like having a foreign country in the middle of the city. When

whites walked the streets of Chinatown, they viewed signs written with foreign

symbols, smelled the aroma of foreign cuisine, and listened to people converse in a

foreign tongue. Additionally, Chinatown essentially had its own government in the

Chinese Six Companies. The Companies were a coalition of Chinatown’s most

powerful associations. They acted as liaisons between Chinatown and city authorities,

as well as arbiters of disputes between community members. Many white San

Franciscans viewed the Six Companies as a foreign government within their city.

The Japanese tried to live in stark contrast to the Chinese. The Japanese elite

in America cautioned against adopting what they perceived to be the uncivilized traits

of the Chinese—a process Eiichiro Azuma calls “Sinification.” One indicator of

civilization was the ease with which a group could assimilate American customs. A

Japanese Newspaper in 1892 illustrated how the Japanese viewed themselves as

different from the Chinese. It stated, “Chinese were so backward and stubborn that

they refuse the American way. The Japanese on the other hand, are so progressive and

competent as to fit into the American way of life…. In no way do we, energetic and

brilliant Japanese men, stand below those lowly Chinese.”18 Most Japanese men

dressed in western style suits.19 They were dispersed across the city; many of them

living in Christian missions, in boardinghouses, or with whites as domestic servants.

17 Out of 13,000 Chinese living in San Francisco, at least 10,000 lived in Chinatown. 18 Azuma, Between Two Empire, 37. 19 Amy Sueyoshi, “Mindful Masquerades: Que(e)rying Japanese Immigrant Dress in Turn-of-the-Century San Francisco,” Frontiers 26, no. 3 (Winter 2005): 67-70

32

Additionally, tension existed between the two groups. After Japan defeated China in

1894, one newspaper reported hundreds of Japanese celebrating in Sacramento. Just

outside of San Francisco, some Japanese were concerned that the Chinese might seek

retribution, so they trained to fend of an attack.20 Japanese rural labors competed with

the Chinese and often demanded and received more pay. In the city, Japanese

merchants began selling Asian arts, a market previously dominated by Chinese

merchants.

Yet, despite the immigrants desire to portray themselves as distinct from the

Chinese, whites harbored ill will toward the Japanese. Japanese newcomers alarmed

Californians just when their concerns about the Chinese were subsiding. San

Franciscans never accepted the Chinese, but the Exclusion Act reduced their anxiety.

In 1890, the census reported 25,833 Chinese in San Francisco. That number dropped

steeply to 13,954 in 1900. While the Japanese had significantly less people, their

increase over the decade concerned whites. From 1890 to 1900 the Japanese

population rose from 590 to 1,781. Whites had to make sense of this new group of

Asian immigrants. In rural areas, white employees who initially favored the Japanese

soon turned against them. After the Exclusion Act, the Chinese labor force gradually

diminished and without the competition, Japanese laborers gained more leverage

against their employers. When Japanese workers became more assertive and

demanded more pay, employers reversed their earlier opinions: the Chinese were

described as passive and subservient, while the Japanese were now aggressive and

20 Joan Wang, “The Double Burdens of Immigrant Nationalism: The Relationship between Chinese and Japanese in the American West, 1880-1920s,” Journal of American Ethnic History 27, no 2 (2008).

33

defiant.21 For the Japanese living in San Francisco, 1900 proved to be an ominous

year; it marked a turning point in their relations with the city. That year, Japanese

immigrants had their fate conjoined with the Chinese. In March, Japanese and

Chinese immigrants were blamed for a bubonic plague epidemic. Although the

Chinese suffered the harshest condemnation, the Japanese were viewed with

repugnance. In May San Francisco held its first anti-Japanese mass rally that featured

the city’s most prominent citizens including Mayor James Phelan.22 Additionally,

they were linked to vice commonly associated with the Chinese, as Japanese men

entered the gambling trade and Japanese women became a more prevalent commodity

within Chinatown’s brothels.

During the first decade of the 20th century, the Japanese were caught in

between two competing political movements—progressives on one side, labor on the

other—that used anti-Japanese rhetoric to sway votes in their favor. Progressive

politicians like James Phelan and other wealthy San Franciscans promised to rid their

city of graft and make government more efficient. A central part of the progressive

platform was a plan to address Japanese immigration. Phelan echoed Dennis Kearney

by insisting the Japanese were the “same tide of immigration” that had supposedly

been checked by the Exclusion Act. “Personally we have nothing against the

Japanese,” stated Phelan, “but as they will not assimilate with us and their social life is

so different from ours, let them keep a respectful distance.”23 In 1901, labor organized

the Union Labor Party to opposed Phelan and the progressives. Unions in San

21 Daniels, Pride and Prejudice, 9. 22 Daniels, Pride and Prejudice, 21; Robert Barde, “Prelude to the Plague: Pubic Health and Politics at America’s Pacific Gateway, 1899,” Journal of the History of Medicine 58 (April 2003): 180 23 Cited in Roger Daniels, Politics of Prejudice, 21

34

Francisco were some of the strongest in the country and their influence was

significant. Labor disagreed with progressives on most issues, but they found

common ground on Japanese immigration. Like the progressives, union leaders

courted the labor vote through anti-Japanese rhetoric. Between 1901 and 1906, the

Union Labor Party maintained firm control over municipal government. During their

reign, anti-Japanese sentiments would simmer, intermittently erupting to extreme

levels, like it did in 1905.

Much of the agitation in 1905 was instigated by Japan’s victory over the

Russian navy. In February, the San Francisco Chronicle ran a series of stories that

warned “the problem of the hour” for the United States was the threat of “Japanese

invasion.”24 Union Labor Party officials made several speeches about the eminent

threat posed by the Japanese. One product of this moment was the founding of the

Japanese and Korean Exclusion League. As implied by the name, the Exclusion

League’s main goal was to lobby for legislation that banned Japanese immigration. At

the inaugural meeting on May 7, one speaker declared that “unrestricted immigration

of the Japanese would seriously lower our standards of living, and as a natural

consequence, deteriorate our civilization.”25 The league consisted of prominent labor

politicians whose influence spanned from San Francisco to the state legislature in

Sacramento. But their influence was more rhetorical than material. They failed to

pass any legislative proposals locally or nationally, but their persistence helped to

sustain a high level of public malevolence toward the Japanese.

24 San Francisco Chronicle, February 23, 1905. 25 San Francisco Chronicle, May 7, 1905.

35

Race and Schools

A corresponding history of racial politics can be observed in San Francisco

Public schools. For school leaders, race was a problem to be solved. Who should and

who should not be allowed to attend school with white children was an important

question to be answered. For most white San Franciscans, the answer was simple;

segregating non-whites was the best alternative. To segregate a particular race of

students, school leaders had to comply with the guidelines mandated by the state

constitution. In San Francisco, the model for effective segregation was the Chinese

school. The Chinese had been segregated for over fifty years before the October 1906

resolution. To understand Japanese segregation, it is important to examine how San

Francisco dealt with Chinese students and how the school board gradually decided to

apply the same treatment to the Japanese.

From the first day of statehood, Californians favored separate schools for non-

white students. School segregation was legally challenged in 1874 and ruled

constitutional by the California State Supreme Court. The court upheld segregation,

but stipulated that districts must provide schooling for racial groups with at least ten

children who were of age to attend school. In such cases, the alternatives were to

permit non-white students to attend school with whites or to build separate schools for

specific racial groups. In August 1875, the San Francisco board of education voted to

enroll black students and bar the Chinese. Historian Charles Wollenberg suggests that

possibly the school board did not want to incur the expense of constructing and

maintaining a separate school for blacks who represented a small percentage of the

population. They may have reasoned it was more economical to integrate black

36

students.26 The Chinese were another matter. They were a more conspicuous

minority. Between 1870 and 1880, the black population increased from 1,330 to

1,628, while their percentage of the total population of San Francisco decreased from

.8% to .7%. At the same time, the Chinese population increased from 11,728 to

21,213 and their percentage of the total population increased from 7.8% to 9.1%.27

Whites, alarmed at the increase, perceived the Chinese as permanent aliens who could

never assimilate into American culture. Blacks tried to leverage their social standing

against this image of the Chinese as perpetual foreigners. Blacks across the state of

California appealed to whites for more civil rights because they, unlike the Chinese,

adhered to Christian values. They also lobbied for the Chinese to be denied the right

to vote and attend public schools because the Chinese did not show they were willing

to adopt American ways and customs.

For several years, Chinese parents were uncertain if their children would be

allowed to attend school. A school was temporarily opened for them in September

1859 when the board of education, at the behest of Chinese parents, opened the first

public school for Chinese students. Over the next eleven years, the board provided

negligible support for the school. In February 1871, Superintendent James Denmen

closed the school, stating that public funds should not be used to educate Chinese

students. Chinese students would be shut out until 1885, when they took legal action

to gain access. On March 3, 1885 the California State Supreme court ordered the

board of education to enroll Chinese students, but the current superintendent, James

26 Charles Wollenberg, All Deliberate Speed, 25-26 27 U.S. Bureau of the Census, Statistics of Population, 1900 (Washington, DC: Bureau of the Census, 1900).

37

Moulder, took extraordinary steps to circumvent the court decision and prevent

Chinese students from attending school with whites. He anticipated the board would

lose the March decision, so in January he began to lobby state legislators to draft a law

mandating separate schools for the Chinese. On March 5, the State Senate passed a

bill to amend section 1662 of the state school code. Before the change, the law stated,

Every school, unless otherwise provided by law, must be opened for the

admission of all children between five and twenty-one years of age residing in

the district, and the Board of Trustees or Board of Education have power to

admit adults and children not residing in the district, whenever good reasons

exist therefor. Trustees shall have the power to exclude children of filthy or

vicious habits, or children suffering from contagious or infectious disease.28

The California legislature amended the school law by re-writing the last sentence of

section 1662. The new law stated that “Trustees shall have the power to exclude

children of filthy and vicious habits, or children suffering from contagious or

infectious diseases, and also to establish separate schools for children of Mongolian

or Chinese descent. When such separate schools are established Chinese or

Mongolian children must not be admitted into any other schools [emphasis added].” 29

In April 1885 the board opened a school at Stockton and Powell streets in Chinatown

and mandated all Chinese students had to attend. The new school meant segregation

in San Francisco was constitutional under state law. When Japanese immigration 28 Low, The Unimpressible Race, 67. 29 Low, The Unimpressible Race, 67.

38

increased, school officials viewed them as the new “Asiatic problem.” But their

experience with the Chinese gave them a solution. Proposals to segregate Japanese

students would be considered for more than a decade as school officials figured out

how to segregate the Japanese in compliance with the state constitution.

In the early 1890s, some board members did not distinguish between the

Chinese and Japanese; they simply applied section 1662 of the state code to Japanese

students. On June 14, 1893 the board “introduced a resolution providing that hereafter

all persons of the Japanese race seeking entrance to the public schools must attend

what is known as the Chinese school.”30 Two months later, this order was rescinded

when the board reconsidered there decision to classify the Japanese as Mongolians.

Some board members decided it was incorrect to lump the two groups because the

Japanese represented a distinct and more civilized race. Despite the fact that some

board members were wary of treating the two groups as synonymous and understood

the Japanese as a better class of Asians, they were still uneasy with Japanese students

attending school with whites.

There is evidence that the school board gradually conflated their opinions

about the Japanese and Chinese. Disdain for both groups reached beyond the

classroom. As early as 1896 the school board prohibited the hiring of Japanese day

workers. A circular from May 1896 stated, “It is the desire of the Board of Education

that Chinese and Japanese be not employed in or about the school building belonging

to this department, for the purpose of cleaning windows, scrubbing &c….”31 By 1900,

San Franciscans were in general agreement: the Japanese were a menace. Whites now 30 San Francisco Chronicle, June 14, 1893. 31 San Francisco Office of the Superintendent of Common Schools, circular, May 13, 1896.

39

seemed more willing to classify the Japanese as Mongolians. The question for the

school board to solve was not if the Japanese should be segregated but how to build a

separate school for them. In 1903, when the Chinese community petitioned the school

board to increase spending on their school, the board of education denied their request

and affirmed their commitment to segregating all Asians. The Chinese were told that

state law clearly mandated segregation. The board president said, “…I would also like

to see the same rule applied, were it possible, to the Japanese. That is not possible

now, since there is no Japanese school; but with Chinese pupils, there is no reason

why the law should not be carried out.” In the president’s opinion, he did not think

“…the general intermingling of Chinese children with white pupils would prove the

advantage of the latter.”32 Keeping the races apart was central to the board’s

reasoning for and their desire to segregate the schools, but in the case of the Japanese,

the school board could not act on their race prejudice because they did not have a

school for Japanese students.

Approximately one year before the earthquake, on April 2, 1905, a San

Francisco Chronicle headline warned that “Japs bring frightful disease.” The paper

reported that Japanese students carried the infectious eye disease trachoma. “A danger

lurked in the 300 brown men who are allowed by a mistaken liberality of the law to

attend the public schools and sit side by side with native American children,” reported

the Chronicle.33 On May 7, the board of education passed a resolution to build a

school for Chinese and Japanese students. After repeated school inspections, the

school board’s attention was drawn to the “attendance of children of Japanese 32 Cited in Low, The Unimpressible Race, 87. 33 San Francisco Chronicle, April 2, 1905.

40

descent…and to the evil consequences liable to result therefrom through the

indiscriminate association of our children with those of the Mongolian race.” The

goals of the resolution were two-fold. First, a separate building for Japanese and

Chinese students would serve the “purpose of relieving the congestation at present

prevailing” in the schools. Second, the board stated its “higher end” goal was to

prevent white students from being placed in a “position where their youthful

impressions may be affected by association with pupils of the Mongolian race.” The

board defended the resolution by explaining it was justified under section 1662 of the

state code, which was “upheld and sustained by our Supreme Court.”34 The school,

however, was never built. It was explained that “because the Board of Supervisors

could not overstep the dictates of the charter regarding the dollar limit, they were

unable to give up the money asked for this purpose.”35

Segregating the Japanese was an elusive goal. It was relatively easy with the

Chinese—just build a school in Chinatown where the vast majority of Chinese live.

But the Japanese were not concentrated in one neighborhood. Forcing them to attend

the Chinese school was not an option because the school was filled to capacity. Local

and state laws complicated the problem. The board of supervisors had the power to

approve, reject, or revise the school board’s request to levy a special tax for school

construction. One way the supervisors could reduce expenditures and keep the tax

rate low was to closely regulate monies allocated specifically for building schools.

There was a history of tension over the special tax for school construction. In 1902

the school board, supervisors, and mayor agreed to levy a special tax to repair old 34 San Francisco Chronicle, May 7, 1905. 35 San Francisco Chronicle, October 30, 1906.

41

schools and build a new one. According to the school board, “when the tax was paid,

a number of the largest taxpayers paid their taxes under protest,” and the city auditor

reneged on his pledge to allocate the taxes for school construction.36 The school board

had to suspend work and lay off several workers because without the money from the

special tax, the department could not afford to pay laborers. The mayor tried to

arbitrate the controversy but in the end, the auditor blocked the school board’s access

to the funds. This controversy involved the construction of a school for white

children, so under these monetary constraints, it was possible that a building for

Japanese students did not receive support from the auditor and the supervisors.

In addition to local ordinance, state law hamstrung the school board.

Ironically, the state law permitting segregation became an obstacle. Without an

alternative facility, it was against the law to expel Japanese students from white

schools. It goes back to the amendment ratified in 1885. Section 1662 of the state

code mandated that all children must be admitted to school. The school board had the

authority to segregate “Mongolian” students, but only when the district provided a

school for them to attend.

Once again, in 1906, the school board lobbied the supervisors to build a

separate school for all Asian students. “But before that body had been able to consider

the matter, the calamity of April had overtaken us and not only were we unable to

secure specific appropriations for the purpose of erecting a proper building for the

accommodation of the Japanese pupils but we were not provided with sufficient funds

36 Thomas P. Woodward, Report of School Director in Charge of Buildings and Grounds: Why Our New School Houses are not Being Built and Why Painting and Repairs have been Stopped (San Francisco: September 1902). .

42

with which to carry on this department,” explained School Board President Aaron

Altmann.37 According to the Altmann, the budget and the earthquake and fire

hindered their plans to segregated Japanese students. In late July 1906, approximately

three months after the disaster, schools reopened, and approximately three months

later the board segregated the Japanese. In the six month between April 18 and

October 11, the school department suffered extraordinary damage and the school

board worked hard and fast to reconstruct the schools and restore the district to as

normal a state of affairs as possible. During this time of destruction and renewal,

school officials remained concerned about their Japanese problem. Even though

lingering effects of the disaster complicated various operations of the school

department, the school board remained vigilant for an opportunity to enforce their

segregation policy.

Earthquake and Recovery

The “great calamity” of 1906 began at 5:12 am on Wednesday, April 18. A

deep rumble signaled the onset of destruction that would engulf San Francisco. Many

San Franciscans were jarred awake. Those who were up staggered in vain to keep

their footing. The sturdiest infrastructure became fragile. Steel rails buckled;

skyscrapers swayed back and forth; streets rolled in violent waves and eventually

cracked. The most immediate dangers could be heard, as glass cracked, wood

foundations splintered, and brick walls and chimneys smashed against the street.

People inside buildings tried to get out before the structures collapsed. People on the

37 San Francisco Chronicle, October 30, 1906.

43

street dodged and weaved to avoid falling bricks and glass. When buildings and walls

collapsed, they created large clouds of dust. From within the clouds, people could be

heard choking and crying for help. When the shaking stopped, the fires began. In

some way, the two worked in tandem. The earthquake ruptured gas lines and

destroyed the city’s water system, leaving it defenseless against the conflagration.

And for three days the city burned.

The human cost was staggering. At least 3,000 people died. An area of 4.7

square miles was destroyed, which corresponded to over 500 city blocks. The fire

gutted 28,000 buildings for which at least half were private residents. Entire

neighborhoods, such as Chinatown, were razed, leaving more than 250,000 people

homeless. Some would seek refuge in neighboring cities, while others found refuge in

camps erected throughout San Francisco. The monetary cost exceeded four hundred

million dollars in 1906 dollars.

Minutes after the quake, city authorities took drastic measures to maintain

order. Mayor Eugene Schmitz told local police and federal soldiers “that anyone

caught looting should not be arrested but should be shot.”38 Vigilante committees

formed and issued public warnings “that any person found pilfering, stealing, robbing,

or committing any act of lawless violence will be summarily hanged.” 39 When the

fires were extinguished, concern shifted from restoring order to facing the challenges

of an uncertain future. Before the catastrophe, San Franciscans of all social classes

were proud of their city. They viewed San Francisco to be the preeminent city on the

38 Malcolm Barker, Three fearful Days: San Francisco Memoirs of the Earthquake and Fire (San Francisco: Londonborn Publications, 2006), 102. 39 Argonaut, April 1906.

44

west coast and the portal to America’s Pacific empire. After the disaster they

wondered, “Will San Francisco’s scepter as a seaport be wrestled from her? Will her

supremacy as Queen of the Pacific be taken from her?”40 Anxiety to preserve San

Francisco’s status as a great metropolis made a fast recovery paramount. A quick

recovery became an opportunity for San Franciscans to confirm the city’s greatness by

demonstrating their capacity to recover from seemingly insurmountable odds.

Like the rest of the city, the school department quickly began its own relief and

recovery. A few hours after the earthquake, the board of education devised plans to

protect school property from looters, to assist teachers in need of housing, and to work

with other municipal departments in the citywide relief effort. Monday morning,

April 23, one day after the fires were extinguished, Superintendent Roncovieri

convened a meeting at his house. Roncovieri organized several committees, including

one to write a damage report. By the middle of May, the committee reported its

findings. The department suffered an extraordinary amount of damage. The disaster

divided San Francisco into two districts, “burned and unburned.” The burned district

was boarded on the east and north by San Francisco Bay, on the west by VanNess

Street, and on the south by Townsend Street. Outside the burned district, damage was

sporadic; inside, it was severe. In all, the department lost thirty-three out of seventy-

five school buildings, twenty nine located in the burned district. Because most schools

were made of wood, they stood little chance against the inferno. The total monetary

loss was determined to be $1,586,000, and the cost for rebuilding was estimated at

$4,436,000. In addition to the monetary losses, the department’s administrative

40 Argonaut, April – May 1906.

45

capacity was in disarray. The board of education’s headquarters was destroyed. The

disaster occurred about two months before summer vacation, so the school year was

interrupted. The board was unable to complete a census report required for state

funding. Destroyed in the fire were important documents such as historical records

and teacher credentials. Roncovieri, who wanted schools to re-open as soon as

possible, was convinced by the rest of the board to begin summer recess two months

early. With the schools “in such an unsettled condition,” they decided to end the

school year and focus solely on reconstruction. 41

The school department played a practical and emotional role in the city’s

recovery. As the city’s largest department, it owned significant property left

unscathed by the earthquake and fire. They granted the police, fire, and health

departments permission to use classrooms or entire buildings as temporary offices.

The military and various relief agencies converted schools into hospitals and

storehouses. Teachers, as a unit, expressed their desire to contribute to the recovery

effort. At the April 23 meeting, over one hundred teachers “instructed” the

superintendent to offer their “services to the proper authorities to be used by them in

any way they deem best for the interest of our city.”42 The board helped the military

care for refugees in Golden Gate Park by organizing “vacation school.” Military

authorities donated tents and the board appointed teachers to plan and teach a

curriculum for displaced children.

The school board gave the community an emotional lift by organizing what

they described as “the greatest outdoor graduation ever witnessed” in the United 41 Board of Supervisors, Municipal Reports (San Francisco: Board of Supervisors, 1906), 466-470. 42 Municipal Report, 466-470.

46

States. 43 After prematurely ending the school year, the board decided to graduate

students based on teacher evaluations. They instructed teachers to list all students

eligible for graduation, and the plan was to have the ceremony on June 3, in Golden

Gate Park. With most of the city in ruins, the board intended to turn graduation into a

celebration for the entire city. Approximately 15,000 attended. The school

department’s music director organized a student choir, who sang songs proclaiming

their love for city and country. Several dignitaries spoke. “Let the cowards and cry

babies go east; the brave remain to build the city,” said University of California,

Berkeley professor Henry Morse Stephen. Mayor Eugene Schmitz told graduates their

diplomas marked “the beginning of a new era and the rebuilding of the new and

greater San Francisco, a San Francisco that shall rise from the ashes and stand forth as

a glorious monument.”44

While the June graduation may have represented an emotional turning point for

the school department, there was still a lot of work to be done. After graduation, the

board of education began the daunting task of preparing the schools to reopen. They

negotiated with state officials about how to calculate San Francisco’s share of state

funding. They asked teachers to resubmit proof of their certificates and requested

records from the state to confirm teacher qualifications. Most significantly, they

began to repair and rebuild schools. On May 28, the board initiated a project to build

temporary structures within the burned district. Board member Thomas Boyle, chair

of the building committee, “was authorized to take the work in hand and to press it

forward by all means in his power.” The “buildings will be constructed of wood, one 43 San Francisco Chronicle, May 24, 1906. 44 San Francisco Chronicle, June 3, 1906.

47

story in height, and will be covered with patent roofing material,” decided the board.45

The board estimated that schools would open the either the last week of July or the

first week in August, leaving approximately two months to prepare. At the June 11th

meeting, they agreed, “In view of the fact that the opening of the public schools has

been fixed for July 23, 1906, it will be necessary to begin at once the work of repairing

and cleaning up the school property so that the pupils may safely return to the same.”46

By the time school opened in July, the school board would construct 27 temporary

buildings.

By July, public pressure mounted for schools to reopen. The extended summer

vacation concerned adults who worried that children would become unruly if they

were out of school too long. An editorial in the San Francisco Bulletin ascertained

that “evil effects” have yet to develop from the “enforced vacation the children have

had since the 18th of April. But any further freedom from wholesale discipline of the

classroom would be dangerous.”47 Additionally, the board of education learned that

hundreds of dollars worth of junk was “being pilfered from the burnt district by school

children working in the interest of dealers.” Students were paid by junk dealers to sift

through debris and pick out valuable metals that could be melted and sold. School

officials were held partially responsible. “If the schools were open it would not be

possible for the junk dealers to make use of little boys as looters, as they are doing at

present,” stated an editorial in the San Francisco Call.48

45 San Francisco Examiner, May 29, 1906. 46 San Francisco Unified School District, Minutes of the Board of Education (San Francisco, June 11, 1906). 47 San Francisco Bulletin, July 13, 1906. 48 San Francisco Bulletin, July 13, 1906.

48

The San Francisco Bulletin, however, praised the “good work accomplished

by the school directors.” According to the editorial, the “evil effects” of the vacation

was prevented by the “untiring zeal” displayed by the board in preparing the schools

to re-open. The board deserved “great praise for its activity during the last three

months.” Schools in the unburned district, “in every instance,” were repaired and

when students return to school, there would “be little or nothing to remind them of the

disaster of April.”49 Other reports were more pessimistic. On July 21, the day before

schools were slated to open, the San Francisco Chronicle reported, “the board fears

some of the buildings are not in safe condition.” The board of education blamed the

board of public works for not officially inspecting schools that withstood the

earthquake in the unburned district. The school board was “unwilling to take the

responsibility of placing hundreds of school children in the building until inspected by

competent men and declared to be safe,” reported the article.

When schools opened on Monday, July 23, they were safe, but the board

proved to be ill prepared. They did not built enough temporary schools in the burned

district and the unburned district was overwhelmed by heavy enrollments because

thousands of San Franciscans relocated to neighborhoods that suffered less damage.

School directors pledged, however, that “no student will be turned away.”50 The

board actually wanted to increase enrollments to get more money from the state. As

late as October overcrowding continued to be a problem. “Since the disaster,”

reported the Chronicle, “there has been a shifting in the population,” such that schools

in the unburned district were overcrowded. On October 10, 1906, one day before the 49 San Francisco Bulletin, July 13, 1906 50 San Francisco Chronicle, July 25, 1906.

49

segregation order, school director Thomas Boyle issued a report proposing that

“accommodations should be provided immediately for at least 3500 school children

who are compelled to remain at home because there is not at present seating capacity

in the temporary buildings and others being used for school purposes.”51 Specifically,

Boyle was requesting extra classrooms for overcrowded schools in the unburned

district, where twenty-one out of twenty-six schools mentioned in the report were

located.

The population shift caused problems for the school department, but it also

presented them with an opportunity. While many schools outside the burned district

were overcrowded, inside, school enrollments were uneven. Five overcrowded

schools in director Boyles’s report were located inside the burned district, but other

temporary schools were below capacity. One school in particular was the Chinese

School. When the board decided to rebuild the school, they rebuilt it “with the view

of bringing there not only Chinese children, but all children of Mongolian descent.”

By October, President Aaron Altmann was notified that attendance in the Chinese

School was low due to the “slow progress in rebuilding the Chinese section.” With

attendance well below pre-earthquake numbers, Altmann and the rest of the board

determined they had enough space at the Chinese School for Japanese students and

“having the classrooms,” it was decided “that the law must be complied with.”52

Moving Japanese students into the Chinese school was a classic case of killing two

birds with one stone. It gave the school board a low cost solution to their “Asian

51 San Francisco Chronicle, October 11, 1906. 52 San Francisco Chronicle, October 30, 1906.

50

Problem” because they did not have to ask the supervisors for money to build a new

school. And with a school available, they were now in accordance with state law.

For more than ten years, the school board grappled over the question of what to

do with the Japanese. At first the school board could not agree over whether the

Japanese should be classified as Mongolians. At the turn of the century, when

hostility towards the Japanese became more intense, concern about how to classify

them subsided. Japanese students were portrayed as inferior children who endangered

the moral and physical welfare of white students, yet the school board did nothing

about the Japanese. They did nothing even though the vast majority of white San

Franciscans would have supported or at least remained indifferent to action against the

Japanese. They passed several resolutions to segregate the Japanese, and still,

nothing. They could not enforce segregation until they complied with state law, and

that opportunity arose after the earthquake and fire.

Local Policy becomes an International Incident

The October 11 resolution was different from previous resolutions to segregate

Japanese students for one particular reason: the board enforced the order. Expelled

from school were ninety-three Japanese students; sixty-eight were born in Japan,

twenty-five in America. The school board demanded the students be removed from

the schools by Monday, October 15. On October 18, President Altmann announced

that “all Japanese children attending the schools have finally been ejected from the

buildings where white children were in attendance.” That day, the San Francisco Call

51

reported the students “were segregated…one by one, until at present there are none in

attendance.”53

The Japanese were not “ejected” quietly. On October 12, the day after the

resolution, Japanese Consul K. Uyeno sent a letter to the board threatening to

challenge the segregation order in federal court. The board replied that it “can not

comply with the request you have communicated in your letter,” and suggested the

consul read the state school code on segregation.54 Between October 12 and 18 the

Japanese “clung on tenaciously and did not leave promptly.”55 Altmann stated the

Japanese protested vigorously and were not inclined to obey the order of the board.”

He added, “When they ascertained that we were in earnest, however, the order was

obeyed.” 56

They may have obeyed the order to leave, but they refused to attend the

Chinese school. By October 18, only one out the ninety-three Japanese students

attending public school transferred to the Oriental school. The rest stayed home. The

principal of the Oriental school, Ms. Newhall, would later testify that Uyeno visited

the Oriental School and attempted to dissuade two Japanese pupils from attending. It

was reported that “despite her unfamiliarity with the Japanese language,” Newhall

interpreted what she observed to be a contentious interaction between the consul and

the two students. She testified the “consul was trying to persuade the two pupils to do

something they were not inclined to.”57 Newhall’s testimony is questionable because

53 San Francisco Call, October 18 1906. 54 San Francisco Call, October 23, 1906. 55 San Francisco Call, October 18, 1906. 56 San Francisco Call, October 18, 1906. 57 San Francisco Call, December 10, 1906.

52

she could not speak Japanese, but what is definite is that after October 18, only one

student, fourteen year old Frank Kobayashi, attended the Chinese school.

Initially the Japanese viewed the resolution within the context of anti-Japanese

sentiments that were sparked by the disaster. “Since the Earthquake and fire” reported

the Japanese Daily New World,58 “the Japanese and Korean Exclusion League has

been taking every opportunity of persecuting our people.” The report continued, “For

the past few months the league did its utmost to stir up the ignorant classes and young

boys against the Japanese.”59 There is some evidence to support their claim. In a

letter dated June 11, 1906, Professor George Davidson of the University of California,

Berkeley, objected to the “repeated insults which have been heapt upon the party of

Japanese scientists…by boys and hoodlum gangs in the streets.”60 Davidson reported

that “insults…have been suffered by these gentlemen not less than a dozen times since

they began their work in this city.” The insults Davidson complained about included

boys throwing rocks and other objects at the Japanese scholars. In addition to sporadic

acts of violence, Japanese immigrants reported that the Japanese and Korean

Exclusion League organized a campaign to boycott Japanese businesses.

From the viewpoint of Japanese immigrants, school segregation was the latest

offense against their community at the behest of the Japanese and Korean Exclusion

League. The Japanese surmised their children were “excluded from the public school

because of race prejudices and forgetfulness of true Americanism.” The Japanese

58 Japanese Daily New World was a Japanese newspaper published in San Francisco. 59 Cited in U.S. Senate, The Final Report of Secretary Metcalf on the Situation Affecting the Japanese in the City of San Francisco, Cal, 59th Cong., 2nd sess., 1906, 24. 60 George Davidson to The University of California, June 16, 1906 cited in U. S. Senate, Final Report, 38.

53

Daily News exclaimed, “if the board of education be controlled by the agitation of

ignorant laborers rather than by true Americanism, then when the Japanese Exclusion

League ask them to exclude Japanese children permanently from the public school

they will do it.”61

On October 18, at this time, there was no indication the board viewed the

protest to be anything more than a minor stir. The decision to segregate the Japanese

was fully within their power as designated by the state school code. “The board is

merely carrying out the State law. It provides that Asiatic and white children shall not

attend the same schools,” stated board president Altmann.62 The board’s confidence

would be short lived. One week after the October 18th board meeting, the Empire of

Japan and the United States federal government would become full-fledge participants

in the unfolding drama, expanding the controversy beyond city and state boarders.

How did the resolution become an international crisis? From the very

beginning, the resolution had international implications. In 1906, the Japanese in San

Francisco were living between two worlds and only beginning to transition from

sojourners to permanent residence. Their response can be understood through Eiichiro

Azuma’s framework of transnationalism. Transnationalism means that Japanese

immigrants interpreted the school board’s resolution from two perspectives: as

members of Japan’s empire and as residents in America. As stated earlier, many

Japanese considered themselves to be subjects of Japan. Their mission in America,

whether through business or acquiring land, was to bolster the reputation and power of

their homeland. For others, America represented an opportunity to start a new life and 61 Japanese Daily News cited in U. S. Senate, Final Report, 27. 62 San Francisco Call, October 18, 1906.

54

school played a critical role in helping them acclimate to their new home. One

Japanese paper, The Japanese American, considered the resolution to be a “virtual

exclusion of Japanese from the only wholesome means of assimilating themselves to

American life.” The paper explained that “Japanese in this country want to adopt

American life in the best and most real spirit, and no better means can be had to this

end than the association of children in schools.” Another article in the same paper

stated, that a “separate school will greatly deter the Americanization of our children.”

The article described Americans as a “people composed of all the nationalities of the

world, and the Japanese, too, since they have come to live on the American soil, will

be and should be Americanized under the influence of American civilization.”63

For immigrants who were more concerned about the prestige of the empire, an

insult against them was an insult against Japan. But not all insults were equal; some

could be endured, while others could not be tolerated. The school board’s dismissal of

the Japanese consul fell into the latter category. It was the school board’s refusal to

hear the consul’s request that seemed to spark the most virulent responses. On October

24, over 1,200 members of the “Japanese colony” held a meeting at Jefferson Square

Hall “in order to institute a systemic fight against Japanese exclusion.”64 The next

day, The Japanese American issued a headline that read, “Our National Dignity

Besmeard—To Arms our Countrymen!” According to the article, the Japanese had

hoped that even though “members of the board have neither the intellectual or moral

capacity to grasp the straight-formed wherefores of the consul’s protest…, the board

would favor us at least with the formality of reconsideration.” But the Japanese were 63 Cited in U.S. Senate, The Final Report, 19, 22. 64 Cited in U.S. Senate, The Final Report, 25.

55

incensed that “not only did [the board] fail to give us a shadow of satisfaction…, they

most insolently ignored the legitimate protestations of our imperial consul.” According

to the paper, it was the boards haughty attitude toward the “Imperial Majesty’s consul”

that made the resolution different from previous acts of discrimination. “The calamity

of the poor little creatures may be bourne; the disgrace of Japanese residents in

American may be endured; but—but let none on earth or in heaven triffle with the

honor of our beloved Empire.” As a result, the board’s actions could “no longer be

confined to a handful of school children; it has assumed national proportions.” The

newspaper implored the Japanese immigrants to be defiant, and “backed by the

sympathetic outburst at home,” they were encouraged to oppose the resolution.65

The “sympathetic outburst at home” was born from actions originating in San

Francisco. On October 20, leaders within the immigrant community sent word to

newspapers in Japan explaining the situation. One newspaper in Tokyo reported that

“our countrymen have been humiliated on the other side of the pacific” because the

children have been expelled from the public schools by “the rascals of the United

States.”66 It did not take long for American diplomats in Japan to hear about the crisis.

On October 22, the United State’s ambassador to Japan, Luke Wright, notified the

state department in Washington D.C. that a problem was brewing. Three days later,

Japan’s Ambassador, Viscount Aoki, held formal meetings in Washington D.C. with

Secretary of State Elihu Root. October 25 marked a turning point because thereafter,

the question of whether the resolution violated the 1894 treaty between the United

States and Japan became the central focus of the controversy. 65 Japanese American cited in U. S. Senate, The Final Report, 20. 66 Cited in Wollenberg, All Deliberate Speed,55.

56

It was not unprecedented for Japanese living abroad to make a plea for help

through Japan’s newspapers. In the 1860s, Japan’s press reported on the mistreatment

of immigrants in Hawaii and petitioned the government to defend its people abroad.

The government, however, was pragmatic in its response to situations involving

Japanese emigrants. It weighed the costs and benefits interference might have on their

international status and trade. When it was prudent to not get involved, they did not.

In this case, Japan’s government would actively pursue the matter.

While the controversy over segregation provides some insight into the

relationship between Japanese immigrants and their homeland, it may also indicate

something about their political and economic standing in San Francisco. When

compared to the Chinese, the Japanese were short on resources within the local

political environment. A brief comparison between the Japanese and Chinese

communities in San Francisco highlights alternative means of protest that were not

available to Japanese immigrants.

Soon after the earthquake and fire, some politicians wanted to use the disaster

as an opportunity to move Chinatown. Many San Franciscans argued that

Chinatown—which was said to be located in “one of the finest parts of San

Francisco”—had become an eyesore after the “yellow plague had made its way.” In

their opinion, “the fire was not an unmixed evil, if it should drive out Chinatown.” 67

In particular, progressive politicians wanted to relocate Chinatown as part of their

movement to clean up San Francisco. The relocation plans began in earnest on April

27 when an all-white committee was formed to discuss where Chinatown should be

67 Argonaut, April 1906.

57

reconstructed. In response, the Chinese did not present themselves as foreign

nationals whose treaty rights had been violated. Instead, they argued against

relocation on the basis that they were permanent residents and resident aliens who

were entitled by the Constitution to live where they pleased. The Chinese could not

rely on a mother country with a powerful navy, but they did have an established

community that was fully integrated into San Francisco’s economy. Many Chinese

were taxpaying business and home owners; others paid exorbitant rents to white

landlords, rent the landlords were reluctant to forgo. In the previous year,

approximately one-third of the import duties collected by San Francisco were paid by

Chinese merchants. Additionally, Chinatown was a lucrative tourist attraction. A

1904 tour guide book encouraged tourists to visit Chinatown to see the “foreigners in

their picturesque costumes, the Joss houses, the restaurants with their elegant fronts

and the beautifully decorated dining rooms….”68 Understanding their economic

value, the Chinese orchestrated a successful campaign to gain support from white San

Franciscans. When the Chinese threatened to leave San Francisco, whites who had a

vested economic interest in Chinatown rallied to their cause. Advocates of relocation

faced growing scrutiny and by mid-June, attempts to relocate Chinatown had been

quashed.

The Japanese in San Francisco had not yet developed the economic

infrastructure and political savvy to wage such a campaign against local political

officials. Although a few Japanese entrepreneurs opened small businesses, they did

not possess the economic resources to leverage against city officials. Before the 68 The Commercial Pictorial and Tourist Map of San Francisco, 1st ed. (San Francisco: Aug. Chevalier, 1904), 4.

58

earthquake, most of the Japanese were dispersed throughout the city, living in

missions, boardinghouses, or the homes of affluent whites. The Chinese, however,

concentrated their wealth in Chinatown, making it an entrenched part of San

Francisco’s economy. Regardless of how much San Franciscans complained, they

nevertheless valued Chinatown for the income it earned the city and private landlords.

Additionally, the Chinese arrived in San Francisco at the dawn of the city’s

development. Chinatown was one of San Francisco’s oldest communities and by

1906, most Chinese living there considered it to be home. Their fight over Chinatown

was about saving their neighborhood, not about defending the honor of their ancestral

homeland. As stated earlier, many Japanese viewed themselves to be citizens of

Japan. It was the Japanese consul who had the most influence over the community in

San Francisco. The Consul understood the White House wanted to maintain good

relations with Japan in order to secure its economic interests in the Pacific. The

Japanese immigrant’s strongest position was to involve Japan and to make the 1894

treaty the focal point of their protest. Such a move involved the United States federal

government and essentially made the White House a proxy for the Japanese in their

struggle against the board of education.69

When the American Ambassador to Japan, Luke Wright, sent word to the

White House that Japan’s government was upset about the segregation of Japanese

students in San Francisco, the state department responded promptly. Their immediate

concern was to placate the Japanese by assuring them that segregating Japanese

69 Yumei Sun, “From Isolation to Participation: Chung Sai Yat Po [China West Daily] and San Francisco’s Chinatown, 1900-1920” (PhD diss., University of Maryland, College Park, 1999); Ying Zi Pang, “The Impact of the 1906 Earthquake on San Francisco’s Chinatown,”

59

students was not an official policy of the federal government. To explain the

resolution, the state department emphasized the impact and random occurrence of the

earthquake. Secretary of State Elihu Root sent word to Japan through Ambassador

Wright that the resolution was an irrational act committed by men who were still

recovering from extreme trauma. In a telegram to Wright, Root stated that his

preliminary assessment of the situation revealed “nothing in San Francisco but an

ordinary local labor controversy excited by the abnormal conditions resulting from the

earthquake and fire.” He explained it was beyond the federal government’s power to

prevent men who were “desirous of a labor vote,” from trying to gain the favor with

voters by excluding the Japanese. The “trouble about schools appear to have arisen

from the fact that the schools which the Japanese had attended were destroyed by the

earthquake and have not yet been replaced.” Secretary Root said the president was

aware of the situation and promised to take the appropriate measures to maintain the

“spirit of friendship and respect” between the United States and Japan. Root

concluded, the “purely local and occasional nature of the San Francisco school

question should be appreciated when the Japanese remember that the Japanese

students are welcome in the hundreds of school and colleges all over the country”70

By isolating the problem in San Francisco and placing the blame on the random

occurrence of the earthquake, the federal government absolved itself of wrongdoing

and provided the framework for an explanation.

The telegram was followed by a meeting on October 25, in Washington D.C.

between the Japanese Ambassador and the Secretary of State. In some ways the

70 San Francisco Chronicle, October 28, 1906.

60

Japanese and United States governments followed a similar approach. Each separated

the interests and goals of their national governments from the views and actions of

their constituents. In the case of the United States, the federal government separated

itself from San Francisco. In the case of Japan, its national representative, Viscount

Aoki, underscored the difference between his government and the common people.

First he assured the United States that his purpose was to preserve peaceful relations

between the two nations. He told Secretary Root that “the friendship between the

United States and Japan is too genuine and to long standing to justify any formal

protest on the part of Japan because of wrongs her citizens may have suffered in some

one locality in the United States.”71 But Aoki explained the trouble was not the

government. He stated that although the government understands that the resolution is

local policy, most Japanese do not. “Of course the Japanese government fully realized

that the action against the Japanese children is local and not general in this country,”

stated Aoki, “but all the Japanese do not understand the situation in this country, and

the unfriendliness to Japan is regarded by many persons as a national action.” He

continued, “Such action on the part of local authorities in this country is resented very

bitterly by all Japanese.”72 By identifying the controversy as a local anomaly, both

governments allayed concerns about open conflict between the two nations, yet they

still communicated the seriousness of the issue and the urgency of federal intervention.

The New York Times dubbed the meeting a turning point because the “the

invocation of treaty rights by the Mikado’s representative gives a more serious aspect

to the recent anti-Japanese crusade in California and the anti-American outburst in 71 New York Times, October 26, 1906. 72 New York Times, October 26, 1906.

61

Japan.”73 One important consequence of focusing on Japan’s treaty rights was that it

questioned the relationship between the federal government and state and local policy

makers. How much jurisdiction did a treaty have over local decision makers? This

question would hold the attention of San Francisco, the nation, and the world for the

next two months. The federal government’s first act was to initiate an investigation to

determine if the San Francisco’s school board was justified in segregating Japanese

students. President Theodore Roosevelt decided to send a member of his cabinet to

San Francisco to show that he considered the controversy to be a serious matter. He

selected the Secretary of Commerce and Labor, Victor Metcalf, to be his chief

investigator. Metcalf, a native of the Bay Area, was dispatched from Washington on

October 28 with instructions to collect data and write a report summarizing his

findings. He arrived in Oakland on the October 31, conducted his inquiry for two

weeks, and returned to Washington D.C. His report would be handed to Congress on

December 18, 1906.

While Metcalf was researching and preparing his report, the board of education

publicly detailed its reasons for passing the resolution. The school board and Metcalf

would present different perspectives of the segregation controversy. The earthquake

and fire would factor prominently in their arguments. Metcalf presented a cause and

effect relationship between the disaster and the resolution: the disaster struck, anxiety

and fear increased, and normal race prejudice reached abnormal levels. Metcalf

depicted the school board as a group that was under the control of racist labor leaders

and influenced by the shock of the disaster. The school board sought to portray

73 New York Times, October, 26 1906.

62

themselves as an independent organization with formal rules to follow and official

duties to perform. The next two sections examine how the school board and Metcalf

engaged in a political contest to shape the public’s image of the controversy.

The Politics of Crisis: The School Board

One accusation the board attempted to refute was that the resolution was

spearheaded by racist, labor leaders in the aftermath of the earthquake and fire. As

quoted earlier, the Japanese community was quick to assume a connection between the

disaster, the Japanese and Korean Exclusion League, and the resolution. It was not

far-fetched to imagine such a combination of factors. At a school board meeting on

August 20, 1906, about two months before the resolution, the board received

communication from the Exclusion League “protesting against the Japanese students

occupying seats in various schools.”74 Although the board denied the League’s

request to build a separate school for Asians because there were insufficient funds, the

request could be interpreted as a presage of the actual enforcement of the October

resolution.

The board insisted that it was not influenced by outside parties or events and

that it was only carrying out state policy. While they admitted the earthquake and fire

provided the opportunity to segregate the Japanese, they insisted the disaster was not

the motivating factor. On October 31, the San Francisco Chronicle published an

interview between University of California president Ide Wheeler and school board

president Altmann. Wheeler asked if the resolution “was a movement that had 74 San Francisco Unified School District, Minutes of the Board of Education (San Francisco, August 23, 1906).

63

suddenly come up for consideration before the Board or whether it had anything to do

with the conditions that have come about in this community since the calamity?”

Altmann answered no to both scenarios. “The board,” replied Altmann “had always

felt in duty, bound to comply with the law.” 75 In November, the board sent a formal

communication to Secretary Metcalf in which they restated Altmann’s position. “The

law is on the statue books and it is within our province to enforce it. It is our duty,”

wrote the school board. They explained that once a law is “passed by the legislature

of a sovereign state, it is beyond our power to do other than obey the law.” The action

taken on October 11, “was but a reiteration of similar resolutions which had been

passed in previous years.” According to the board, “it was not feasible to effect a

strict enforcement of the above mentioned school law” because of the “crowded

conditions of the Oriental School prior to the calamity of April last.” But since the

earthquake and fire, it “has become possible to enforce this law which the Board of

Education regards as mandatory.” In the same memo, the school board argued that if

race was an issue, Japan’s ambition made it so. In the board’s view, segregation was

“not so much a question of education, but a matter of principle with [the Japanese].

As a nation they desire and practically demand that they equally be recognized along

with the Caucasian nations.”76 Further, the school board argued the resolution did not

violate the 1894 treaty because Japanese students were not excluded, just segregated;

they still had access to school. It was only because the Japanese wanted to attend

school with whites that they mistakenly equated segregation with exclusion.

75 San Francisco Chronicle, October 31, 1906 76 San Francisco Chronicle, November 10, 1906.

64

In the above argument, the board portrayed themselves as pragmatist who

seized the moment created by the earthquake. The resolution was the responsible act

of public servants who were entrusted to enforce the law. This portrayal runs in stark

contrast to the image of being racist flunkies who were under great stress after the

earthquake.

The school board expanded on the public servant argument by representing

themselves as mid-level officials responding to orders from above and demands from

below. Orders from above referred to section 1662 of the state code; demands from

below referred to complaining parents. The main complaint, according to Altmann,

was that several Japanese students were too old. The parents explained they did not

want their young girls attending school with older Japanese males. In his interview

with President Wheeler, Altmann claimed to have received complaints from across the

city, but “more particularly from parents of children attending schools in the Western

Addition.” He explained, “The Japanese attending those schools were of ages above

the average age of the oldest grammar grade pupils.”77 In another interview, Altmann

provided a specific example. The Pacific Heights School78, explained Altmann, was

located in “a residential section where many Japanese are employed as house servants.

Many of them attend classes in this school and would reach on average from three to

four years more in age than other pupils.”79 Indeed, the majority of the nineteen

Japanese students in the Pacific Heights school were schoolboys and all of them were

foreign born and overage. The students closest in age to their appropriate grade were

77 San Francisco Chronicle, October 30 1906. 78 Although Pacific Heights today is considered to be a separate neighborhood, in 1906 it was technically part of the Western Addition. 79 San Francisco Call, December 7, 1906.

65

two twelve year old third graders and one fifteen year old eighth grader. The most

glaring mismatch was a twenty year old eighth grader. To Superintendent Roncovieri,

the “national commotion” was a surprise because segregating Japanese students “was

purely a local regulation for the good of San Francisco children whose parents urged

us to action and which was easier to enforce after the fire than before.” Roncovieri

explained it was within the board’s power to “object to an adult Japanese sitting beside

a twelve-year old schoolgirl, and if this be prejudice, we are the most prejudiced

people in the world on that point.”80

It is difficult to confirm how much the schoolboys worried San Franciscans or

to judge the school board’s sincerity about responding to parents concerned about

Japanese men attending primary school. One reason to question the board’s argument

is that they targeted all Japanese students regardless of age or nationality. American

students of Japanese decent were expelled along with students born in Japan. Most of

the Japanese born in American were enrolled in their appropriate grade. If the school

board was concerned about overage students they should have limited their resolution

to approximately forty-nine students, and less if they were concerned only with grown

men, which if that was defined as someone older than eighteen, then the number of

students was eleven. But they segregated all the Japanese students, giving the

impression that race prejudice was the motivating factor.

Additionally, it is unclear how widespread the concern was over Japanese

students. There is evidence that the school board had previously acted to expel

overage Japanese students. Parents complained about the older students before the

80 Harper’s Weekly January 19, 1907.

66

earthquake and fire. They reported students between the ages of twenty-two and

twenty four, but on the day of the resolution, the oldest Japanese student was twenty.

Apparently the school board dealt with the students who were over twenty years old.

The complaining parents were said to be relieved when some—but not all—of the

older Japanese students withdrew from school.81 Reporter George Kennan insisted

that the schoolboy issue was contrived by the board of education and the Exclusion

League to scare parents. He reported that some teachers praised Japanese students for

their work ethic. Board president Altmann stated that “nothing can be said against the

general character and deportment of Japanese Scholars.”82 And Kennan claimed that

Superintendent Roncovieri admitted he had never received a complaint about the

conduct of Japanese students.

While the board’s argument about older students was questionable, it makes

sense that parents within the Western Addition would be the most vocal after the

earthquake and fire. The fire caused people to move south and west of the burned

district. As people relocated they changed the dynamic of neighborhoods across the

city. The Western Addition illustrates one example. The Western Addition suffered

little damage from the fire as it was on the boundary of the burned district at the edge

of Van Ness St. But actions taken to save the neighborhood foreshadowed its

transformation. Prior to the disaster, the Western Addition was primarily a residential

neighborhood of upper and upper-middle class homes. To stop the approaching fire

from destroying the neighborhood, soldiers dynamited mansions along Van Ness St. to

create a firebreak. After the disaster, the neighborhood shifted to working class homes 81 U.S. Senate, The Final Report, 4. 82 San Francisco Chronicle, December 9, 1906 cited in George Kennan, The Outlook, June 1, 1907.

67

and rentals as displaced San Franciscans began to relocate. The Japanese were among

the migrants, and along Buchanan Street, between Geary and Pine Street, they began

to establish what today is known as Japantown. Their concentration within the

neighborhood drew attention. A 1907 real estate advertisement tried to entice white

homebuyers to purchase property in neighboring Presidio Terrace by warning that

“Japs have invaded the Western Addition.” “Chinese and Japanese are way gaining

foothold in the best parts of the Western Addition,” claimed the advertisement. Two

schools in the western addition had the largest number of Japanese students. Pacific

Heights had nine-teen students and Redding Primary had twenty-three (only nine

students were born in the United States but the students were closer to their proper

grade than the students attending Pacific Heights). Additionally, the overcrowded

conditions in the unburned district seemingly made the Japanese presence more

apparent. Days after the resolution was passed, the San Francisco Call reported that

“since the April disaster the Japanese have attended primary and grammar schools in

large numbers, crowding out the American Pupils.”83 It is possible the nascent

Japantown raised concern among whites about the Japanese in general and the

students in particular. Whatever the reason—race prejudice or overage students—the

school board could do nothing until they found a way to circumvent state law and

local politics. The earthquake and fire provided a way.

83 San Francisco Call, October 18, 1906.

68

The Politics of Crisis: Metcalf’s Report

The city anxiously awaited Secretary of Commerce and Labor Victor Metcalf’s

report. When Metcalf left the Bay Area to return to Washington, San Franciscans did

not know what to expect from the report because he did not make any statements

about his findings. But implicit signals from the secretary gave hints about his

leanings. On the first day of his investigation, Metcalf asked Altmann if the Japanese

were Mongols. The question identified a loop hole in the law that favored the

Japanese because section 1662 explicitly mentions only Chinese and Mongolian

students. But nothing was certain because Metcalf refused to comment until he

released the report. As Metcalf’s secrecy left the city unsure of the investigation’s

outcome, so to did their suspicion of President Roosevelt. Before the resolution,

relations between the White House and San Francisco were cool. In the wake of the

earthquake and fire, President Roosevelt refused to accept relief money offered by

foreign nations. Local newspapers and periodicals criticized Roosevelt for not being

flexible in his foreign policy when San Francisco was in desperate need of help.

All questions were answered on December 18. The report denounced the

October resolution. On page three of the report, Metcalf set the tone for what was to

follow. He wrote, “The action of the board in the passage of the resolutions of May 6,

1905, and October 11, 1906, was undoubtedly largely influence by the activity of the

Japanese and Korean Exclusion League.” Metcalf narrowed the scope of the federal

government’s involvement. The federal government was interested only in the sixty-

eight foreign born students. As for the twenty-five born in America, Metcalf

69

explained they were “subject to the laws of the Nation as well as of the state.”84

Additionally Metcalf had to be careful to center the controversy on treaty rights and

not specifically segregation. Chinese students in San Francisco and blacks in the

south were segregated and he did not want this case to have a spill over affect on

schools across the country.

Metcalf addressed the school board’s argument about the older Japanese

schoolboys. He acknowledged the students born in Japan were “very much older”

than their classmates and he admitted that it was reasonable for citizens to complain

about older male students attending primary school. But he insisted, “The objection to

Japanese men attending the primary grades could very readily be met by a simple rule

limiting the ages of all children attending those grades.”85 He dismissed the Japanese

schoolboy issue as a minor problem that did not require a resolution to segregate all

Japanese students. Furthermore, Metcalf argued that forcing the Japanese into the

Oriental School would essentially prevent several students from attending school. The

problem was that adverse condition in the burned section made if difficult for Japanese

students to get to the Oriental School. “Owing to the great conflagration,” wrote

Metcalf, “…it would not be possible even for grown children living at remote

distances to attend this school.”86 This was probably Metcalf’s strongest counter

argument because it attacked the heart of the school board’s rationale. Metcalf argued

that if the Japanese lived at such a distance from Chinese school to make it impossible

84 U.S. Senate, The Final Report, 4. 85 U.S. Senate, The Final Report, 7. 86 U.S. Senate, The Final Report, 6

70

for them to attend, then those students had to be admitted to a white school closer their

homes or the school board risked violating state code 1662.

The report had a wider scope than just the schools. School segregation was

only one-third of the report. The remaining two-thirds documented abuses—boycotts

and violent assaults—suffered by the Japanese after the Earthquake and fire. The

main theme of the report was that after the earthquake and fire, Japanese nationals

living in San Francisco had been the targets of a malicious campaign, a campaign

orchestrated by the Japanese and Korean Exclusion League and in violation of the

1894 Treaty. The tenor of the report was summarized in Metcalf’s concluding

statement: “If, therefore, the police power of San Francisco is not sufficient to meet

the situation and guard and protect Japanese residents in San Francisco, to whom

under our treaty with Japan we guarantee ‘full and perfect protection for their persons

and property,’ then, it seems to me, it is clearly the duty of the Federal Government to

afford such protection.”87

The school board was quick to defend its position. On December 19, Altmann

stated he was “sorry to see in Mr. Metcalf’s report to the President the statement that

the Chinese, Japanese and Corean [sic] Exclusion League prompted the action of the

Board of Education in Segregating the Japanese pupils.” Altmann claimed to be

perplexed as to how Metcalf could reach such a conclusion because “long before the

Japanese exclusion league came into existence the board had already taken action in

this matter and was not dictated to by any outside influence.” Altmann recalled that

two years prior to the resolution the supervisors denied the school board funding for a

87 U.S. Senate, The Final Report, 17.

71

new Asian school because they were concerned about the tax rate. Without adequate

appropriations “it was left for this, the calamity year, to bring forth additional facilities

for the Japanese pupils in the Rehabilitated Oriental school,” stated Altmann.88 Even

though the previous resolutions to segregate the Japanese were not enforced, Altmann

argued that proposals to build a school should prove that the school board’s decision

was grounded in the state school code and not in city politics. In response to the

question about the distance students had travel to get to the Oriental School, Altmann

argued that white students had to walk as far or farther than Japanese students. He

also claimed that the Japanese Consul rejected his offer “to have a class established”

for the youngest primary students who had to travel more than fifteen blocks to attend

the Oriental School.89

Metcalf’s report ended part one of the segregation crisis. After the report was

released, attention shifted to Washington D.C. The onus was on the White House to

act. President Roosevelt wanted to settle the controversy quickly. When Japan

defeated Russia, Roosevelt recognized Japan as a legitimate power and wanted to

avoid conflict between their navies in the Pacific. Before the segregation order, he

was concerned about the actions of California’s legislature. In March 1905, the

California Senate and Assembly unanimously passed resolutions against the Japanese,

including laws to ban them from the state. The resolutions were not enforced but they

worried Roosevelt. He called the California legislature “idiots” for passing the

resolutions and expressed frustration that California lawmakers might instigate trouble

88 San Francisco Chronicle, December 19, 1906. 89 San Francisco Chronicle, December 19, 1906.

72

with Japan.90 Japan had proven its military might and Roosevelt considered it unwise

to antagonize a country with such a formidable navy. When the October 11 resolution

was passed by the school board, Roosevelt responded quickly by sending Metcalf to

investigate. His quick response was a message to Japan that he was aware and

concerned about the situation.

Roosevelt’s stand against segregation was not based on an enlightened sense of

racial equality toward the Japanese. Roosevelt’s views about race were conditioned

by the racist, white supremacist beliefs prevalent in his day. He held disparaging

views of blacks and Chinese, considering theme to be inferior to whites. Yet his racial

views were such that he could admire particular non-white individuals—such as

Booker T. Washington—or particular non-white group. Japan had proven itself in

battle, which in Roosevelt’s mind, made them worthy of respect. In his racial

hierarchy, he placed them below whites and above blacks and Chinese. This racial

classification implied that Blacks and Chinese could not compete with white laborers,

but Japanese immigrants could. Because Japanese immigrants presented a direct

challenge to white laborers, Roosevelt concluded that interactions between the two

groups would remain volatile.91

On December 3, two weeks before Metcalf released his report, Roosevelt

spoke in front of Congress and issued a public statement about the controversy. He

conjectured that hostility against the Japanese might end if they were citizens and he

proposed granting Japanese immigrants the right to become naturalized citizens. The

90 Roger Daniels, The Politics of Prejudice, 34. 91 Bederman, Gail, Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880-1917 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1995), 198-200.

73

uproar in San Francisco was immediate. The city, aghast at Roosevelt’s

pronouncement, rallied behind the school board. Roosevelt was disturbed by San

Francisco’s response. He wrote to a friend, “The San Franciscans are howling and

wooping and embarrassing me in every way, their manners are inexcusable.”92 After

the hostile response to his speech, Roosevelt decided that the only way to placate the

Californians and keep peace with Japan was to restrict Japanese immigration. He

relented, “Whether we like it or not, I think we have to face the fact that the people of

the Pacific slope….will become steadily more and more hostile to the Japanese if their

laborers come here, and I am doing my best to bring about an agreement with Japan by

which the laborers of each country shall be kept out of the other country.”93

To broker the agreement, Roosevelt had to negotiate three separate deals: one

with the San Francisco school board, one with the California Legislature, and one with

Japan. First, he needed to convince the school board to rescind the segregation order.

Once that was done, then he could ask Japan to restrict immigration of its laborers.

And finally he had to try to persuade the California legislature to curb its hostility

toward the Japanese. Roosevelt summoned the school board to Washington, D.C.

The school board, accompanied by Mayor Schmitz, arrived on February 8, 1907. On

February 15, the two sides reached a compromise. The school board agreed to repeal

the resolution if the President promised to ban Japanese laborers from entering the

United States. Roosevelt explained that segregating Japanese students would make it

harder to get Japan to agree to keep their laborers from emigrating, and the school

board agreed that exclusion took precedence over segregation. 92 Bailey, Theodore Roosevelt, 125. 93 Bailey, Theodore Roosevelt, 124-125

74

Conclusion

The compromise ended the school board’s involvement in the controversy.

When the school board returned to San Francisco, they were greeted with harsh

criticism. San Francisco’s labor leaders were unhappy with the compromise and

accused the school board of capitulating to the president before getting a complete ban

on Japanese immigrants. The school board, in a seeming show of strength, clarified

their position by affirming their legal right to segregate Japanese students. According

to the school board, they “did not concede or intend to concede that its action was in

violation of any of the stipulations of the treaty between the United States or Japan.”

Furthermore, they insisted that if the treaty attempted to “circumscribe the Board or

prevent it from regulating its own school affairs, as the exercise of local policy power,

such provisions in said treaty are nugatory and void.”94 The school board framed the

outcome as a logical concession. They explained the president convinced them to

rescind the resolution in order to relieve tension between the two nations so the federal

government could peacefully negotiate a deal with Japan to restrict the flow of

Japanese immigrants. Ultimately, the school board’s solution to the controversy only

changed the status of the older Japanese students. Japanese students continued to

enroll in school unless they were approximately three years older than their primary

school classmates. The older students were transferred to ungraded schools.

The school board was consistent throughout the entire episode. From

beginning to end, they stressed their independence as a decision making body. The

arguments they presented to justify their decision were framed as choices based on

94 San Francisco Unified School District, Minutes, (San Francisco, October 11, 1906), 472.

75

their role as educational leaders. They insisted that before the disaster they went

through proper channels to segregate the Japanese. Without adequate funding, they

could not construct a building for the Japanese in order to comply with state law. The

earthquake and fire presented an opportunity, and they took advantage of it. When

they were questioned about the matter, they defended their position by affirming their

role as non-partisan public officials. They claimed to be beyond the influence of

politics—in the guise of racist labor leaders—and immune to the emotional trauma

caused by the disaster. Segregation was a rational decision based on state law as well

as their dutiful response to complaining parents. The Federal government attempted to

portray the resolution as an oddity, just one of several irrational acts perpetrated

against the Japanese after the earthquake and fire. Their goal was to appease Japan, to

give the perception that racism against the Japanese was caused by the destruction

wrought by the earthquake and fire. In essence, it was a battle over perspective: the

school board sought to emphasize their evenness before and after the disaster. The

federal government wanted to emphasize how the disaster inflamed racial hostility.

The earthquake and fire—a monstrous event that devastated the city—became a tool

to be manipulated as a means to implement and interpret political goals.

76

Chapter Three

Politics of School Construction: Progressive Reform and the Great Depression

The date was April 27, 1933. While the nation was preoccupied with a

stagnating economy, San Franciscans focused momentarily on the inferno burning at

McAllister Street, between Broderick and Baker Streets. It started at 3:45 pm. A

painter, using his blow torch to remove old paint, inadvertently started the fire. It

moved quickly to the roof and then spread to adjacent buildings. Residents ran from

their homes, grabbing whatever items they could—clothes, furniture, bird cages, a

typewriter. It had been years since San Francisco witnessed a blaze so intense, “the

first five-alarm fire…since the Ewing Field conflagration of 1926.”95 More than 600

firemen—approximately half the department—responded to the call. During the

struggle to extinguish the blaze, five firemen were hurt, one of them critically. In all,

twenty nine buildings caught fire; three burned completely.

Yet, despite the damage, San Franciscans breathed a sigh of relief. If the fire

had started one hour earlier, the outcome could have been much worse. The building

the painter set ablaze was Fremont Primary School, and one hour before the fire, it

was occupied by 456 children. “It seems an act of God that school had been dismissed

when the fire broke out,” stated a concerned parent.96 Outcry ensued for several

weeks after the fire. The community demanded that “firetrap schools” be torn down,

and safe schools built, but school construction was a complicated matter in San

Francisco. It was a contentious policy issue prior to the earthquake and fire. After the

disaster, no one questioned the need to build schools. Controversy centered on two 95 San Francisco Chronicle, April 28, 1899. 96 San Francisco News, April 28, 1933.

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questions: how should the city pay the cost of construction and what should be the

goals for construction? Conflict intensified during the 1920s, when opinions hardened

and the city divided over two methods of funding. Debate ensued as interest groups

tried to advance their plans for new schools. The clamor instigated by the Fremont

school fire was the latest episode in a protracted and complicated drama about the

politics of school construction in San Francisco.

The debate over school construction included myriads of local actors who for

more than a decade struggled to gain political advantage in order to realize their own

agendas. The board of education and the board of supervisors argued fiercely over

how to fund construction. Women’s civic clubs and the Parent Teachers’ Association

(PTA) usually sided with whoever had the power to actually fund construction, but

they differed with the school board over which schools to build. Lesser known but

influential civic organizations, like the Public Education Society, challenged anyone

who opposed their views about funding.

Already complex, the situation was complicated further by the Great

Depression. Between 1929 and 1933, the world economy collapsed. The Depression

did not shock San Francisco with overwhelming force like the earthquake and fire of

1906; its onset was more subtle. After the stock market crashed in October 1929, San

Franciscans stayed optimistic until 1931. That year, the severity of the economic

downturn—which for the previous two years had been viewed as a natural slump in

the business cycle—was beyond doubt. No longer could rising unemployment be

shrugged off, as the homeless multiplied and breadlines grew long. In 1933 the

economy had reached bottom and no one could guess when things might improve. The

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Great Depression acted as both an impediment and accelerant to the school

department’s building program. Although the Depression initially dampened the

public’s will to fund school construction, it also strengthened resolve by presenting

some interest groups an opportunity to achieve their goals.

The focus of this chapter—the politics of school construction between 1914

and 1933—is a story about the persistence of local educational politics. The issue of

school construction had built up a tremendous amount of energy in the decade

preceding the Great Depression. The depression forced people to redefine the problem

of school construction and rethink their proposed solutions. For all the people

involved, the question became how to attain their goals during a period of severe

economic distress. This chapter looks at the process through which people shifted

their rhetoric according to the present context and stayed alert to any developments

that might bolster their cause. The story begins in the 1914 with a report critical of the

SFUSD. It spurred a broad campaign of school reform, including a massive building

program. Relations between the supervisors and the school board drive most of the

action in this chapter until the onset of the Depression. When the economy declined

other groups played a significant role as they took advantage of opportunities to

influence the politics of school construction.

New Political Structure

The 1914 report was the outcome of complaints that the school department was

not adequately training students for employment in San Francisco’s business and

industrial sectors. The report was commissioned by Amy Steinhart, a woman of

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prominence in city politics. She and her husband were part of an affluent family with

political connections to Governor Hiram Johnson’s wing of the progressive party in

San Francisco. The report concluded that although San Francisco was one of the

richest cities per capita compared to other American cities, it had one of the lowest tax

rates and subsequently spent comparatively little money on education. Data revealed

that San Francisco—along with Savannah, Georgia—appropriated less money to

education than all other cities with a population over 30,000. Problems like

overcrowding and shoddy equipment were attributed to inadequate funding. The

report made two recommendations. First, it suggested the school board “introduce

business methods” of bookkeeping and budgeting. Second, the report called for

revisions to the city charter, specifically to eliminate the $1 limit on the special tax for

schools. The recommendations, if carried out, would raise additional money for

schools and turn the school board into efficient managers of the department’s

resources.97

After the report was published, Steinhart was moved to action and founded the

Public Education Society. In December 1914, the Public Education Society petitioned

the Chamber of Commerce to pay the Federal Bureau of Education, under the

leadership of Commissioner Philander Claxton, to assess the school department.

Claxton released the report in 1917 and the Claxton Report—as it became known—

would provided a blueprint for change that transformed school governance in San

Francisco.

97 Lee Dolson, “The Administration of the San Francisco Public Schools, 1847 to 1947,” (PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1964), 409.

80

The Claxton report was heavily influenced by the ideas of a network of

progressive reformers. Historian David Tyack calls the reformers administrative

progressives, and Herbert Kleibard refers to them as social efficiency educators.98

Their goal was to make urban school districts more efficient by eliminating wasteful

practices and developing programs to train citizens for work within an industrial

economy. One crucial part of their strategy was to adopt the science of corporate

management and create a professional cadre of educational leaders who were qualified

to manage large urban school districts. In their view, a successful school district was

contingent on having technical experts who could make decisions based on research

and not politics. Administrative progressives wanted professional educators skilled

enough to run an urban school district like a corporation.

Claxton’s report found San Francisco’s administrative structure fundamentally

flawed. San Francisco’s charter required the superintendent to be a savvy politician

instead of an educational expert. Because the superintendent was elected by the

people, he could act independent of the school board and do what he needed to do to

curry favor with the voters. The report cited the advice of a pioneer administrative

progressive, Franklin Bobbit. Bobbit drew a parallel between corporations and urban

school districts. He compared the superintendent to the chief executive of a company

and the school board was likened to the company’s board of directors. The

superintendent was subordinate and accountable to the school board, but they worked

as a team. The superintendent had the autonomy to select deputies and run the school

98 David Tyack, The One Best System: A History of American Urban Education (Cambridge: Harvard), 126-147; Herbert Kleibard, The Struggle for the American Curriculum, 1893-1958, (New York: Routledge, 1995), 77-85.

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department. The school board relied on the superintendent’s technical expertise when

they made decisions about school policy.99

Using Bobbit’s framework as a guide, the Claxton commission made three

important recommendations. Its first recommendation addressed their biggest

concern, which was to end the “dual headed” system of governance and arrange for

the superintendent to be appointed by the board of education. The next two

recommendations were supposed to remedy two flaws identified with the school

board. The first flaw was that the school board could not levy taxes. Each year they

had to get their budget approved by the supervisors. Second, the school board did not

control school construction. If the supervisors approved their budget, then the school

board had to submit plans to the Board of Public Works, who could delay construction

if they so desired. Such rules negated the purpose of appointing an expert

superintendent. The school board was essentially hamstrung and forced to accept

decisions from people who had no technical expertise in education. The report

concluded,

“The board of education of San Francisco is not an independent body. It has

neither the final or full power, nor full and final responsibility in the

management and control of the public school system and of its business and

educational affairs. The board of supervisors, having full power under the

charter to revise the estimates of the board of education before setting the

99 Frankin Bobbit cited in the U. S. Department of the Interior, Report to the San Francisco Board of Education of a Survey made under the Direction of the United States Commissioner of Education (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1917), 83-88.

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school levy, may or may not grant the amounts contained in the estimate. The

Board of Public Works may or may not see fit to carry out the plans of the

Board of Education for the erection and repair of buildings. In either case the

power of the Board of Education to carry out its plans for the extension of the

school system and for the improvement of its efficiency depends on the actions

of an independent coordinate body over which the board of education has no

control.100

Two recommendations followed from the commission’s analysis. First, the

city charter and state constitution had to change to give the school board control over

the tax levy. Second, the school board should be given control over school

construction. The commission made an additional suggestion related to the second

recommendation. They suggested the school board initiate a building program to

transform the district from an eight-four plan to a six-three-three plan. The existing

eight-four plan provided students eight years of primary school and four years of high

school, while the six-three-three plan guaranteed students six years of primary school,

three years of junior high school, and three years of high school. The commission

advised the school board to proceed cautiously. “Because of the comparative newness

of this plan of organization in American schools,” wrote the commission, “any city the

size of San Francisco will want to try the experiment of such organization in a few

schools before adopting it generally.” But they emphasized the importance of

following through on the plan. The commission explained, “One reason—and a very

100 U. S. Department of the Interior, Report to the San Francisco, 83-88.

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important one—why this plan of organization should be carefully considered now is

found in the fact that the board must provide relief in the immediate future for the

present congestion in both high schools and elementary schools, and for this purpose

must reconstruct and enlarge many old buildings or erect new ones.”101

The commission’s most grave concern was addressed when San Franciscans

voted to end the double-headed administration of the school department. In 1920

voters approved Amendment 37, which made the superintendent an appointee of the

school board. One difference in having an appointed instead of elected superintendent

was that the candidates for the position did not have to be well known within the city.

The school board could search outside the city, across the country, for the person they

judged to be most qualified for the position. When the current superintendent, Alfred

Roncovieri, finished his term in 1923, Dr. Joseph Marr Gwinn, the former

Superintendent of New Orleans Public schools, became San Francisco’s first

appointed superintendent in more than fifty years. Before Gwinn’s appointment,

Amendment 37 had more immediate effects. It also reconfigured the school board.

Prior to the Amendment, the school board consisted of four officers who held four

year terms. The school board established by Amendment 37 consisted of seven

members, each with a term of seven years. The new board—including two

incumbents from the previous one—took office in January 1922.

With a new school board and superintendent, the school department would

embark on an agenda for school reform. School construction would become the

symbol of progress as well as the crux of tension between the school board and

101 U. S. Department of the Interior, Report to the San Francisco, 99

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supervisors. The two sides would fight to control the material resources needed to

build schools and the public’s perception of school construction. Advantage would

swing back and forth between the two groups as they used state and local statues to

outmaneuver each other and gain control over decision making.

Politics of School Construction

About one year before the appointment of the new board and four years after

the Claxton Commission predicted something had to be done to relieve overcrowding

in the schools, the public demanded action. On March 24, 1921 a headline from the

San Francisco Examiner read, “City awakens to urgent need for schools.” The

headline was part of a campaign that began in March and continued for several

months. The campaign, spearheaded by columnists Oscar Fernbach and Annie Laurie,

exposed the sordid condition of San Francisco’s public school buildings. The

problems were numerous. Most glaring was the overcrowding. Fernbach harped on

the fact that enrollments had exceeded capacity. “School houses—more school

houses—still more school houses,” implored Fernbach. The city needed more schools

“to accommodate San Francisco’s children without forcing them to sit for hours like

sardines jammed into tin.” Without additional buildings, Fernbach stated it would be

impossible to provide “every youngster in the city a full day’s instruction, on each

school day.”102 Fernbach was criticizing the school district’s policy of providing only

a half-day of instruction to those students attending overcrowded schools: half the

students went to school in the morning, the other half in the afternoon. Laurie insisted

102 San Francisco Examiner, March 21, 1921.

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that half-days of school gave students only half a chance to succeed. “Odd way of

managing things, isn’t it?” she wrote. Reflecting on the states compulsory education

law, she wondered, “How are you going to ‘compulse’ children to go to school when

there’s no school for them to go to—at least for more than half a day?”103

The problem, according to Fernbach and Laurie, was that the school

department did not build enough schools to keep pace with the city’s rapidly

expanding population. It lagged behind other institutions that successfully adjusted.

“Growing, Growing, growing the good old city,” stated Laurie. She continued, “More

clubs, more churches, more theaters, more people going into business, more buying

and selling, more building, more children than ever before dreamed of here in San

Francisco, but not more school houses.” Both reporters identify 1906 as the turning

point. “Since 1906,” stated Fernbach, “the school attendance in this city has trebled.

School space has not trebled—far from it.” To some extent, statistics bear out his

assertion. The 1900 federal census reported San Francisco’s population to be 342,782;

by 1920, it was 506,676. Likewise, daily average attendance increased. In 1900,

35,004 students were reported, on average, to have attended school each day. By

1920, average daily attendance increased to 50,458. While daily attendance did not

“treble” as Laurie and Fernbach claimed, the increase was significant. From 1900 to

1920, the school department had to absorb approximately 15,000 new students. To be

sure, schools were built after the 1906 disaster. Citizens passed school construction

bonds in 1908 and 1917 for $8,000,000 and 3,500,000 respectively. The 1908 bond

issue funded the construction or renovation of approximately forty structures but the

103 San Francisco Examiner, March 20, 1921. California passed a compulsory school law in 1874.

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new buildings did not expand the school department’s infrastructure. In 1917 the

district reported using ninety-two buildings, down from ninety-nine in 1907. The

1917 bond was supposed to reduce the overcrowding but it had little effect. Three

years later, in 1920, only $500,000 of $3,500,000 in bonds had been sold. That school

year, the board of education resorted to asking teachers and civic organizations for

help selling the bonds.

The 1921 Examiner campaign indicated that conditions within some schools

had become intolerable. In addition to crowded classrooms, Laurie and Fernbach

criticized the unsanitary conditions in many of the schools. They reported children

studying in damp basements, dilapidated shacks, and bungalow style buildings, some

of which were intended for temporary use after the earthquake and fire. Laurie

described classrooms in one school by stating, “The air is bad, the light is bad, and to

come right down to plain English, the odor is so bad in these particular rooms that it

makes you seasick to go into one of them and stay for even half an hour.”104 Laurie’s

and Fernbach’s reporting seemed to be effective. By the end of March, the

community responded. Several organizations expressed “unbounded gratification to

‘The Examiner’ for the campaign it is now making for more and better school

houses.”105 With the problem exposed, city and school leaders searched for

explanations and solutions.

What no one seemed willing to do was lay blame on a specific person or

group. Laurie assigned blame to the people of San Francisco “who failed to keep

awake to the growing needs of the community in the matter of school 104 San Francisco Examiner, March 22, 1921. 105 San Francisco Examiner, March 25, 1921.

87

development.”106 Her general reprimand was the exception, as most public officials

attributed the situation to circumstance. Mayor James Rolph explained that several

schools were built after the earthquake and fire, but construction was disrupted by

World War I. He insisted that no one should be surprised because “for years the board

of education has been struggling against terrible odds to make the best of a bad

situation.”107 School Superintendent Alfred Roncovieri, after returning from a trip to

the East coast, confirmed that school construction across the country was hampered by

the wartime economy. He made sure to note that unlike other cities, “San Francisco

had been laboring under a double handicap,” due to the combined impact of the 1906

disaster and World War I.108 Ralph Mcleran, the chair of the board of supervisors’

finance committee, elaborated further. In his assessment San Francisco was “seven

years behind in its school program.” He calculated that at least “four years were lost

because of war and through the inability of the city to market its last school bonds.”109

Mcleran took the lead in proposing a plan of action. His solution was clear.

“There is but one way in which these school buildings can be built, and that is—

increase the tax rate of the city and county of San Fran.” He proposed two options.

“The question to be decided is whether we shall have a bond issue or adopt a policy of

pay-as-you-go,” said McLeran. Pay-as-you-go meant that funding for school

construction would be raised annually by a special tax. To build enough schools to

alleviate overcrowding, McLeran estimated that for the next four or five years,

taxpayers would have to pay an additional fifty cents for each one hundred dollars of

106 San Francisco Examiner, March 25, 1921. 107 San Francisco Examiner, March 30, 1921. 108 San Francisco Call, April 12, 1921. 109 San Francisco Call, April 27 1921.

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assessed property. The alternative, which Mcleran favored, was to issue a new set of

bonds. McLeran supported a bond issue because it required a smaller annual tax

increase than the pay-as-you-go plan and it placed some of the onus of debt on future

taxpayers. By issuing a bond, “the future generation, which will enjoy these public

improvements, will pay its portion of the burden,” said McLeran. 110

In May, McLeran and the rest of the supervisors reversed there position and

supported the pay-as-you-go plan. They judged the bond market as too unpredictable

and they chose instead to raise the money through taxes, money which would be

available immediately. The supervisors proposed a special school construction tax of

thirty cents on each one hundred dollars of assessed property. The tax would raise

approximately $1,700,000 for new schools. The board of education rallied behind the

pay-as-you-go plan, as did the city’s newspapers and civic organizations. On May 26,

1921, Oscar Fernbach declared, “the fight is won.”111 The supervisors unanimously

approved the special tax and planned to levy a similar tax for the next four years.

In January 1922, when the new school board created under Amendment 37

took office, one of their most pressing issues became the building problem. Actions

taken the previous year received mixed reviews. On March 11, 1922 the San

Francisco Examiner, praised its campaign of the previous year with a headline that

read, “City Schools Win the Fight.” According to the article, the Examiner’s

campaign had “reached the season of fruitage.” “In less than a year”, San Franciscans

who were dubious about a tax hike, could see the “wisdom of their actions.” The

article concluded that “children going to school in shacks are not all taken care of yet, 110 San Francisco Examiner, March 28, 1921. 111 San Francisco Examiner, May 26, 1921.

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but they pass daily splendid new buildings in which they will soon be comfortably

housed.”112 Other reports were less approving and skeptical of demands for new

buildings. An article in the San Francisco News wrote that overcrowding in schools

had been overstated, and the campaign for new schools amounted to "propaganda.”

The article noted that while some schools were indeed overcrowded, many were not.

Additionally, building costs were exorbitant. Tax payers were being “doubly robbed”

because “they are taxed to erect buildings not actually needed and they pay more for

work than it is worth,” stated the article. Concern about the cost of building schools

would, in time, become an issue, but it was generally accepted that schools needed to

be built. What emerged as the central point of contention in 1922 was whether school

construction should be funded through bonds or taxes.113

The choice between bonds or taxes was a national debate. In the 1920s, cities

across America had to bear the cost of an expanding list of municipal services, the

most expensive being education. Most cities allocated the largest percentage of its

revenue to the school department. To cover the cost, city officials had to decide

whether to accrue deficits or raise taxes. Both choices violated two important political

and economic goals of the 1920s: balanced budgets and low taxes. During a decade in

which efficiency was highly valued, Americans were wary of high deficits. Balance

budgets inspired confidence that government officials were fiscally responsible.

Taxes were a longstanding nuisance. In 1910 Californians revolted against high

property taxes and pressured the legislature to pass an amendment to reduce the tax

rate. A decade later people were still dissatisfied about the taxes they were required to 112 San Francisco Examiner, March 11, 1922. 113 San Francisco News Letter, March 4, 1922.

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pay. The debate over school funding involved two broad groups who were willing to

sacrifice one goal in favor of another. Some were willing to borrow money and incur

debt in order to build schools; others were willing to pay for construction directly

through taxes even if that meant raising tax levies.

The question of bonds or taxes became a point of contention in April 1922

when the school board submitted its budget for the 1922-1923 fiscal year. This was

the first budget submitted by the new school board created under Amendment 37.

Their budget requested $1,750,000 for school construction. Such cost would require

the supervisors to approve a special tax rate of twenty-five cents per $100 of assessed

valuation of property. Initially, the supervisors’ finance committee refused to approve

more than twenty cents, but their support for the pay-as-you-go plan had waned. In

May, they rejected the school boards request for a special tax and decided to raise

revenue for school construction through a bond issue. The school board “was on

principle very much opposed to a Bond Issue position, insisting that the proper method

for financing the building program should and would be to furnish an amount of at

least $1,750,000 per year out of annual taxes.”114 But the supervisors had completely

soured on the idea of a special tax and viewed a bond issue “as the only feasible

method of wiping out the shortage of school facilities….”115

Supporters of the bond issue continued to refer to the 1906 disaster. An

editorial in the San Francisco Examiner informed readers that schools destroyed in

1906 had “not been replaced, although we have been building new schools each year.”

114 Frederick Dohrmann, Jr., Three Years on a Board: Being the Experiences of the San Francisco Board of Education, 1922-1923-1924 (San Francisco: F. Dohmann, Jr), 8. 115 San Francisco Examiner, May 6, 1922.

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The editorial admonished the public. “We have played with this situation long

enough. We have skirted the edge of the problem with our makeshift financial plans.”

It advised readers to roll up their sleeves and “go at the problem whole-heartedly.” It

concluded, “Only a bond issue will do it. Then let’s have the bond issue.”116

Both sides of the debate argued their plan was more efficient. The chair of the

committee, Ralph McLeran insisted his goal was faithfully to uphold a campaign

promise to keep the tax rate low. Low taxes was a theme he other supervisors would

harp on through out the 1920s. They constantly referred to the notion of “economies,”

the idea of doing more with less that was manifest through low taxes and high

efficiency. The idea was to provide the same quality of services without raising taxes.

To pass a bond would let the supervisors cut at least $1.5 million from the budget.

Critics accused the supervisors of being more concerned about their political futures

than the welfare of the people. An editorial in the San Francisco Daily News warned

readers they were about to be forced to swallow “a $10,000,000 pill.” The bond,

according to the editorial, would be more costly and inefficient than the special tax.

$10,000,000 was too much money because the school board was not ready to build

and “the money would have to remain idle.” The editorial noted that interest on the

bonds would eventual cost more than the cost accrued if the money was appropriated

annually in the budget. The editorial stated, “by not making the requested school

appropriation, [the supervisors] can keep down the tax rate, to the benefit of future

116 San Francisco Examiner, May 17, 1922

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electioneering.”117 It encouraged readers to reject the bond and support the school

boards plan.

The supervisors downplayed the economics and politics of the debate. Their

primary argument was grounded in state law. When the supervisors dashed the idea of

a twenty cent tax in favor of a $10,000,000 bond issue, they claimed to be heeding the

warning of San Francisco’s city attorney George Lull. Lull advised the board that

California State law limited special taxes for education to 15 cents per ever one

hundred dollars of assessed property. The previous year’s thirty cent tax rate was

unconstitutional, stated Lull. During May and July, the supervisors consulted with

Lull to confirm the state law regarding the special tax rate. On July 28, 1922, Lull

gave his opinion. First the city attorney clarified the supervisor’s power relative to the

state in regards to education. He explained that “Article IX of the [California]

constitution makes education and the management and control of the public schools a

matter of state care and supervision.” “Moreover,” he continued, “it should be

emphasized that the power of a municipality in this regard can only run current with,

and never counter to, the general laws of the state.” Given this provision, the special

tax rendered last year was unconstitutional because section 1838 of the political code

prohibited a special tax for education from exceeding fifteen cents per $100 of

assessed valuation of property.

Next, Lull gave his opinion about an apparent contradiction within the state

constitution. As recommended by the Claxton Commission, a new amendment,

section 1612a, was added to the California State political code in 1921. The new law

117 San Francisco Daily News, May 26, 1922.

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seemed to give school boards across the state the power to levy whatever amount of

taxes they deemed necessary. Section 1612a stated that once the board of education

proposed a budget,

“the supervisors of each county or city and county must [emphasis mine]

annually at the time and in the manner of levying county or city and county

taxes levy and cause to be collected a district tax for each school district whose

budget shows a district tax to be necessary, and to fix such a rate for such

district tax and will produced at least the amount of district tax necessary, and

to fix such a rate for such district taxes will produce at least the amount of

district money requested by the particular district.”118

The law also stipulated that if the supervisors refused to accept the board of

education’s budget then the city auditor was authorized to overrule the supervisors.

The critical phrase to be interpreted was that the city and county must levy taxes

requested by the school board. Lull had to decide if the supervisors had the right to

reject the school board’s budget or if they were compelled by state law to pass the

school board’s levy, even when it exceeded fifteen cents. Lull decided there was no

contradiction between the sections 1838 and 1612a. He concluded the supervisors had

full controlled over the municipal tax rate, but they had to adhere to the mandated

limit on the special tax. In five years, section 1612a would be reconsidered, but for

118 Municipal Record, August 17, 1922.

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the moment, Lull gave the supervisors legal sanction to resume their control over

school funding.

The board of education did not challenge Lull’s interpretation, but they

continued, unsuccessfully, to advocate for the pay-as you-go plan. When the school

board realized the supervisors would not relent, the board struck a compromise. A

letter, dated August 14, stipulated the conditions of the compromise. It was signed by

board president Dohrmann and addressed to finance committee chair Mclearan. The

letter reminded Mclearn that in addition to the $12,000,000 bond, “your Finance

Committee unanimously agreed, at the said conference, that there shall continued to

be provided from the annual tax levy, for the purpose of taking care of the normal

expansion of the School Department, a sum of not less than One Million Two Hundred

and Fifty Thousand (1,250,000) Dollars, annually….” The letter stated explicitly that

money raised by the bond issue was only to be used for the “catching up program,”

which meant the “reconstruction and replacement of present obsolete schools.”

Under the above conditions, Dohrmann wrote to Mclearan, “Our Board, therefore,

respectfully submits, through your Committee, to the Board of Supervisors, its hearty

endorsement of the project to call for an election…to vote upon the issuance of

Twelve Million Dollars ($12,000,000) worth of bonds…devoted to the ‘catching-up,’

rebuilding or rehabilitating program.”119

With the school board’s endorsement, the supervisors resolved to hold a

special election for the bonds on November 22. The bond issue received widespread

support. An editorial in the San Francisco Examiner insisted that only a “good size

119 Dohrmann, Three Years, 10.

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bond issue” could raise the money to build enough schools. The editorial condemned

the pay-as-you-go plan because the special tax levies only “toyed with the

problem.”120 Other newspapers, like Chronicle and the Bulletin, and organization like

the Parent-teacher’s Association, Women’s Civic Clubs, and the Chamber of

Commerce endorsed the bond.

On Nov 9, with the vote less than two weeks away, the board of supervisors

engineered a city wide campaign. They coupled the 10,000,000 school bond with a

$2,000,000 bond to build a shelter for sick, elderly men. The 12,000,000 bond was

hyped as money to provide relief for the elderly and good schools for the young.

Proponents did not try to dodge the fact that the bond was a large debt to incur. “It

sounds like a lot of money. It is a lot of money, but it isn’t one cent too much.

Twelve million isn’t too much to invest in the future of San Francisco,” stated one

editorial.121

To promote the bond, the supervisors and their supporters stressed the urgency

of the situation by emphasizing several longstanding problems. Schools were still

congested and more than 1,000 students continued to attend school part-time. The

school department was force to rent 106 extra buildings, many of which were

unsanitary flats, basements, and shacks. Newspapers included several political

cartoons that stoked concern about unsafe and overcrowded schools. They printed

pictures of schools with titles such as “flimsy shacks that house pupils” or with

captions that asked “would you send your children here?”122 Teacher had students

120 San Francisco Examiner, August 15, 1922. 121 San Francisco Chronicle, November 21, 1922. 122 San Francisco Examiner, November 16, 1922.

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create posters telling people to support education by voting yes for the relief and

school bonds.

Advocates paid special attention to fire trap schools. The danger of fire

resonated with San Franciscans. The Claxton Commission in 1917 noticed “there was

a marked agitation among the people of the city regarding greater precaution against

fire hazards in the schools. This was doubtless partly stimulated by the experience of

the great fire some years ago; also by some recent tragic experiences in the east.”123

The tragic experiences referred to by the Claxton Commission occurred about two

years after the 1906 disaster. On March 4, 1908, in Collinwood Ohio, a town near

Cleveland, two teachers and 172 students were killed when fire swept through their

primary school. For several weeks, San Francisco newspapers reported that no school

in the city was properly equipped to evacuate students in case of an emergency. On

the eve of the bond vote, advocates combined the fear of fire traps with memories of

the 1906 disaster. It was reported that the department continued to use more than

thirty wood frame buildings constructed before 1890. An additional thirteen wood

frame schools built after the 1906 disaster as temporary facilities were still open. One

particularly ominous political cartoon showed a fireman carrying a lifeless young girl

from a school consumed by fire. A report by the Civic League of Improvement Clubs

and Associations of San Francisco stated that “Many of the buildings are insanitary

[sic] and a great many of them dangerous fire traps.” According to the report, “The

catastrophe of 1906 has left these memoirs in its wake. The destruction wrought that

year has never been over-come by the board of education.” The report implored

123 U. S. Department of the Interior, Report to the San Francisco, 187.

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voters to approve the bond because “the only way to meet these trying conditions is by

building on a large scale.”124

One day before the vote, several schools let students demonstrate in support of

the bond. The Fremont Primary school rally exemplified the concern about unsanitary

fire traps. Fremont, constructed in 1892, had drawn attention during the fire trap scare

of 1908. It was a three story, wood frame building, typical of most wood frame

schools in the city. In 1908, parents complained the school was a hazard and

demanded that school officials construct a fire escape. Fourteen years later, the school

was still in bad shape. On Nov 21, the day before the bond vote, more than seven

hundred students from Fremont Primary marched in the streets shouting the slogan

“take us out of the dungeon.” The San Francisco Chronicle listed Fremont’s

problems. In addition to a leaking roof and an old, outdated furnace, the school had

one narrow fire escape leading outside the school. If a fire broke out, the main

staircase inside the school was “just wide enough for one child to come down at a

time…” “A first-class fire trap,” reported the Chronicle.125

The next day, the bond issue passed overwhelmingly. 69,262 people voted in

favor; 11,504 voted against, giving the supervisors 15,000 votes over the required two-

thirds majority. Passage of the bonds brought about a momentary respite in the debate

over funding, and with the money approved, attention turned to the goals and details

of construction.

124 Civic League of Improvement Clubs and Associations of San Francisco, vol. 8, no. 8 (November 1922), 1-7. 125 San Francisco Chronicle, November 21, 1922.

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The Building Program

San Franciscans had to decide how to allocate the bond money. Potential for

conflict became apparent as different groups expressed a variety of goals for school

construction. Some people wanted to solve the problems mentioned earlier—to

alleviate overcrowding and replace fire trap schools. Others wanted to upgrade the

public school system and use it as a lure to attract newcomers to the city. Newspapers

occasionally published full page adds promoting the school department. One lay-out

in the Chronicle stated that “one great magnet” a city or state can use to attract

“desirable home seekers…is good school facilities.” It declared, “California has been

recognized for her superior system of schools, and San Francisco can claim

distinguished representatives.”126

The school board had plans of their own. Historian Victor Shradar described

the 1922 school board as men and women who shared the values of the administrative

progressives. They valued scientific research and the advice of experts. The school

board decided to act on some of the recommendations put forward in the Claxton

Report. 127 Their biggest decision was to embark on an ambitious agenda to

reconfigure the entire school department. Expecting an annual tax of $1,250,000, they

began an extensive ten year building program, officially known as the Reorganization

and Housing Program of the Public Schools of San Francisco.

Their first task was to conduct a study to determine “past, present, and

probable future distribution of school children by school divisions.” Results from the

126 San Francisco Chronicle, June 12, 1922. 127 Victor Shradar, “Ethnic Politics, Religion, and the Public Schools of San Francisco, 1849-1933” (PhD diss., Stanford University, 1974), 123-133; Dolson, “The Administration,” 406-422

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study estimated the annual growth in enrollments up to the year 1935 and predicted

how increased enrollments might affect the distribution of students across the city.

Based on the results, the school board developed a ten year plan for school

construction. In 1924, they assembled a committee to review their plan. The review

committee was composed of six people, including two prominent educational

reformers, Stanford University’s Ellwood P. Cubberley and Oakland Superintendent,

Fred Hunter. Cubberley was the most prominent representative of the administrative

progressive movement, and Hunter was one of the movement’s most respected

adherents. The report submitted by Cubberley, Hunter and the rest of the committee

illustrated how the building program adhered to the priorities valued by the efficiency

educators.

The committee’s review was a glowing report of the building program. Their

praise and suggestions echoed the advice given by the Claxton Commission. The

Claxton Commission wanted the school board to be an autonomous body, and the

review committee saw evidence of the school board’s independence within their

decision making process. “From the beginning of the bond campaign to the present

time, it is obvious that the school authorities of San Francisco have looked upon this

period of reconstruction and rehabilitation of the school plant as an unparalleled

opportunity for bringing about much needed change in the educational organization of

the city,” began the report. The committee praised the school board for independently

deciding to overhaul the entire school district “rather than endeavoring to heed the

clamors and evaluate the claims of individual sections, districts, or interests in the

city.” The school board proceeded with their plans while knowing “that in the process

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of reorganization and the development of a city-wide program, many cherished

traditions, personal interests, and local conceptions of educational service would have

to give way to the larger conception of the problem of educating the children of San

Francisco.” Accordingly, the report noted, the school board “exercised rare good

judgment and an administrative sagacity that will, in the long run, mean a vast

improvement in the educational service of the school system.”

“Administrative sagacity” was a core tenet of the administrative progressive

movement. With a newly appointed superintendent, the school board began to cite the

rhetoric of technical expertise. The building program was touted as the culmination of

research, analysis, and dialogue between educational professionals. The school board

wielded the claim of expertise like a shield to deflect criticism of the building

program. One such instance occurred soon after the review committee released their

report. In March 1924, the school board announced it was going to build a high

school on the site of Monroe Elementary School in the southern portion of the city.

One neighborhood association agreed that a high school was needed but disagreed

with the school board over where to build the school. The association asked the

mayor to intervene. Mayor Rossi, in talks with the school board, said, “These people

represent by this large delegation, a large part of the city of San Francisco and should

have a right to say something about this school question.”128 When mayor asked if the

board was concerned about the cost of building a school on the site favored by the

association, the school board responded,

128 Dohrmann, Jr., Three Years, 71.

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Mr. Mayor, this is, in the mind of the members of the Board of

Education not a question of money, as shown by the fact that we have decided

to build a high school in that district; we have the funds for the purpose

available out of the Bond Issue. Therefore, it is not a question of money, but a

principle. The members of our Board have personally made an intensive study

of this whole problem and have had expert advice from the Superintendent and

his staff, confirmed by a committee of six expert educational people not

connected with the San Francisco Department, who have confirmed our

selection of the Monroe site.129

It was with such confidence that the school board proceeded with their

building program. The goal of the building program was to transform the school

district from the eight-four plan to the six-three-three plan, as suggested by the

Claxton Commission. The key to the program was the junior high school. Deciding

to build junior high schools meant the school board had embraced a nation wide trend.

During the 1920s, junior high school was the craze amongst educational reformers. At

the turn of the century, the eight-four plan was standard, but critics condemned it

because most students failed to reach high school; the majority dropped out some time

between grades five and eight. The drop out rate indicated to reformers that the eight-

four plan was inefficient and wasteful. They proposed junior high school as a

solution. Historians David Tyack and Larry Cuban explain that administrative

progressives wanted to transform children and society by founding a separate

129 Dohrmann, Jr., Three Years, 72.

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institution for seventh, eighth, and ninth graders. It was supposed to serve as a

mechanism to sort students and decrease dropout rates by providing targeted

vocational and academic guidance. Students who deserved to go to high school would

get the opportunity; the rest would be prepared for the workforce. Another part of

their plan was to construct a school system that could track students based on their

perceived abilities and provide students curricula—vocational or academic—that

could train them to function in a particular role. They designed metrics to measure

students and established institutional mechanisms to sort them.

The idea of the six-three-three model gained momentum after 1910, and by

1920 the need to establish junior high schools was a foregone conclusion. What the

Claxton Commission called an experiment was now an educational axiom. The

certainty with which reformers viewed the junior high school was apparent in the

review committee’s recommendation: “Introducing the junior high…is no longer an

experiment. The junior high school is rapidly being made a part of practically every

city school and in light of the building program now being inaugurated in San

Francisco, it would be nothing short of a colossal and unpardonable blunder on the

part of the administration not to make the change in organization at this time.”130

Commitment to the idea of junior high school did not translate into the rapid

construction of school buildings. Regardless of the commitment and urgency, money

had to be raised; buildings had to be built. Implementing the six-three-three plan

meant building separate schools to house 13,817 seventh, eighth and ninth grade

students, and this was only one part of the comprehensive building program. The 130 Board of Education of San Francisco, Report of the Reviewing Committee of the Reorganization of the San Francisco Schools (San Francisco: Phillips and Van Orden Co., 1924), 5.

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school board also established new specifications for primary and high schools. The

new plan required that elementary schools have twenty-four classrooms with the

capacity to hold 900-1000 students. Most elementary schools contained eight, ten, or

twelve rooms. High schools were to hold 1,500 to 2,000 students. In addition to more

classrooms, all schools had to be outfitted with various amenities, including an

auditorium, gymnasium, shop room, and a meeting place for organizations like the

PTA and the boy scouts.

The review committee predicted the most costly expenditure would be real

estate. They concluded that San Francisco was far behind other “progressive cities” in

providing students adequate playground space. It was anticipated that the department

would have to purchase considerable land around school sites, old and new. “It is

probably not an exaggeration of fact to say that the board of education might spend

one-half of the available bond funds on sites alone, without achieving a thoroughly

satisfactory status,” warned the committee. Considering the high cost of purchasing

land and constructing buildings, the committee insisted that “twelve million

dollars…will only make a fair beginning toward the solution of the school housing

problem of the city.”131

As the review committee predicted, acquiring land would occupy much of the

school boards attention and resources. The 1925 Grand Jury report described the

initial stages of the building program, which mostly involved the school board’s effort

to procure land. In San Francisco, a grand jury was selected each year to assess each

department of the municipal government. They were supposed to be a bi-partisan

131 Board of Education, Report of the Reviewing Committee, 24.

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mechanism for determining how well city government was functioning. Their reports

often sparked controversy as they were accused of favoring one interest group at the

expense of another. For successive years, the grand jury reported on the progress and

setbacks of the school board’s building program. In the 1925 report, school board

president Dohrmann thanked the supervisors for “bringing the purchase of lands under

the twelve-million dollar bond issues to a point of reasonable satisfaction.” The

school board also thanked the grand jury for helping to obtain the services of an

assistant to the city attorney. The assistant was specifically assigned to help to the

school board resolve any legal problems related to land they were trying to buy or sell.

In one case the school board asked the grand jury to help “acquire a parcel of land

owned by Abby Rose Wood, an elderly woman, at the corner of Delores and Dorland

streets….” Wood had received notice from the courts that she would be compensated

for the property, but she did not pick up the money and ignored orders to vacate. The

grand jury made certain to mention that although the sheriff had been notified to evict

Wood, “the members of the board of education feel a personal sympathy for her

because of her age, and she has been given such notice of eviction, but has wholly

ignored the same.” The grand jury promised to “bring friendly influence to bear upon

the aged women,” and they expressed “high hopes of a favorable result to this

problem, which is looked upon as the most annoying, not to say the most important,

situation at present.”

While Abby Rose Wood caused a momentary stir, bigger troubles loomed. In

the last paragraph of their report, the grand jury recalled the school board’s letter from

August 14, 1922 and revealed that the supervisors had not complied with the

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conditions stipulated in the letter. The supervisors levied a tax well below the amount

expected by the school board. Nothing in the grand jury’s report indicated overt

concern about the issue but the situation was important enough for them to insist that

the “proper persons take notice” of the supervisor’s “failure to completely adhere to

these provisions.” Difficulties notwithstanding, the grand jury gave the “highest

recommendation and fullest confidence” to the school board.

The following year, the grand jury continued to lavish praise on the school

board. During the 1925-1926 fiscal year, seven new schools opened and twelve new

contracts for construction had been awarded. The school department had opened

three junior high schools—two newly constructed buildings and one renovated

primary school. Such progress was viewed by the grand jury as proof of the school

board’s commitment to providing the community with the best educational facilities.

The supervisors did not receive like praise. Their continued failure to provide adequate

funding through an annual tax was viewed as their unwillingness to recognize the

importance of erecting modern facilities.

The School Board Takes Control

Since 1923 the supervisor’s unevenly provided revenue for the building

program. In 1923 appropriations were $500,000; in 1924, 250,000; in 1925,

1,100,000; and in 1926, 900,000. These figures were far short of what was deemed

necessary to continue the building program. The school board was expecting annual

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appropriations of at least $1,250,000. The grand jury’s assessment was higher; they

calculated the supervisors should have raised $1,620,000 per year and because of the

supervisor’s inconsistent funding they declared “pressing needs now exist for

additional funds to provide for the cumulated expansion needs of the schools.”132

Tension over funding reached a critical point in the spring of 1927. That year’s grand

jury report previewed the controversy. The report started by recapping the positive

achievement’s of the building program. Most notably, they announced that phase one

of the “school building program is now practically at an end.” The report labeled the

first phase as the “catching-up” program, “for which the $12 million bond issue was

provided in 1923, and has had for its purpose the replacing of old building by new

building and the relief of crowded conditions in already existing buildings.” With the

bond money totally spent or allocated, it was time to begin phase two, the “expansion

program.” It was defined as “the program necessary to provide additional school

buildings in line with the growth of the City’s population.” Costs for the expansion

program were estimated to require annual expenditures of at least $1,600,000, but the

supervisors did not raise this money as it promised to do. The grand jury calculated

that over the past five years $2,300,000 tax dollars had been collected for the

expansion program. They surmised it was “therefore evident that at the end of the five

year period there is an accumulation of unmet expansion needs amounting to

$5,200,000.” The report concluded, “If this sum of money had been provided along

132 City and County of San Francisco, Final Report of the Grand Jury, (San Francisco: The Recorder PRTG. and Pub. Co.,)

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with the bond money, the school department would not be faced as it now is with a

large shortage in school buildings to properly house all the 100,000 children enrolled.”

In May the school board submitted a budget for $7,621,529, of which

$2,100,000 was to be designated for purchasing land and building schools. The

$2,100,000 was intended to restart the pay-as-you-go system. To satisfy the school

board’s demand, supervisor would have to add twelve cents to the tax rate. For

several months, the supervisors and school board haggled over the budget until August

when the supervisors decided to cut $900,000 from the building fund. After being

rejected by the supervisors, the board of education consulted the city attorney, John O’

Toole, who succeeded George Lull in 1926. O’Toole, in contrast to Lull, referred the

school board to section 1612a of the state political code which stated that if the

supervisors rejected the school board’s request then the city auditor had to pass the

levy. On August 7 the board of education sent a formal letter to city auditor Thomas

Boyle demanding he pass their budget. The auditor refused, claiming that he would

not sign a budget rejected by the supervisors unless forced by a court order. The

school board obliged and sued the supervisors.

At this point, the supervisors controlled decision making over school

construction. The city charter gave them full authority to revise the school board’s

budget and the supervisors often cut expenditures for school construction because that

was one of the school department’s most costly expenses. Supervisors and the school

board engaged in a public battle for control of the building program. Each accused the

other of acting out of self-interest and in complete disregard for tax payers and school

children. Two editorials summed up the debate. The first was published in the

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Chronicle and it opened with a headline that read, “School board’s demand strips

camouflage from fake economy.” The editorial skewered the supervisors for being

selective in their plans to save money. “It has long been the fashion to run for office

on promises to cut the tax rate by economy,” stated the editorial. According to the

author, the supervisors were particular about how to curb spending; they were

reluctant to cut funding for programs “where they might lose votes.” The supervisors

were not directly accountable for educational policy, so they “‘economized’ by

sacrificing the public schools.” The editorial claimed the supervisor’s refusal to

collect taxes for the building program was disingenuous because “in 1922 the public

was promised that in the future there would be a year-to-year building policy to keep

up with demands.” Children would suffer the most, stated the author, because they

continued to attend old and unsafe schools. The reader was left with a somber

prediction. If the supervisors cut funding on school construction, it might cause a

“breakdown in the whole city program.”133

The second editorial was published in the Examiner. The headline warned:

“Taxes low again, unless school board lifts them.” It praised the supervisors for

keeping the “taxes down, as promised when elected in 1925.” A twelve cent tax was

unnecessary because previous bonds provided enough funding to require, at

maximum, a special tax of seven cents. The editorial lauded the finance committee for

keeping the tax rate low by denying funds to other departments, but the board of

education, “being in some respects a State rather than a municipal body,” presented a

unique challenge because it claimed to have the legal power to levy taxes regardless of

133 San Francisco Chronicle, August 16, 1927

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the amount. The author tried to assure readers that the “exhibit of economy” by the

board of supervisors would stand in court and the tax rate would remain low, but in the

unlikely chance “the tax rate goes up now in response to a court decree, the full

responsibility will rest upon the board of Education.”134

Other critics of the school board questioned their progressive building

program. In early September, days before the court ruling, several public officials and

prominent citizens accused the school board of being irresponsible by placing higher

value on progressivism than safety. Adolph Uhl, a manager of the City Efficiency

League and candidate for mayor, accused the school board of wasting money to build

gymnasiums instead of fixing and rebuilding fire trap schools. According to Uhl “so

long as children are going to school in wooden structures and some are going to school

only a half day, the board of education should use all its money in construction of new

buildings.” He continued, “…the board of education intends to spend $1 million of its

requested $2,100,000 on gymnasiums and cafeterias. At the same time it is saying that

children are housed in fire traps.”135

On September 12, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the school board giving

them exclusive power over their budget. Opponents claimed the ruling severely

constrained the power of the supervisors. “Never again can the supervisors promise

outright to reduce taxes; always they must add the proviso: ‘if the school board be

willing,’” stated an Examiner editorial. The author focused on the school board’s

inadequate response to fire trap schools and conditions that left children “crowded in

basements” and “housed in ancient shacks.” $12,000,000 from the bond issue of 1922 134 San Francisco Examiner, August 31, 1927 135 San Francisco Daily News, September 9, 1927.

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had been “expended by the school board for a few very expensive structures, leaving

many firetraps still in existence.” It was pointed out that only $75,000 of the proposed

$2,100,000 was allotted to replacing a fire trap school, while the rest was going to

frivolous projects. “Is it wise to build music-rooms while firetraps exist?” asked the

editorial.136 As expected, people who supported the school board argued the ruling

was justified. An editorial in the Bulletin insisted the supervisors were beaten “fairly

and squarely,” but instead of accepting the decision, the supervisors were “whining

and even trying to pass the buck of the tax rate increase on the school board.”

According to the editorial, fault lies with the supervisors, who beat “the school board

down to a point at which it could not function efficiently.” The school board, who

showed “wonderful patience,” had limits, “and when that limit was reached it invoked

the aid of the law and won hands down.”

The matter was formally settled but tensions continued to run high. Days after

the ruling, the finance committee accused the school board of wasteful spending. The

committee claimed, “School building costs, under the board of education’s

management, are running twice as high as Oakland and Los Angeles.” Supervisor

Mark Milton began an investigation, which concluded two years later, when he

presented a report in 1929 that claimed the school department was building

“educational palaces.”137 A community newspaper implored the school board to not

“feel compelled to make their school buildings exactly the show places of the

community; a habit which has lead to expensive and unwarranted competition between

136 San Francisco Examiner, September 13, 1927. 137 October 19 1929 in San Francisco Public Library SFUSD files, box 134.

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communities….”138 Other city agencies expressed contempt for what they considered

to be excessive spending on school construction. The department of libraries

explained how their department was slighted because the school board developed

plans to spend two million dollars to build a high school and junior high school in the

park-presidio district, while there was hardly any money allocated to build new

libraries. When asked why, the explanation was straightforward: “The board of

education can levy taxes without the consent of the supervisors…Such is not the case

with other departments of the city.”139

When the school board was confronted with figures that revealed a junior high

school in Oakland cost $270,000, while a similar structure in San Francisco cost

approximately $650,000, they relented somewhat and agreed to investigate the cost

discrepancy, but it was clear the balance of power had shifted. School board’s

advantage was evident through board president Daniel Murphy’s defiance. He argued

that construction costs were high because they built safe, fireproof schools. Murphy

said that if engineers tell him that he can cut cost and continue to build fireproof

schools, then “maybe I’ll say too, but if left to myself I’d say we’d better build as

we’ve been building.” Murphy’s showed the board’s strength through his insistence to

continue building and he also illustrated the school board’s willingness to refer to fire

safety as a means to justify the building program.

The school board’s power became more evident during a new conflict with the

supervisors over the 1929-1930 budget. In August 1929 the board of education

submitted a budget for $10,778,179, which was an increase of $297,041 over the 138 San Francisco Commercial News may 8, 1929. 139 Richmond Banner, May 17 1929.

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previous budget. When the finance committee led by supervisor Franck Havenner

asked for the school board to reduce the budget, board president Murphy responded,

“We believe that we figured the budget and arrived at an irreducible minimum.” “We

are however,” said Murphy, “willing to listen to reasonable suggestions.”140 The

school board did not revise the budge and forced the supervisors to cut other

expenditures in order to keep the tax rate down. According the San Francisco News,

the supervisor kept the tax rate down “in spite of the fact that the board of education

has within the past three years adopted the new policy of financing the annual building

program out of taxes.”141

The 1920s ended well for the school board. They accomplished several

noteworthy achievements in their building program. The six-three-three plan was well

underway. From 1922 to 1930, the school department built fifty schools, including

nine junior high schools. Fifty-one percent of all seventh, eight, and ninth graders

were attending junior high schools.142 Most importantly, the school board controlled

the city purse. Since gaining the power to pass their own budget, the school board

annually levied a tax of $2,100,000 for school construction. Total school expenditures

amounted to thirty percent of the municipal budget for the 1927-1928 fiscal year.

Before the California Supreme Court decision, school expenditures never exceeded

twenty-four percent. Changes to the special tax rate during the 1920s reflected the

controversy over funding. In 1922 when the supervisors decided to fund construction

140 San Francisco News, August 6, 1929. 141 San Francisco New, September 2, 1929. 142 San Francisco Public Schools, A Ten year Record 1920-1930, Together with General Information Concerning the San Francisco Public Schools (San Francisco: San Francisco Board of Education, 1930), 24-25.

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through taxes, they levied a special tax of twenty-eight cents per $100 of assessed

property. From 1923-1927, there was a precipitous drop in the special tax levied by

the supervisors. The highest levy collected during that period was 15 cents in 1923

and 1925; the lowest was 3 cents in 1924. Beginning in 1927, each year, the school

board levied a special tax above twenty cents, with the highest at twenty-eight cents in

1927 and the lowest at twenty-three cents in 1930. It probably seemed like the good

times would continue indefinitely. Even when the stock market crashed in October

1929, school officials did not flinch; they carried on with the building program.

Indeed, times had changed. In 1922, there was a spirit of cooperation in San

Francisco in regards to school construction. The problems of overcrowding or fire

trap schools were attributed to the earthquake and fire of 1906 or the inconveniences

caused by World War I. When the school bond passed in 1922, it passed

overwhelmingly. The city was on one accord about school construction. In five years,

San Franciscans were still unhappy about their schools, but now they were willing to

point fingers. No longer were people referencing World War I or the disaster of 1906.

The school board implicated the supervisors and likewise, the supervisors castigated

the school board; they were engaged in direct political conflict.

Control over decision making was governed by the formal rules and

procedures listed in the city charter and state constitution. Prior to 1927, the charter

constrained the school board by opening up the decision making process to include the

supervisors by giving them veto power over the school budget. However, state law, as

interpreted by the California Supreme Court, expelled the supervisors from the

process, giving the school board total control over the tax levy taxes. Ultimately, the

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conflict was about values and resources. The supervisors and the school board battled

over whose values should be given priority when it was time to set the tax levy. The

school board gave priority to the six-three-six program and the supervisors wanted to

keep the tax rate low and replace fire traps.

Sparring continued until disaster struck when America’s economy collapsed in

1932. For the rest of the decade, the economy languished, causing untold suffering

across the country. San Franciscans suffered their share, and just as individuals sought

ways to cope, the school board sought to continue its building program. They would

be forced to adjust their views on school construction and altered there relationship to

other groups in the political environment.

The Great Depression and Political Compromise

What historians today call the Great Depression was an enigma to Americans

who experienced it. It was an enigma was because few people saw it coming. When

the stock market crashed, Americans viewed it as extraordinary, but not abnormal.

They did not view the crash to be an omen of what was to come. They understood the

economy moved in cycles, and they expected the market to recover. Moreover, at the

beginning of the 1930s, many Americans were optimistic about society and the

economy. It was an exciting time because the first three decades of the 1900s were

years of momentous change. Historian David Kennedy assembled a list of “epoch

changing events”: “the great war, mass immigration, race riots, rapid urbanization, the

rise of giant industrial combines like U.S. Steel, Ford, and General Motors, new

technologies like electric power, automobiles, radios and motion pictures, novel social

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experiments like prohibition, daring campaigns for birth control, a new frankness

about sex, women’s suffrage, the advent of mass-marketing advertising and consumer

financing.”143 Americans were optimistic because for many people the 1920s were

prosperous years. By the 1929 over 45 million people were employed and

collectively, Americans earned approximately $77 billion dollars, an unprecedented

level of income.144 Businesses and consumers benefited as consumer goods became

cheaper and more affordable to average Americans. Before the crashed there existed a

general idea that anyone could become rich if they invested their money properly.

Thousands tried their hand in the stock market with dreams of a windfall. After the

crash, people waited anxiously for the recovery and resumption of prosperity.

Historians, through hindsight, know what Americans living in the 1930s could

not: that their confidence was grounded on a precarious reality. Although many

Americans improved their standard of living, many others suffered in squalor. One

reason government officials were blindsided by the depression was that they did not

have the tools to analyze the economy. The federal government did not keep accurate

statistics on key indices like unemployment. Without such data they could not see the

signs of economic distress. The government, however, was aware of one glaring

problem: the plight of American farmers. Farmers prospered during World War I

when they produced crops to support the war effort. When the war ended, they were

stuck with a surplus of goods at rapidly decreasing prices. Many of them became

143 David Kennedy, Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 (New York: Oxford University Press), 13 144 Robert Heilbroner, The Worldly Philosophers: The lives, Times, and Ideas of the Great Economic Thinkers, 4th ed. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972), 240.

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mired in debt. By 1931 when the economy reached bottom, the agricultural sector had

been there for several years.

President Herbert Hoover embodied the dichotomy of optimism and concern.

When he took office in March 1929 he praised the American economy, but was aware

that all was not right. This oft-quoted statement illustrated Hoover’s optimism. “We

shall soon with the help of God be within sight of the day when poverty will be

banished from the nation,” stated Hoover.145 But historians credit Hoover with being

more astute than most politicians. He was not completely blinded by prosperity.

Before the crash, the soaring stock market worried him and he had deep concerns

about the frivolous attitude with which Americans bought consumer goods and stocks

on margin. One of his first tasks as president was to address the plight of farmers.

Although Hoover had a better grasp of the economy than most public officials,

he did not foresee the imminent peril and saw no reason for stronger federal

intervention. David Kennedy writes, “…no one—including Hoover, whose anxieties

were keener than most—suspected that the country was teetering at the brink of abyss

out of whose depths it would take more than ten years to climb.”146 Hoover, like so

many others, considered the economy to be relatively sound. When the stock market

crashed in October 1929, Hoover insisted that a quick and effective response would

help the economy recover. Hoover set out to contain the effects of the crash by

restoring the public’s confidence in the economy. One plan was to urge state and local

governments to finance public works projects. He directly asked city mayors and state

governors to accelerate and expand their construction projects in order to provide jobs. 145 Cited in Heilbroner, Worldly Philosophers, 241. 146 Kennedy, Freedom from Fear, 56.

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His entreaty to state and local officials indicated the limits of Hoover’s insight. Public

works was one strategy to strengthen the people’s faith in the economy by expanding

employment. His insistence on locally funded public works illustrated his adherence

to a belief in limited federal involvement in local government. He held strongly to the

idea that local communities could work together and endure what he considered to be

a temporary economic downturn. The federal government could help coordinate

projects at the local level or provide careful guidance and encouragement, but it was

up to the people in those communities to act; they had to do the work to sustain each

other during the hard times.147

The school board’s building program benefited politically from Hoover’s

appeal. At a convention of California educational leaders—including several from

San Francisco—attendees were urged to build schools. “By building now,” stated one

speaker, “we not only take advantage of the lowest prices in years but we line up with

President Hoover’s program.” Newspapers reported that “San Francisco made a

generous response to the Nation’s call for more building activity to relieve

unemployment.”148 Timothy Reardon, president of the board of Public works,

announced he was launching a $12,000,000 building program that included

construction of schools, roads, streets and hospitals. Controversy over the educational

palaces subsided when school construction became associated with employment. The

school department, along with the board of public works, made plans to build several

“palace schools” that ranged from $400,000 to $1,000,000, including Balboa High

147 Kennedy, Freedom from Fear, 56; William Mullins, The Depression and the Urban West Coast, 1929-1933: Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, and Portland (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), 1. 148 March 12, 1930 in San Francisco Public Library SFUSD files, box 135.

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School which was allotted $650,000; Aptos Junior High School, $890,000; and

George Washington high school, $1,000,000.149

Debate over the tax levy continued as the supervisors continued to ask the

school board to cut its budget to reduce the city tax rate. In May 1930, the school

board requested 1.7 million for school construction. During the summer and fall, the

supervisors swore they would do what they could to keep the tax rate below $4 for

every hundred dollars of assessed property. The supervisors warned that if they were

force to accept the school budget, then they would be forced to levy a tax rate of

$4.04. Supervisor Angelo Rossi, the chairman of the finance committee, wanted to

board to cut the entire $1.7 million dollars allocated for the school construction,

claiming that it was unnecessary to build schools at this time.150 Another supervisor,

James Power, made less stringent demands, telling the board to cut at least $1 million

from its budget. School board President, Ira Coburn, called any cuts to the building

program “indiscreet.” Former board president Murphy agreed, “we members of the

board know that any reduction in the building program this year will be difficult to

make up next year…Furthermore, I am opposed to interfering with the building

program which has been mapped out over a period of years and is virtually necessary

for the protection and education of your children.” The school board agreed to cut the

budget $150,000, far less than recommended by the supervisors. The city-wide tax

rate was set at $4.04. It was only the second time in San Francisco’s history that the

tax rate exceeded $4. Mayor Rossi reflected on the school board’s power. “If other

149 March 19, 1930 in San Francisco Public Library SFUSD files, box 135. 150 June 3, 1930 in San Francisco Public Library SFUSD files, box 135.

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departments of the city had the same authority as the Board of Education, we would

have a rate of about $8,” he said.151

Taxes are a social dilemma because private citizens with divergent values have

to pay money to fund public services. Controversy turns on a variety of questions

such as how much money should each individual be required to pay? Who has the

right to levy taxes? What public services should be given priority? In normal times,

these are difficult questions; during times of economic hardship, they become much

more complicated. Historian William Mullins explains that as the reality of the Great

Depression gradually seeped into the American consciousness—most explicitly

through the growing concern about unemployment—San Franciscans became more

anxious about the tax rate. Occasionally, they publicly vented their concerns. In

September 1930, contempt for the school board’s power over the tax rate inspired a

movement to amend the city charter. Sponsors of Amendment 27 argued that if the

school board had the power to raise taxes, then they should be an elected body. As it

stood, the mayor appointed the school board and the citizens voted to confirm his

appointees. Dr. Frank Fischer, president of the California Literature Society and a

spokesperson for the amendment, called the school board’s power to levy taxes “un-

American” and claimed it was “taxation without representation.” “We fought a

bloody war to get rid of the practice,” stated Fisher. He accused the board of being

“autocratic in the management of the school” because they continuously “defied and

defeated the people’s will.” Fisher elaborated, “… while they build these palaces for

some children, they left other children housed in schools that were shacks and fire

151 San Francisco Examiner, August 30, 1930.

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traps.”152 People who favored an elected school board objected to giving appointed

officials the power to levy taxes. They wanted the school board to be directly

accountable to the people. The Taxpayers’ Defense League of San Francisco issued a

statement to rally support for the amendment on the premise that it would end an

undemocratic process: “Amendment 27 will restore directly to the people the power to

choose the representatives who have a constitutional right to levy taxes…It is

inconceivable to see how any body of men or women could opposed the right of the

electorate to choose its own officers, when such officers have such important vested

rights as the power to levy taxes.”

Several men and women did oppose the charter amendment. The most vocal

opposition came from the Public Education Society. For more than fifteen years, since

they co-sponsored the Claxton Report, The Public Education Society were influential

players in educational politics and their ideology remained consistent. In 1917 they

fought to make the superintendent an appointed position; in 1930, they fought to

preserve an appointed school board. They argued that elected school boards were

effective only in small districts. If big cities elected their school boards, urban

districts would inevitably get bogged down in politics. Local editorials summarized

the Public Education Society’s viewpoint. One editorial insisted an elected school

board would turn “the entire school system into a hot bed of politics.” Under such

conditions, school children would be “used as pawns in a political game.” With an

152 San Francisco Examiner, September 25, 1930.

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elective school board, it was inevitable that members would “spend more time

thinking about votes than they do about the children’s needs.”153

The Public Education Society had several important allies. The Chamber of

Commerce also pledged to fight Amendment 27. The president of the Chamber stated,

“It would be a calamity to the efficiency of the school system to adopt the elective

method.”154 When Ellwood P. Cubberley, a notable administrative progressive, was

asked to give his opinion, he backed the Public Education Society. Initially, he

qualified his position. He explained that if San Francisco decided to amend the charter

then school board elections should be held separate from other municipal elections to

prevent city politics from contaminating the school department. But he held high

praise for the present system under superintendent Gwinn, suggesting the school

department had been successful over the last decade because “For the first time in

[San Francisco’s] history they have been under professional rather than political

oversight.” He concluded, “I fear that the proposed charter Amendment means a

backward step.”155

PTA leadership also opposed the amendment, but they suggested a

compromise. The PTA president provided context by explaining that the demand for

an amendment was sparked by the controversy over taxes. They recommended that

school board members continue to be appointees of the mayor, but give up their power

to levy taxes. The Public Education Society rejected this solution. They continued to

adhere to the advice of the Claxton commission, which recommended that school

153 San Francisco Examiner September 24, 1930. 154 San Francisco Examiner, September 26, 1930. 155 San Francisco News, October 7, 1930

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boards should have full control of their budget. The Society continued their fight to

maintain the status quo without relinquishing the school board’s power over the city

purse. The election was held on November 4. Unlike bond measures, which required

a two-thirds majority, charter amendments require a one vote majority. The

amendment was defeated 70, 778 people voting no and 68, 292 voting yes. The

movement to amend the charter was unsuccessful, but the episode put a spotlight on

the controversial surrounding the building program. The following questions

continued to foster anxiety: how should school construction be funded? Should the

focus be transforming San Francisco into a progressive district, complete with junior

high schools and facilities outfitted with auditoriums, cafeterias and gymnasiums? Or

should the priority be eliminating all fire traps?

In May 1931 the school board’s building program received a lukewarm

endorsement from the grand jury. Their report praised the school board for the

excellent work done over the last decade, but warned that a few schools were fire

hazards and needed to be replaced as soon as possible. Four of the worst schools—

Fremont, Douglass, Buena Vista, and Irving M. Scott Primary Schools—were labeled

pre-fire schools because they were built prior to the earthquake and fire of 1906.

Superintendent Gwinn defended the building program with an optimistic declaration.

He pledged, “Within four years not a child in San Francisco will be receiving

instruction in anything but Class A, fireproof school buildings.”156 Gwinn continued,

156 Call-Bulletin May 6, 1931.

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“even if we have some old buildings here, I am sure that we have much better schools

then in any other state in the union.”157

On the heels of the grand jury report, in the spring of 1931, the school board

and supervisors began their latest round of fighting. The pattern established since

1927 continued: school board proposed a construction budget of $1,700,000;

supervisors asked the school board to suspend the building program; school board

refused, agreeing to cut only $200,000 if the supervisors can prove that such a

reduction was necessary. Superintendent Gwinn responded in typical fashion: “There

will be no cut in the building program.” He continued, “Reductions in the budget may

be necessary, but the building program will be the last item to be slashed.” He used

the grand jury’s critique of the building program to validate his point. Gwinn insisted

the money allocated for construction this year would “go a long way toward

eliminating seven dangerous schools.”158 More specifically, the school board argued

the six-three-three program was part of their plan to eliminate fire traps. When

supervisor Aldoph Uhl questioned why the school board had not closed Agaissiz

primary school, one of the schools marked as a fire trap, the board answered that

junior highs schools were part of the solution. Superintendent Gwinn explained that

construction of the new Bernal Junior high school would take seventh and eighth

graders out of Agissiz, making it easier to transfer students in the lower grades and

eventually close the school. Aldoph Uhl, sounding stumped, replied, “Well, what can

157 Call-Bulletin May 6, 1931. 158 Call-Bulletin, May 12, 1931.

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I say to that when I have been campaigning for years to get rid of the Agassiz school?”

Uhl was then told by the school board to go pick “someone else’s pet.”159

In July, the Call-Bulletin wrote, “The board of education will maintain its

school building program regardless of conditions.” The paper’s source was

Superintendent Gwinn, who offered to compromise with the supervisors through

alternative cost saving measures. To cut expenditures, Gwinn offered to combine

small classes and increase teacher/student ratios, leave vacant a few administrative

positions, close small schools and transfer students to neighboring campuses, and

suspend the purchase of new textbooks. Savings were estimated at $225,000, but the

supervisors were unimpressed; they wanted more. Supervisor J. Emmet Hayden said,

“We are out to keep tax rates down as low as possible.” Hayden added, “The board of

Supervisors has done its part and I believe that the Board of Education should do its

share.”160 Resolute, the school board decided to keep the funding intact.

Once again, the school board demonstrated it was in control of the budget, but

a month later, the situation changed. Over the last decade, school board members

resolved to transform the department into a modern, progressive school district, the

central component being the building program. In 1927, the school board was given

legal sanction to levy taxes for their department budget and more specifically, for

school construction. With their newfound power, they pledged to let nothing interfere

with the building program. They favored the pay-as-you-go strategy and each year,

supervisors were forced against their will to levy a special tax for school construction.

But in August 1931, the school board agreed to suspend the pay-as-you-go policy in 159 Call-Bulletin, May 12, 1931. 160 San Francisco News, July 23, 1931.

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favor of a $5 million bond issue proposed by Mayor Angelo Rossi, who succeeded

Mayor Rolph in January 1931. For the board to endorse a bond issues was a marked

change from their actions over the last four years and their defiance the previous

month. On August 26, the San Francisco Daily News ran the following headline,

“Board OKEHs Rossi plan for jobless.”161 Rossi reportedly believed that a bond issue

could solve his two biggest concerns: keeping the tax rate down and creating jobs for

the unemployed. Mayor Rossi’s promised to create jobs, maintain the municipal tax

rate, and continue the building program. In return, the school board promised to

donate $1 million of the tax money allocated for school construction to the

unemployment relief fund. Board president Ira Coburn explained that a bond issue

was the “only practicable way out of the unemployment relief maze.” He explained,

“The current emergency is worse than that of the fire of 1906, because it is national

and international in scope.”162 Coburn concluded, “If the depression continued the

bond issue will prove the only way we can house our school children.”

What happened between July and August to make the school board shelve the

pay-as-you-go-plan in support of a bond issue? Unemployment was the critical factor.

Because of the employment crisis, all municipal departments were under pressure to

reassess their expenditures. One issue that illustrated the anxiety of the moment was

the citywide furor over moonlighting. Mullins explains that the laboring classes put

pressure on business leaders to end the practice of allowing one person to collect two

incomes. People were becoming desperate and they wanted to end moonlighting to

prevent one person from holding two separate jobs when so many others could not 161 San Francisco News, August 26, 1931. 162 August 29, 1931 in San Francisco Public Library SFUSD files, bag 135.

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find one. School board members were targeted because several teachers held positions

in day and night school. An editorial stated, “With hundreds of qualified teachers and

unemployed and in financial distress, there is no excuse for giving jobs in the city’s

night schools to city employees who are already earning adequate salaries during the

day.’’163 The school board responded by pledging to end the practice, calling it

“indefensible.”

Concern about moonlighting showed the school board—like other municipal

departments—was caught in the unemployment malaise, but the story does not reveal

the depths of the crisis. By late 1931 the American economy had deteriorated and

emotions were catching up to reality: optimism was dying; fear and uncertainty

abounded. Historian Robert Heilbroner adeptly captured the emotional transformation

that occurred across the nation:

In 1930, the nation manfully whistled “Happy Days Are Here Again,” but the

national income precipitously fell from $87 billions. In 1931 the country sang

“I’ve Got Five Dollars”; meanwhile its income plummeted to $59 billions. In

1932 the song was grimmer: “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?”—the national

income dwindled to a miserable $42 billions.164

Board president Coburn’s statements suggest that San Franciscan’s became

anxious about the economy before 1932, but the gist of Heilbroner’s statement

remains accurate. By 1931, San Francisco was caught between “cautious optimism” 163 San Francisco News, August 28, 1931. 164 Heilbroner, The Worldly Philosophers, 243-244.

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and pure disillusionment.165 San Franciscans were optimistic because their economy

declined less precipitously than other major cities, but regardless of what happened

elsewhere, they were experiencing severe hardship. Between 1929 and 1931,

manufacturing decreased in San Francisco by 34 percent. During that same time 11

percent of San Francisco’s businesses failed. Wages per capita in 1929 were $108.00;

by 1931, they were $72.50. Although figures for unemployment were widely

inaccurate, one newspaper reported that between March 1930 and April 1931, 18

percent of the workforce had become unemployed.166

Statistical data may have been unreliable, but people did not need data to

confirm what they saw and experienced. Unemployment and homelessness were

growing, as were cries for relief. Nationwide, the general approach to relief—

advocated by President Hoover and accepted by most American’s—called on local

communities to assume the burden of caretaker. Institutions like the community chest

and organizations like the PTA collected donations—money, clothes, and food—for

the unemployed. There services were meant to augment the monies and supplies

provided by city governments. In San Francisco, from 1929 to 1931, the increase in

the tax money designated for unemployment relief was stark. Supervisors allocated

$20,000 in 1929; the next year $118,000; the next, $2.4 million. Still, they could not

meet the demand. Rising demand for unemployment relief influenced negotiations

over the municipal budget.

May to September were months when the supervisors calculated the budget for

the upcoming fiscal year. Over the past 4 years, this was a time of conflict, as the 165 Mullins, The Depression and the Urban West, 54 166 Mullins, The Depression and the Urban West, 56

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supervisors and the school board haggled over money for school construction. In

1931, conflict gave way to concession, as the supervisors and school board felt the

pinch of the depression. Assessed wealth for the city had declined by approximately

one hundred million dollars, mostly due to drops in property values. To raise sufficient

revenue for unemployment relief, supervisors would have had to increase the tax rate

above the previous year’s levy of $4.04. A news article explicitly laid out the political

ramifications of a tax hike. The article reported that Supervisor Hayden, chair of the

finance committee, predicted that a “big boost in the tax rate may have a bad political

effect upon incumbent supervisors who seek reelection and upon other incumbents,”

such as Mayor Rossi. The supervisors, apparently not willing to risk the backlash of a

tax hike, decided to keep the municipal tax rate at $4.04. They chose to shuffle money

around and incur debt, hence the agreement with the school board to float a bond

issue, suspend the pay-as-you-go plan, and divert money for school construction to

unemployment relief. School board member Daniel Murphy shared the supervisor’s

concern and explained his compliance with mayor Rossi’s plan. To be stalwart toward

the pay-as-you-go plan was not an option. He explained, “The settled policy of the

board of education had always been the pay-as-you-go plan of school building. But

this emergency year it was necessary to avoid increasing the tax rate at a time when it

can be ill borne.”167

Not all school board members agreed. The loudest objection came from Alfred

Esberg who resigned his position over the board’s decision. In his resignation letter,

Esberg wrote that he was following through on his pledge to resign if the school board

167 San Francisco News, October 28, 1931.

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decided to support a bond measure instead of continuing the pay-as-you-go method of

funding. Esberg called a bond measure “wasteful, unsound, uneconomical, and

unwarranted” and warned it would impose the “greatest tax burden upon the tax

payer.”168 The bonds would raise too much money, more than what was needed at the

present time. He insisted the pay-as-you-go method would provide just enough money

to build schools for which the required preparations had been completed. Esberg

made his intentions clear: “I am against the proposed bond issue and my reason for

resigning was so that I might do what I can to defeat the proposal.”169

The Power of Local Interests

On September 11 the supervisors unanimously voted to submit the bond for

public vote on November 4. It was left to the board of education to decide the exact

amount, and on September 16, they decided to float a $3,500,000 bond. Proponents of

the bond issue seemed fairly optimistic that it would be approved. They advertised the

bond as too good to fail and listed several reasons why the bonds would pass. The

money would pay to build safe schools for children. It would provide jobs for the

unemployed. It would keep the tax rate down for several years. And lastly, “San

Francisco voters have never failed to carry a bond issue for the public schools.”170 Dr.

J. C. Geiger, the health officer of San Francisco, predicted “many more than the

necessary two-thirds vote will assure adequate housing for the school needs of the

168 San Francisco Examiner, August 29, 1931. 169 August 30, 1931 in San Francisco Public Library SFUSD files, bag 135. 170 San Francisco News, October 21, 1931.

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city’s children.”171 The school board displayed similar confidence, taking steps to get

several projects ready to begin soon after the bonds were approved. They contracted

the city architect to begin drafting blueprints and consulted landowners about

purchasing property needed for the school sites.

The bonds received widespread public support. San Francisco’s two biggest

labor unions, the San Francisco Labor council and the Buildings Trade Council,

endorsed the bonds, as did the Chamber of Commerce, several district improvement

clubs, the Retail Grocers’ Association and the American Legion. News coverage of

the bond campaign was overwhelmingly favorable. When reading the papers, one

might think the city unanimously supported the bond issue. Newspapers printed

pictures of ramshackle fire traps. Portraits depicted a variety of hazardous conditions,

such as young children posing next to an old, charcoal fueled, cast-iron stove; and in

another scene, stood a boy, grinning profusely, while sticking his hand through a

broken window. Except for reports about Esberg’s resignation, there was scarcely any

mention of opposition. The newspapers only reported friction between proponents.

One important disagreement occurred between the school board and a broad coalition

of prominent, middle to upper-class women. They rallied behind the bond campaign,

but disagreed with the school board over how the money should be spent.

In general San Francisco’s women’s organizations had been longstanding

advocates for children and stalwart supporters of public education. Their advocacy

began in the late 1800s and became stronger, more public and coordinated after the

turn of the century. Numerous studies have examined how women across the country

171 Call-Bulletin, October 22, 1931.

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formed social groups that bridged the gap between home and society. Distinctions

between public and private life became blurred as they used their role as domestic

caretakers to insert themselves within the public discourse. Education provided a

particularly fertile institution for their activism. Their objective was to keep the

politicians focused on what really mattered in schools: educating children. And who

would be a more natural advocate for children than their mothers. On occasion, their

methods were brash, such as the time reported below when a group of San Francisco

mothers, in September 1921, started a near riot after hearing rumors that their children

were forced to sit in uncomfortable chairs because the school department sold their

desks:

“Humming like a swarm of bees, an army of 500 women, including many with

babes in arms, and accompanied by a large number of toddlers and children of

more advanced age, stormed the city hall this morning, terrified the employees

of the board of education into sending out an SOS call for help, charged upon

the office of Mayor James Rolph Jr., besieged the office of the board of

Supervisors and put John S. Dunnigan and his chief deputy, John Rogers to

flight, defied a riot squad of police and finally dispersed with out casualties.”

Most of the time, however, they acted through more formal channels, one of the most

prominent being the PTA.

The PTA started as a group of uncoordinated, independently founded clubs.

Prior to 1900 these clubs went by various names including mother study circles,

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mothers and teachers study circles, parent and teachers associations, or simply as

mothers’ clubs. Many of these clubs were inspired by the child study movement,

made prominent by educational reformer G. Stanley Hall. Hall’s objectives were

different from administrative progressives, like Cubberley, whose reform agenda

focused on revamping the administrative capacity of urban schools. Hall zeroed in on

the child, believing that children were born with particular talents, talents that could

either be developed or squandered. Schools represented great promise and peril; they

could help children fulfill their natural potential, or they could interfere with and

corrupt a child’s development. To determine a child’s natural gifts, adults had to

study them and amass enough data on each child in order to customize curricula that

would best develop their individual talents.172 One objective of the mothers’ clubs

was to establish a space where parents and teachers could talk about children.

According to the organizers, only when mothers and teachers cooperated could the

“awful gap between home and school life be closed, and intelligent, uniform training

secured to the child.”173

In 1907 representatives from the National Congress of Mothers—founded in

1897 in Washington D.C.—came to San Francisco to consolidate the various clubs.

Their efforts culminated in the founding of the San Francisco Congress of Mothers

and Parent-Teacher Associations in January, 1909. In August 1910, California

founded a state wide congress of which San Francisco, along with Los Angeles,

became the states most influential chapters. In 1924, when the National Congress of

172 Herbert Kliebard, The Struggle for the American Curriculum, 1893-1958 (New York: Routledge, 1995), 35-44. 173 H. C. Rothwell, “Second District Delves into Past History,” Parent-Teacher Journal (December, 1932), 10.

133

Mothers changed its name to the Parent Teachers Association, San Francisco’s chapter

became the Second District of the California Congress of Parents and Teachers.

The 1920s were important years for the PTA. At the start of the decade

membership was 2237; by the end it was 7500. Evidence suggests it was a well

functioning organization. There was a hierarchy of officers and clear processes for

electing leadership. They issued annual reports detailing the organizations

expenditures and receipts. Their public relations committee used the radio and

newspapers to announce programs and workshops organized and sponsored by the

organization. The programs covered several topics including education for the

physically challenged, public speaking courses for women, and philanthropy. They

seem to have had connections throughout the political and academic worlds of the Bay

Area, as they regularly invited prominent politicians and scholars to speak at their

meetings. Numerous photos show the range of their activities: touring schools with

board members to assess safety, campaigning for donations for the community chest,

joining city officials when they signed legislation related to children, and sewing and

distributing clothing to needy children.

One passion for the PTA was the building program. They were well informed

about school construction. Whenever the school board decided to build a school, they

consulted the city architect who drew up plans and passed the plan on to the board of

public works. After the board of public works reviewed the plans, they were returned

to the school board. Before final approval of a blueprint, one group that had to be

consulted was the PTA.

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In regards to funding, their propensity was to support any plan that would most

likely provide money for new schools. In 1921, they publicly supported the pay-as-

you-go plan. The following year they supported the bond issued promoted by the

supervisors. They backed the school board in 1927 during their battle against the

supervisors to reinstate the pay-as-you-go plan, and they sided with the Public

Education Society against the charter amendment in 1930. In the bond campaign of

1931, the PTA rallied behind the school board and supervisors.

While they were indifferent towards funding, they were tenacious in their

advocacy for safe schools. Conflict between the school board and PTA occurred when

the PTA judged the school board as too slow in its response to fire trap schools. Such

was the case during the bond campaign in 1931. When the Second District released its

annual report in May, the Freemont Primary School PTA reported they had been

working for the last year “to get a new school, which has been promised within the

next two years.”174 During the bond campaign they criticized the school board for not

including provisions to rebuild Fremont and other fire traps. The PTA questioned the

school board’s commitment to rid the district of fire trap schools. In regards to

renovations previously made to Fremont, they doubted “if the repairs would have been

made if [they] had not gone to the board of education and insisted upon it.” They

decried the school board for building “expensive new schools when children risk their

lives daily in a dark, overcrowded, tinderbox that has stood unaltered since it was

build in 1892.”175 The school board’s reply was blunt. The PTA was told that “the

new Fremont school was far down the list of new buildings proposed for 174 San Francisco Congress of Mothers and Parent-Teacher Associations, Annual Reports, 1931 175 San Francisco News, October 19, 1931.

135

construction.”176 Fremont was not a priority and it would be several years before

money was set aside to replace the building. Undeterred, PTA women would continue

to press the board to close fire traps like Fremont. While there efforts to influence

board policy failed in the campaign of 1931, their actions would take center stage after

the Fremont fire of 1933.

Although the PTA did not agree with the school board’s plan, they nonetheless

supported it because the prospect of a failed bond issue was unacceptable. Board

member Murphy laid out the options. “The present question is not one which stands

between the pay-as-you-go plan and the bond issue idea,” explained Murphy. “It is a

question of whether or not the school building program halts or goes ahead.” Failure

to pass the bond would stop the building program because the budget for the next

fiscal year was fixed. When voters go to the polls, they “decide whether or not the

children get the schools and the workingmen their jobs.”177

The supervisors, the school board, the newspapers, the labor unions, the PTA,

and other proponents were surprised when the bond measure failed. 56,727 people

voted in favor and 34,399 against. It failed to gain the required two-thirds majority by

approximately 4,000 votes. An editorial in the Call-Bulletin declared, “San Francisco

broke a record in the Tuesday election. For the first time in our history we failed to

approve a bond for the construction of public schools.” In an attempt to explain the

outcome, the editorial offered several possibilities. “We can blame the depression, we

can lay some of the blame on the feeling that government expenses should be reduced

at this time, and some more of it on the active propaganda in favor of a pay-as you go 176 San Francisco News, November 2, 1931. 177 San Francisco News, October 28, 1931.

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method…” Additionally, several reports claimed the bond measure was “poorly

positioned” on the ballot, such that several people who were not inclined to vote on

the issue might have if it was better located on the placard.178 After some deliberation

to resubmit the vote, the supervisors dropped the issue.

One group was certain why the measure failed. Occasionally, newspapers

mentioned people who opposed the bond issue but provided few details about their

identities or actions. The opposition turned out to be the Public Education Society.

The coalition forged between the Society and the school board throughout the 1920’s

had dissolved. Unlike the PTA, the Public Education Society placed great priority on

the continuance of the pay-as-you-go method. Rather than see the building program

funded through bonds, they voted against the measure and placed the future of the

program in jeopardy. During the campaign nothing was printed about the

organization, but the day after the vote, they issued a statement lauding the results.

The group’s corresponding secretary said, the “results of the bond election fully

justifies the value of the pay-as-you-go method as the only dependable economic way

for providing money for an orderly program of construction.” She surmised the public

will for a bond must have been weak because “with no organized fight against them

and with the complete support of the press, the necessary two-thirds vote was not

available to carry even so small a bond issue as 3,500,000.” She urged the school

board to remain committed to the pay-as-you-go plan. “We earnestly hope that in the

future the board of education will not so early yield the needed allotment of money

which would have provided school buildings for the children and payrolls for the

178 Call-Bulletin, November 7, 1931.

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unemployed, in order that other departments of the city government might benefit and

yet keep down the tax rate temporarily,” stated the secretary. She concluded, “If

economies must be made, there is no reason why they should be made at the expense

of the school children.”

The Public Education Society rift with the school board indicated conflict

within the reform coalition. Other historian’s classify elite progressive reformers as a

cohesive group that competed against other groups in their quest to transform the

schools. David Tyack’s administrative progressives imposed their vision of schools

and society on the working class and ethnic minorities. Herbert Kliebard’s efficiency

experts competed against other progressive reformers to implement there corporate

model of educational reform. Victor Shradar argues that during the 1920s, in San

Francisco, progressive reformers unified along class lines. Wealthy and socially

influential people of mixed ethnic heritage joined together to support progressive

reforms at the expense of the working class. The Public Education Society’s actions

suggested a different story. It revealed a rift between elite reformers. Their

disagreement was not over ends but means. The Public Education Society was

instrumental in amending the city charter to appoint the present school board and

superintendent. They all supported the building program, but the Public Education

Society broke ranks when the school board decided to endorse the bond issue.

Regardless of the economic emergency, the Public Education society was unwilling to

compromise. They did not want tax money diverted away from the building program;

nor did they want the school board to surrender control over the tax levy. And state

law made the Public Education Society a strong minority. Because bond issues

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required a two-thirds majority, opposition could effectively block a bond measure with

relatively few votes. In November 1931 the building program was virtually shut

down.

Choice Opportunities: Fire, Earthquake, and the New Deal

Trouble continued in 1932 as the economy worsened. Rising unemployment

overwhelmed local responses to the crisis. Charles Wollenberg, who oversaw the

city’s relief program, warned more money was needed to help the unemployed.

According to his calculations, the city had to raise $1,750,000 above the money

currently set aside for unemployment relief. He claimed the city was feeding at least

40,000 people each day and he predicted the number would grow to 60,000 by winter.

What alarmed Wollenberg the most was that “more and more of our better type

citizens, those who have carefully husbanded their savings, are reaching the relief

line.” He noticed these “better type citizens” have not only “used up the funds they

had on hand but have borrowed on their homes, have eaten that up and now are facing

eviction.”179

In February 1932, the school board officially decided to suspend the building

program for the next fiscal year. They also devised strategies to save additional

money. They agreed to forgo the $1,000,000 to build George Washington High

School. In lieu of new buildings, to remedy overcrowding, they decided to transfer

students in crowded school to less congested facilities. Deputy Superintendent David

P. Harding issued a report showing there were at least 9,000 vacant seats in schools

179 San Francisco News, May 12, 1932.

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around the city. In addition to transferring students, they plan to convert auditoriums

and gymnasiums into temporary classrooms. Following these measures, “San

Francisco can get along at least another year without additional investment in

educational housing facilities,” said Harding.

The decision to suspend the building program drew criticism from the PTA.

Once again, the PTA insisted that fire trap schools—especially Fremont—be replaced.

“Fremont is a dangerous firetrap menacing the lives of the 500 small children who

attend it,” protested the women.180 The board of education dismissed the PTA by

calling their claims “unwarranted” and “contrary to facts.” Ira Coburn, the school

board president, responded to the criticism by claiming, “The Fremont School was

given a thorough overhauling recently and is good for several years.”181 Coburn asked

the PTA to be patient and understand that nothing could be dune until the economy

improved. Superintendent Gwinn agreed, insisting the community can “get along” for

a few years with the schools in their present condition.182 When the PTA confronted

the mayor, he deflected responsibility. “These matters are up to the board of

education,” he said. But he supported the school board’s decision. “In view of the

practically universal demand from citizens that the tax rate be kept at the lowest figure

and the necessity for providing for unemployment relief, the school commissioners

have fully cooperated in reducing budget items and thereby aiding the taxpayers.”

180 Call-Bulletin, April 4, 1932. 181 San Francisco Chronicle, April 6, 1932. 182 April 26 1932 in San Francisco Public Library SFUSD files, bag 139

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The mayor added, “We cannot build new schools from tax money at this time. That

fact should be fully recognized by every citizen.”183

1932-1933 was a difficult school year. Depression, scandal, earthquake, and

fire would rack the school department. The school board continued to be hampered by

financial difficulties. In addition to cost saving measures listed earlier, the board

eliminated several administrative positions, froze salaries, and closed several night

schools. Superintendent Gwinn was accused of mismanaging funds when it was

discovered the school department overpaid several teachers. Gwinn and other school

officials were portrayed as being grossly inefficient and incompetent. During an

investigation conducted by the supervisors, department employees testified that Gwinn

hid files to impede the investigation. He would eventually be forced to resign.

Between March and April 1933, earthquake and fire would shock San

Francisco and alter the politics of school construction. On March 10, Long Beach

California was the epicenter of a magnitude 6.4 earthquake. The quaked was

responsible for 115 deaths and significant damage to property. Across Los Angels,

142 out of 392 schools suffered damage, with several completely destroyed.

According to authorities “no other type of building in that area suffered in anything

like this proportion.”184 Californians across the state shuddered at the thought of the

young people who would have been crushed if the earthquake had occurred during

school hours. State law makers quickly responded to wide spread calls for reform.

On March 20, the California assembly proposed the Field Bill, which set up stringent

safety codes, mandating that state officials inspect old buildings and authorize the 183 April 26 1932 in San Francisco Public Library SFUSD files, bag 139 184 San Francisco Chronicle, March 18, 1933.

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construction of new ones to ensure they are sufficiently earthquake-proof. It became

law on April 10.

Earthquake safety would influence the building program, but not immediately.

A few weeks after the Long Beach Earthquake, the Fremont Primary School burned

down and fire safety took priority. After the fire, people were looking for someone to

blame beyond the painter who was directly responsible. A favorite target was the

voters who defeated the 1931 bond in favor of the pay-as-you-go plan. The Mayor

took aim by claiming, “The fire demonstrated only too clearly what the people of San

Francisco have been doing since they turned down, by small margin, the recent school

bond issues: they have been gambling economy against the very lives of their

children!”185 An editorial from the Examiner echoed the mayor’s anger. “Pay-as-you-

go—and now the Fremont School is Gone!” The author concluded that the “‘pay-as-

you-go’ argument is little short of murderous.”186 The president of the PTA struck a

softer tone. In her view, voters in 1931 were not fully aware of the danger. “If the

public had known the type of school their children were attending in 1931, the

$3,500,000 bond issue would not have failed,” she said.187 School board President

implied that if the bonds had not failed, fire trap schools would have been replaced.

“The city was started on a program aiming eventually to replace all of its 46 [wood]

frame schools. But for two years that program has been at a standstill, for lack of

funds,” said Bush.188

185 San Francisco Chronicle, April 28 1933. 186 San Francisco Examiner, April 29, 1933. 187 San Francisc, Call-Bulletin, April 28 1933. 188 San Francisco News, April 29, 1933.

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A few newspapers doubted the school board’s sincerity. They referenced the

school board’s progressive agenda and their reluctance to replace Fremont. The San

Francisco News reminded readers that in 1931 “Fremont school was far down the list

of buildings to be replaced.” The News recalled how the Fremont PTA lobbied

unsuccessfully to have Fremont included in the building program. The Examiner

published a similar story, reporting that the bond issue of 1931 had “no provision for

replacing the old Fremont School.” The Examiner article wrote, “The chief purpose of

the bond issue…was to build new high schools and junior high schools.” It concluded

that any renovations to Fremont would have been incidental. Superintendent Gwinn

countered with an old argument—that building junior high schools and high schools

was part of their plan to close fire traps. Gwinn stated, “The 1931 bond plan would

have permitted a satisfactory readjustment so that the Fremont school could be

abandoned.”189

The day after the fire, the mayor announced a plan to submit a $3,000,000

bond issue for school construction. To get public support, he addressed the queries

raised in the newspapers. He pledged the bonds would be used “for one purpose only,

the construction of new schools to replace the present fire-traps….” He avowed,

“New high schools may be needed—but I shall insist that they wait until no San

Francisco school child is further exposed to the perils of such ramshackle makeshifts

as the Fremont.”190 The mayor moved quickly. In May, he gained the unanimous

approval of the supervisors and they settled on June 27 as the date for the vote—the

same day voters were going to decide the future of the Eighteenth Amendment. 189 San Francisco News, April 28, 1933 190 San Francisco Examiner, April 29 1933.

143

By June, the campaign was in full swing. All city newspapers supported the

bond measure. They reported and listed numerous civic groups, influential people,

and organizations that endorsed the bond. They printed several editorials to refute the

pay-as-you-go plan. One week before the vote, the mayor announced an additional

reason why people should pass the bonds. According to Mayor Rossi, “if the voters

approved the proposed $3,000,000 school bond issue…San Francisco will be one of

the first cities in the nation to receive direct federal aid under President Roosevelt’s

National Recovery Act.”191

When Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s was elected president in November 1932,

he radically altered the federal government’s response to the Depression. His

predecessor, President Hoover, remained devoted to the idea that local communities

had to band together to endure the hard times. Hoover’s approach was grounded in

the belief that the economy would recover, that the depression was just a natural slump

in the business cycle. It was a weather-the-storm mentality. Local governments were

encouraged to hold on, sustain the unemployed through local relief—from private and

public sources—and eventually, on its own, the storm would pass and life would

return to normal. As the depression got worse, Hoover, realized that federal

intervention was necessary. He offered more federal assistance to the states than any

prior administration. In 1932, he instituted the Reconstruction Finance Corporation

(RFC) that provided federal money for public works. $329,660,000 was allocated for

federal projects and $1.5 billion was designated for the states. The RFC was

hampered by complicated rules dictating how the money should be doled out.

191 San Francisco Examiner, June 20, 1933.

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Additionally, the program was not big enough to deal with the rampant unemployment

caused by the depression. Ultimately, its effect was minimal.192

President Roosevelt took office in March 1933 and during his first hundred

days he ushered in a barrage of legislation that expanded federal intervention in the

economy. At the conclusion of this hundred day period, on June 16, a package of bills

known collectively as the National Industrial Recovery Act (NRA) were signed. Title

II of the act established the Public Works Administration (PWA) and launched the

most extensive federal public works program in the nation’s history. Initially the

PWA was appropriated $3.3 billion; in the following years it would receive over a

billion more. The agency sponsored construction projects across the nation. With

PWA assistance, state and local governments constructed sewage treatment plants,

courthouses, roads, bridges, aqueducts, hospitals and a host of other structures.

Schools were a popular expenditure. Between July 1929 and March 1939, an

estimated seventy percent of school construction across the country was partially

funded with PWA money.193

When Mayor Rossi tried to bolster support for his bond issue through the

promise of federal money, the PWA had existed for less than a month. Rossi did not

have much to say about the program because he knew very little about it. What he

knew was that federal money was going to become available, but he did not know how

or when. The PWA had not yet developed the capacity to operate such a large

program because it was in the process of establishing its administrative structure. So

192 U. S. Public Works Administration, American Builds: The Record of PWA (United states printing office: Washington, 1939), 6; Mullins, The Depression and the Urban West, 2. 193 U. S. Public Works Administration, American Builds: The Record of PWA (United states printing office: Washington, 1939), 8.

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Rossi’s promotion of the PWA was vague and it was presented as an addendum rather

than a core feature of the bond campaign.

Similar to the 1931 campaign, the bond issue received overwhelming support

from prominent organizations and the press. And similar to 1931, the bond issue

failed, this time by a wider margin. The Fremont fire, the widespread community

support, and the promise of federal money were not enough to sway two-thirds of the

voters. 79,833 people voted for the bonds. 50,989 voted against it, making the vote

approximately 7,000 votes short of passing. In 1931 the bond vote failed by 4,000

votes.

The defeat left the mayor and the school board unsure about how to proceed.

The mayor remained adamant about not raising taxes. On July 12 they decided to

fund only maintenance projects they declared as absolutely necessary. They decide to

repair Fremont and reopen it, but the third floor, which sustained the most damage,

remained closed and only the youngest grades attended the school. Buena Vista

school, another building that had been labeled a fire trap, was scheduled to be

replaced. The board of education calculated that it could pay for the repairs without

raising the budget if they cut other expenditures like teacher salaries and night school.

In august, the board of education repackaged the school bond proposal. This

time the school bonds would not be presented on its own. It was folded into a city-

wide proposal of public works projects to be submitted to the NRA. In September the

board of public works presented a plan of construction projects to the board of

supervisors. The report was an itemized list of project that cost approximately

$35,000,000. The board of supervisor chose November 7 as the day for the special

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elections. The election included thirteen individual bond measures. Unlike the bond

vote in June, the mayor and supervisors were more knowledgeable about the NIRA.

The supervisors promoted the federal works program as an incentive to attract voters.

A headline from the San Francisco News announced, “NRA Projects To Give Work to

Thousands.” The public was told the federal government would subsidize thirty

percent of the cost for labor and building material. If the bonds were approved on

November 7, then they city would receive more than $8 million from the federal

government. The process was made explicit. First the city would forward the request

for a grant to the state NRA advisory board and then, if approved, it would be sent to

Washington. City controller Leonard S. Leavy allayed concerns the bond would raise

taxes. According to Leavy, the “federal gift” would be deposited in the banks and used

to pay the debt incurred through the bond sales.194

One of the thirteen bond measures was a $13 million proposal for new schools.

$2 million were allocated to build five new schools: one high school, one junior high,

one health school, and two elementary schools. $1 million would be divided to pay

for “replacements and alterations,” which including the replacement or repair of nine

firetrap buildings, but did not including Fremont. But now the supervisors had the

upper-hand for the first time since the California Supreme Court case of 1927 because

for a bond measure to be place on the ballot, it had to be approved by the supervisors.

When the school board submitted their proposal for $3 million, it “was rejected by the

supervisors with instructions to increase the firetrap allotment.”195 The school board

returned with a $3.5 million proposal, allocating “$1,685,000 for new construction, 194 San Francisco Examiner, October, 27, 1933 195 September 26, 1933 in San Francisco Public Library SFUSD files, bag 142.

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and $1,315,000 for restoring and replacing so-called firetrap schools.”196 This plan

was approved.

On September 26, the board of supervisors accepted the school board’s

proposal but explained it could not be placed on the November 7 ballot. By state law,

when a bond was defeated, it could not be resubmitted to voters for at least six

months. Because of the failed vote in June, the supervisors could not authorize a bond

for school construction until after December 27. While the supervisors geared up for

the November 7 vote and pressured the federal government to rush approval of its

funding, the school board mulled over how to get its bond proposal in front of the

voters. On October 18 they found a solution. The presidents of The City and County

Federation of Women’s Clubs and the Parent Teachers’ Association agreed to

collaborate and organize an initiative petition to secure a special election for the

school bonds on December 19. To get the initiative on the ballot by December 19, the

women were instructed by registrar Charles J. Collins, to file by November 10. They

needed 22,740 signatures, so Collins suggested they get 30,000 because many people

who sign the petition turn out not to be registered voters.

With the women in the forefront, attention was refocused onto fire trap

schools. The newspapers described the women’s campaign as a “New Drive on

School Fire Trap Peril.”197 Memory of the Fremont school fire was still fresh, but

another school, Irving M. Scott Primary became the new symbol of the danger. Papers

published pictures and articles describing the hazards of the school. Mayor Rossi lent

his support. “It would be a sad commentary on our judgment if, after taking care of 196 September 26, 1933 in San Francisco Public Library SFUSD files, bag 142. 197 San Francisco Examiner, October 24, 1933.

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our adult generation by passing the NRA bond issue on November 7, we should leave

the younger generation in peril.” He declared, “No greater necessity confronts us than

the removing of our children from schools which are a menace to their safety.”198

On the evening of October 24 the PTA launched their campaign by hosting a

meeting with guest speaker Justus Wardell, the federal public works administrator for

the western states. The next day, the petition drive began in earnest with the Mayor

being one of the first signers. He was photographed with the president of the City and

County Federation of Women and the second vice president of the PTA looking over

his shoulder. The caption read, “The mayor aids women’s bond plea.”199 The women

led a grassroots movement to get signatures. They walked the streets to garner votes.

Each organization set up a headquarters to coordinate their efforts. The two groups

used a wall-size map complete with push pins to ensure that volunteers were

efficiently distributed across the city. They designated schools, firehouses, and

hospitals as stations where volunteers could solicit people for signatures. The PTA

worked with high school art classes to create posters to advertise their campaign. By

November 11 they were short five thousand signatures. Registrar Collins gave them

five additional days and on November 15 they turned in 29,000 signatures. Collins

certified the signatures, and the supervisors unanimously approved a bond vote for

December 19.

With the slogan to “make every school building safe for our children,” the

women immediately began a second campaign to rally support for the bond issue. The

PTA’s campaign was multi-dimensional. They visited schools to give “pep talks” to 198 San Francisco Examiner, October 24, 1933. 199 San Francisco Examiner, October, 25 1933.

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students. They plastered the city with posters created by junior high school and high

school students. They visited meetings of various organizations at which the PTA

arranged for speakers to talk about the bond campaign and school safety. The PTA

organized a phone bank to spread the word and convince people to support bond

measure. They had members ready to drive to the polls people who were not

physically able to travel on their own.200

Soon after the start of the bond campaign, events gave credence to their

argument for safer schools. Fall-out from the Long Beach earthquake began to

materialize. On November 21, engineers from the state classified three schools

earthquake hazards under the guidelines of the Field Bill. The board was ordered to

close the schools immediately and transfer students to neighboring facilities. More

closings were expected because the engineers expanded their investigation. People

who supported the bonds incorporated the closures into their campaign, reminding the

public of the old hazards and warning them of the new. San Francisco’s schools were

described as “virtual death traps in case of fire and earthquake.”201 The sudden

closing of the schools provided more impetus for the bond. An article in the

Chronicle stated, “The money is to be used to replace ancient wooden schools—some

of them fifty years old, to remodel other schools to make them safe and to provide

three new school buildings in districts where there is now crying need.”202 The school

board seemed to use the school closings as a means to issue a veiled threat of high

taxes. Board President Bush announced that if the bonds did not pass, then they

200 San Francisco Call-Bulletin, December 16, 1933. 201 San Francisco Examiner, December 12, 1933. 202 San Francisco Chronicle, December 11, 1933.

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would be forced to include appropriations in the budget to “take care of necessary

school construction that cannot longer be delayed.” He predicted a special tax of

possibly $1.5 million.

Campaign leaders offered the public an alternative. Repeatedly during the

bond campaign, the public was reassured that if they voted yes, they would not incur

the full debt of the bond issues. Provisions of the bond measure were made explicit.

One newspaper wrote the bonds would be “issued only on condition that the Federal

Government makes an outright gift of 30 per cent of the total amount of the issue.”203

Another paper declared, “If there is no government gift of thirty per cent there will be

no bond issue.” It was also made clear that most of the money from the bond issues

would be used to pay workers. San Franciscans were informed that because the school

department owned most of the land upon which it planned to build, “almost all the

$3,000,000 will go for labor and materials.”204

On December 20 the Call-Bulletin announced, “S. F. Schools Win.” The bond

measure passed. It was close: approximately 2,600 votes above the required two-

thirds majority with 68,926 people voting for the measure and 30,618 voting against it.

Those who supported the bonds relished the victory. They lost the last two bond votes

and it had been two years since the building program was suspended. PTA described

the campaign as their “outstanding project of the year.”205 One day after the vote, the

school board sent a memo to the supervisors and mayor asking them to request federal

money from the PWA. On March 29, 1934, the PTA in their annual report announced

203 San Francisco Examiner, December 12, 1933. 204 San Francisco Chronicle, December 11, 1933. 205 San Francisco Congress of Mothers and Parent-Teacher Associations, Annual Reports, 1934

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that the federal government granted San Francisco the 30 percent aid for the school

bonds. Two weeks later the board of education began to make preliminary plans for

school construction.

Conclusion

One of the conditions in the PTA campaign of December 1933 was that the

money raised from the bonds would be used to replace “old wooden three-story

buildings, similar to the Fremont school…, erected between 1880 and 1913….”206

Fourteen years later, in 1948, the school board conducted an extensive survey of the

school department’s buildings. One of the worst schools in the district was a wood

frame structure built in 1892. It was recommended “the building should be abandoned

at the earliest possible date.”207 The school was the notorious Fremont Primary, one

of three “pre-fire” schools—the other two were Irving M. Scott and Douglass—still in

use. The pre-fire schools, however, do not indicate the success or failure on the part of

the PTA. In the bond campaign of December 1933, thirteen fire traps were singled out

to be rebuilt or refurbished. Four were “pre-fire” schools and as stated, three were left

untouched. Five schools were completely rebuilt. Two were razed. And two schools

were renovated. The upgrades varied; one school got a new library, while the other

became the annex for a new building.

Overall, the PTA was moderately successful in their goal to eliminate old

wood frame schools. In 1930 students attended about thirty-eight wood frame

206 San Francisco Examiner, December 9, 1933. 207 San Francisco Unified School District, Building Survey: Elementary School (San Francisco: San Francisco Unified School District, 1948), 109.

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buildings constructed prior to 1913. In 1948, twenty-six remained open with seven-

teen in their original form. The most glaring remnant of the past were the “pre-fire”

schools, especially Fremont, considering it was the building that helped energize the

movement against fire traps. As for the school board their vision of a school district

reorganized according to the six-three-three plan was incomplete. In 1930 fifty-one

percent of the students in the seventh, eighth and ninth grades had been transferred to

separate junior high schools. By 1948, seventy-two percent were enrolled in separate

schools. The district opened eleven junior high schools, nine of which were built prior

to 1937. One school—Marina Junior High School, completed in 1936—was paid for

through the 1933 bond issue.

This story involves conflict over goals and process. Problems between the

school board and the PTA were centered on goals. It can be visualized through a

Venn-diagram. In the middle of the Venn diagram, there was plenty of common

ground between the two groups. Both wanted new buildings and new schools—

whether elementary, junior high, or high school—meant safe fireproof schools. But at

one ends of the diagram, outside the intersecting portions of the two circles, the school

board often chose to build junior high schools or new, modern elementary schools

rather than raze or refurbish a fire trap. The school board was willing to permit some

students to attend a school identified as a fire trap, while they proceeded with their

building program. This was unacceptable to the women. They wanted all fire traps

destroyed. Conflict between the supervisors, school board, and Public Education

society was about process. The core issue was who should be able to make decisions

about school construction. The Public Education Society wanted to maintain the

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system they fought hard to create. Their insistence on continuing the pay-as-you-go

plan was as much about fiscal policy as it was about preserving the political autonomy

of the school board.

The Great Depression muddied the water. Conflict was not a straightforward

battle between people with different goals and preferences. All the groups involved

had to calculate their actions within a severe economic crisis. The depression

provided opportunity and obstacles depending on one’s position in the debate. As

unemployment reached staggering heights, all municipal officers, including the

supervisors and school board had to make sense of their policies in terms of the

present context. Much about the formal process stayed the same but the school board

changed its priorities in order to address the demands created by the depression. The

school board’s decisions affected other groups within the political environment as

these groups recalibrated their positions in light of the school board’s actions.

There were no clear winners or losers. No one could claim a clear cut victory,

or a debilitating loss. Each side accomplished goals and influenced decision making.

The upper-hand temporarily went to whatever group could seize an opportunity and

work it to their advantage and each group had their moment.

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Conclusion

The 1906 earthquake and fire and the Great Depression were devastating

events that altered the political, social, and economic contexts of San Francisco. Each

crisis was a turning point in the lives and psyche of all who experienced them. In

some ways the effects were obvious. Thousands died in the disaster of 1906 and the

city’s physical infrastructure was reduced to charred ruins. During the depression,

while the poor got poorer, millions of upper and middle class people were also left

helpless. Despair was rampant as Americans struggled to endure a seemingly endless

nightmare. For some, however, the crises were a turning point of a different sort.

Some people treated them as opportunities. To explain opportunity as crisis, historian

Kevin Rosaria refers to the concept of creative destruction in which crises disrupt

longstanding ideas and destroy physical structures and modes of production. He

argues that with the old ways disrupted, opportunities abound for new ideas and

processes to emerge.1 The earthquake and fire and the Great Depression were

certainly disruptions, but in regards to the policies of Japanese segregation and school

construction, crisis provided opportunities to advance longstanding political agendas.

Another viewpoint is that even in times of crisis there are those who try to

conduct business as usual. The notion of business as usual does not discount the fact

that crises alter lives, but it illustrates that, regardless of the severity of a particular

crisis, vestiges of life prior to the event continue and are not simply swept away.

Historian Stephen Beil explains that old patterns of life continue to thrive because

people to use their established political and cultural practices to make sense of the 1 Kevin Rosario, “What Comes Down Must Go Up: Why Disasters Have Been Good for American Capitalism,” in American Disasters, edited by Steven Beil (New York: New York Press, 2001), 72-102.

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disaster. But the impact goes both ways. Crisis can also give rise to new meanings

because people adopt language and representations generated by the crisis. In effect,

crises can overlay previous political relationships and cultural practices with new

language and new meanings that people use to communicate and interpret their world.2

The cases of this study are positioned between these two perspectives of crisis.

For some political actors, crisis was an opportunity; for others, an obstacle. When the

earthquake and fire and Great Depression changed the availability and flow of

resources, the events altered activity within the political environment. However, for

school officials involved in the issues of Japanese segregation and school construction,

it was business as usual. In respect to my study, the notion of “business as usual” can

be interpreted as “politics as usual.” Political agendas remained the same as actors

articulated their policies in light of the current circumstances and tried to marshal

whatever resources they could to realize their objectives.

Educational Decision Making: State Law and Local Politics

A critical feature of the politics in each case is that the school board had to

negotiate its role as a state and local institution. School policy was the outcome of

how the school board was able to manage its role as a “creature of the legislature” and

as a local organization embedded within city politics. School boards in California got

their legitimacy and power from the California State Constitution.3 State

constitutional law superseded local statutes, giving the state final say on educational

2 Steven Beil, “Introduction: On the Titanic research and Recovery Expedition and the Production of Disasters,” in American Disasters, edited by Stephen Beil (New York: New York Press, 2001), 1-8. 3 Charter of the City and County of San Francisco, art. 7, chapter. 3.

156

matters. The constitution provided broad guidelines for how education was to be

conducted throughout the state with state law designating local school boards as the

official decision makers of educational policy within each district. But there was

significant wiggle room between state law and how each school board conducted its

business.

As long as the local charter did not conflict with the state constitution, it added

another layer to the formal code that defined the functions and responsibilities of the

school board. In San Francisco, the local charter defined the details of the school

board’s standard operating procedures such as the size of the board, dates and times

for board meetings, and the school board’s power and responsibilities relative to other

municipal departments. In 1900, when the new city charter was ratified, one goal of

the charter was to reorganize school governance based on a corporate model which set

up a bureaucracy with the school board at the top of the hierarchy. Decisions were

supposed to move from the top down and the formal code was supposed to insulate the

school board against the vagaries of local politics.

It was impossible to detach schools from the local political environment

because they were embedded within it. Local politics included the school board’s

interactions with interest groups and other municipal departments within the city.

Local interest groups publicly supported or challenged the school board. Interest

groups had several methods for expressing their views on school issues. They could

have members attend board meetings, send official memos to the school board, or

write an article or editorial for one of the newspapers. Whatever means they used to

communicate their views, interest groups had the power to gain the school board’s

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attention and try to sway their decision making. Additionally, the school board

constantly jostled with other municipal departments. Their prime nemesis was often

the board of supervisors. The school board was the biggest drain on the municipal

budget and the supervisors had to juggle the school department’s demands with

demands from other departments.

Within this political environment, the school board’s control over decision

making fluctuated. Their authority was contingent on the way state law either

constrained or empowered the board in their interactions with the supervisors, other

government agencies, and local interest groups. Further, when crisis struck, the shift

in resources affected the school boards political leverage and ability to make

decisions. In the cases of Japanese segregation and school construction, the school

board’s had a set of goals they wanted to achieve. Their desire to achieve their goals

remained constant before and after each crisis, but their ability to actually make

decisions changed over time.

Historians are correct to argue that the school board’s desire to segregate the

Japanese was motivated by race prejudice. San Francisco was particularly hostile

toward Asians. Prejudice against the Japanese was a carry over from the hostility

leveled against the Chinese. Notions of a racial hierarchy were ingrained within the

social consciousness of white and non-white people. Formal and informal codes of

behavior reinforced the idea that whites were superior to non-whites. In 1901, labor

unions rose to power through anti-Japanese political platforms. When the Union

Labor party won the mayoralty, they did so promising to ban Japanese immigrants

from entering the country. The school board of 1906 had personal ties to the

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administration. School board president Aaron Altmann was the brother-in-law of

Boss Abe Ruef, the unofficial head of the Union Labor Party. Superintendent Alfred

Roncovieri and Mayor Eugene Schmitz were members of the city orchestra.

Race prejudice can be taken as a given, but pressure from labor can be

overstated. The school board did not have to be pressured into segregating Japanese

students because they supported segregation. School officials honed their methods of

discrimination on the Chinese, so when the Japanese became the new “Asian problem”

there were strategies in place to deal with them. For the school department, the

method of choice was segregation. As early as 1893, school board members passed

the first of several resolutions to segregate Japanese students. The important question

is not why the school board segregated the Japanese, but why it took them so long to

enforce the resolution. The school board’s desire to segregate the Japanese may have

been inspired by a racist ideology, but their inability to act was determined by the

standard operating procedures laid out in the state code and city charter.

If the school board could have segregated the Japanese sooner than October 11,

it is probable they would have. Regardless of race prejudice or demands from labor,

state law and the supervisor’s reluctance to build schools prevented definitive action

on the issue of Japanese segregation. State law gave school districts authority to

segregate “Mongolians” only if the district provided separate facilities for their

education. In 1892 when the school board first resolved to segregate Japanese

students, some board members decided it was wrong to classify them as Mongolians.

They rescinded the order because board members disagreed over whether state law

governing segregation applied to the Japanese. Between 1900 and 1906, when

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hostilities intensified against the Japanese, city and school officials were in accord that

the Japanese should be classified as Mongolians. School officials advocated for

segregation. The city charter gave the supervisors veto power over the school board’s

budget. Repeated demands for new schools—for white and Asian students—were

rebuffed by the supervisors. The school board was caught in a bind. Without a new

school they could not segregate the Japanese and without approval from the

supervisors, they could not build a new school. Decision making was left in abeyance,

as the school board could not raise the money needed to open a school for the

Japanese.

Prior to the Great Depression, the politics of school construction was a fight

between the school board and supervisors for control of the decision making process.

In this case, the school board used state law to their advantage. In January 1922 the

newly appointed school board adhered to the administrative progressive ideology.

When Superintendent Gwinn was appointed in 1923, district leadership was unified in

their commitment to progressive reform. At the top of their agenda was the building

program. School construction got off to a rocky start because the city charter initially

constrained the powers of the school board. Similar to the situation in 1906, the

charter gave the supervisors veto power over the school budget. They could reject or

adjust the tax levy recommended by the school board. In addition to the supervisors,

the school board had to contend with local interest groups. In the early 1920s the

school board was pressured by the public to build safe schools.

In 1927 the school board gained the upper hand over the board of supervisors

when the California Supreme Court ruled the city charter violated state law. The court

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gave the school board total control over the school budget by ordering the supervisor

to levy the taxes requested by the school board. The ruling placed decision making

squarely in the hands of the school board and between 1927 and 1931, the school

board had virtually total control over the building program. School construction

proceeded based on the plans devised by the school department. They focused on

building Junior high schools and upgrading elementary schools. Other issues related

to school construction, such as the elimination of fire traps, were secondary concerns

and the supervisor could attend to those issues at their discretion. The supervisors and

local interest groups, such as the PTA, were shut out of the decision making process.

Politics of Crises

In each case, when crises struck, the fortunes of the school board were

reversed. It was politics as usual in regards to the school board trying to implement

their policies, but the crises altered the availability of resources and subsequently

changed the school board’s control over decision making. Sometimes change worked

in favor of the school board and at other times to their disadvantage when other groups

were in a position to benefit from the shift in resources.

Jim March and Johan Olsen explain that politics involve complicated

interactions between institutions, individuals, and events. To understand the

complicated nature of politics, March and Olsen refer to their concept of organized

anarchies. In their view, given the complexity of the political environment,

alternatives choices available to decision makers are in constant flux; choices flow in

an out of the situation. They write, “Alternatives are not automatically provided to a

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decision maker; they have to be found.”4 Policy makers have to be alert to moments

when they can either attach an old policy to a new problem or attach an old problem to

a new policy. When decision makers find an alternative, March and Olsen label those

moments choice opportunities, one feature of which is the ephemeral nature of the

moment. An important feature of the school board’s choice opportunities in Japanese

segregation and school construction was that the school board had more power over

decision making when they were able to reduce the number of actors involved in the

process.

The earthquake and fire created a choice opportunity when the school board

was able to attach the old problem of Japanese students to a new solution: vacant seats

within the Chinese school. Before the earthquake and fire, the supervisor’s control

over taxes prevented the school board from acting on their desire to segregate the

Japanese. After the disaster, when the board realized they had space within the

Chinese school, they responded quickly by expelling the Japanese and ordering them

into the Chinese schools. When the Chinese school provided a building for the

Japanese, the school board did not have to consult with the board of supervisors about

the budget and they were no longer concerned about violating state law. The school

board was free to make a decision.

A new chapter began, however, when Japan and the federal government

involved. The political process grew extremely complex as new actors entered the

scene and old actors assumed a more aggressive role. The federal government stirred

up the political environment. It was a classic David and Goliath story: the school 4James March and Johan Olsen, “The New Institutionalism: Organizational Factors in Political Life, The American Political Science Review 78 (September 1984): 740, 734-749.

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board against the White House; a local resolution pitted against an international treaty.

President Roosevelt and Secretary Metcalf attracted the attention of the nation and

world. And out in the Pacific somewhere was the opaque threat of Japan’s navy.

External pressure from the White House altered political relations within San

Francisco. President Roosevelt’s involvement empowered the Japanese immigrant

community, who previously had no say in public policy. The speed at which they

were expelled from school was evidence of their inability to defend themselves against

local authorities. When they directly confronted the school board, they were

dismissed. It was only through diplomatic negotiations with the state department,

could the Japanese gain the school board’s attention. The controversy also

exacerbated animosity directed at the Japanese. San Franciscan’s closed ranks around

the school board to defend the resolution. Labor Unions and the Exclusion League

ramped up their efforts against the Japanese. The school board was caught in the

middle, with the White house bearing down on them from Washington and local

groups pushing them to the forefront of a campaign to ban Japanese immigration.

The politics of school construction also showed how the school board’s power

to make decisions fluctuated depending on the number of participants involved in the

process. In the early 1920s, the building program was initiated as a solution to several

problems, such as the danger of overcrowded fire traps, out of date facilities, and an

outmoded academic program. Between 1927 and 1931, the school board held

significant power over school construction. The school board controlled the city purse

and dictated to the supervisors how much money to spend on new schools. Policy

decisions were simple. The school board calculated a budget and the supervisors had

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to sign it. After the stock market crashed, the building program benefited from

President Hoover’s endorsement of local public works. School construction became

an old solution linked to a new problem. When Hoover made a call for public works,

the building program was advertised as a solution to unemployment and this continued

to be a major theme for school construction throughout the depression.

Fortunes changed when the economy hit bottom in 1932. In 1931, with

unemployment soaring, the school board was presented with two alternatives. The

first choice was to endorse a school bond for school construction and give the tax

money allotted for the building program to relief programs for the unemployed. The

alternative was to continue using tax money to fund the building program and leave

the supervisors in the lurch to find another way to raise money for unemployment

relief. When the school board decided to endorse the bond issue, they essentially gave

up their control over school construction because they allowed other groups to reenter

the decision making process. To float a bond, the school board had to get the

supervisor’s approval and then garner two-thirds majority in a public vote. In the

bond votes of November 1931 and June 1933, formal procedures enabled a small

minority to defeat the votes and shut down the building program for two years.

In the bond vote of December 1933, the PTA benefited from provisions within

the city charter to gain more input in school construction. When the proposed bond

issue of June 1933 failed, the city charter prohibited another vote for six months.

Typically special elections for bond measures were slated for June and November

each year, so the school board would have had to wait until June 1934 for the next

round of special elections. To get the bond measure before voters as soon as possible,

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the PTA led a drive to petition the public for an initiative. For special elections,

normally there was only one campaign before the vote, but for the 1933 December

election, there were two campaigns. The first campaign was led by the PTA to get

signatures for the petition and the second was to get people to come out and vote on

the issue. In each campaign the women emphasized their preference to eliminate fire

traps and framed the bonds as a plan to build safe schools.

Rhetoric of Crises

Each case shows that resources are important. Crises altered the political

environment because changes to the flow and availability of resource can make a

political actor’s plans more or less feasible. Crises also infuse the environment with

language that gets integrated into the political rhetoric. David Tyack and Larry Cuban

explain the importance of rhetoric in educational politics, explaining that rhetoric—or

what they call policy talk—“is a dramatic exchange in a persistent theater of aspiration

and anxiety, for Americans have for over a century used debate over education as a

potent means of defining the present and shaping the future.”5 The earthquake and fire

and the Great Depression transformed the policy talk of Japanese segregation and

school construction.

During the controversy over Japanese segregation, the school board and the

federal government competed for control over the public’s perception of the issue. The

federal government attempted to paint the resolution as an anomaly. In doing so, they

featured the earthquake and fire prominently in their narrative. The federal 5 David Tyack and Larry Cuban, Tinkering Toward Utopia: A Century of Public School Reform (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995), 42.

165

government created a before and after scenario in which hostility against the Japanese

soared after the disaster. They portrayed the school board as members of a community

in shock after experiencing a traumatic event. Segregation was one of many vile acts

orchestrated by labor unions, who in normal times harbored ill feelings toward the

Japanese, and when consumed by the stress of the disaster, their aggression reached

unprecedented heights.

The school board wanted to portray itself as an independent organization that

functioned according to the formal rules and responsibilities of its members’ position

as educational leaders. They refuted the federal government’s cause and effect

narrative and portrayed themselves as a stable institution unaffected by the disaster.

The earthquake and fire was a side note. Other than presenting the board with an

opportunity to do what they planned to do anyway, the earthquake and fire was

inconsequential. Further, segregation was educational policy, unrelated to the racial

and economic policies of labor. In their words, they were a state institution

responding to the needs of their constituents. State law granted them the right to

segregate Japanese children, and parents asked them to expel the Japanese.

The policy talk about school construction involved several adaptations. In the

early 1920s, school construction was connected to the earthquake and fire of 1906.

The community was unified around the theme that the school department had been

dealt a harsh blow by the disaster and needed help to recover. Problems like over

crowding and unsanitary conditions were attributed to the lingering effects of the

disaster. In 1927 there was a notable shift in the policy talk. Rhetoric about school

construction was filtered through the ideology of progressive reform or concerns for

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school safety. Proponents of progressive reform argued their plans were based on the

science and standards of efficiency. Their opponents countered that progressive

reform overlooked the importance of creating safe schools for children.

During the depression, these two ideas continued but additional ideas relevant

to the economic crisis were included within the policy talk. People were told that

building fireproof schools would relieve unemployment; or that school bonds would

provide money for the building program, jobs for the unemployed, and tax breaks for

the financially strapped; or that the school construction would create safe schools and

attract federal subsidies for employment.

Final Thoughts

What can we take away from this study of school policy and crisis? There are

a few insights, more suggestive than definitive. The study suggests bad news and

good news for policy makers. The bad news is that people tend to assume they have

more control over policy than they really do. In 1984, Mike Kirst asked the question

“Who controls the schools?” The best answer this study offers is that it depends.

Control of decision making was contingent on numerous factors. San Francisco’s

school board existed in a nebulous political space between state laws, local laws, and

local politics. State and local laws overlapped and sometimes conflicted with each

other. Sometimes the laws empowered the board and at other times, they hampered

the school board’s ability to act. The school board gained advantage over other groups

when they were able to eliminate actors from the decision making process. But

participation fluctuated. David Cohen and Mike Kirst insist that when the political

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environment becomes more crowded—especially when state and federal officials play

a stronger role—then policy and the processes for making decision become more

uncertain. The school board could not indefinitely control access to decision making

because events unpredictably altered the political environment. Both crises were

unpredictable events that shocked the school system and changed the political

dynamics of each case. The best political actors could do was to have a plan, stay

alert, and respond to situations as they arose.6

The good news is that opportunities exist regardless of how dire circumstances

may appear. These two huge shocks—the 1906 earthquake and fire and the Great

Depression—definitely altered the political environment but they did not completely

dislodge political actors off their path. They had to reassess and recalibrate their

plans, but they moved forward—with varying degrees of success—with their agendas.

It was critical for political actors to understand how to adapt when resources suddenly

became available or suddenly became scarce.

If anything, this study argues for humility in educational policy making, for

taking a step back from confident assertions about what is right or wrong for the

schools. The success and failure of educational policies are contingent on a number of

factors, many of them unknown or outside the purview of individual actors. And,

although this study is focused on two extreme events, several scholars explain that

disorder in education is natural. Larry Cuban warns against the mistake of trying to

6 Mike Kirst, Who Controls Our School? (New York: W.H. Freeman and Company, 1984); David Cohen, “Policy and Organization: The Impact of State and Federal Education Policy on School Governance,” Harvard Education Review 52 (November 1982): 484

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assign blame when policies fail.7 He argues that when people assign blame, they

imply there was a definitive problem with a definitive solution and someone failed to

correctly analyze the problem or implement the solution. But Cuban argues, when we

examine education as a dilemma, we get another picture. We get a picture of

competing interest groups who want their priorities valued over the demands of other

groups. We get a picture of an overlapping system of laws and regulations that often

send mixed messages and contradictory directives. Philip Cusick paints a chaotic

portrait of the school system. He argues that the American education system is a

messy, unruly one. He states, “…the problem with the American educational system

is that it is the American Educational System.”8 Schools are messy because they are

America’s most democratic institution. People have access and make constant

demands. School officials respond, satisfying some, appeasing others, and leaving

many unhappy.

It is difficult for us to accept that some things are out of our control.

Educational research is grounded on methods that isolate variables in order to predict

outcomes for administrators, teachers, and students. And while this research is

valuable, it may provide an overly simplified picture of the problems, solutions, and

processes involved in operating schools. Policy makers, educators and lay persons

become frustrated when predicted outcomes do not materialize. In that case, it might

be helpful to factor in the messiness and understand that we can to strive for a

7 Larry Cuban, How Can I Fix It?: Finding Solutions and Managing Dilemmas: An Educator’s Road Map (New York: Teachers College Press, 2001) 8 Philip Cusick, The Educational System: Its Nature and Logic (New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1992), 140.

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particular outcome as long as we are prepared to adjust our expectations when events

transpire that are beyond our control.

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Archival Collections

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San Francisco, CA. San Francisco Unified School District Records, 1854-2003. San Francisco Public Library,

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