Click here to listen to this week’s JAM – How Is A Civil Rights Icon Tied To Hillbrook High School?
Last week I learned something about the new Hillbrook high school campus that truly astonished me. Before I get there, however, a bit of context.
Hillbrook has always had a strong sense of place. For more than 85 years, children have grown up on our bucolic campus in Los Gatos, nestled in the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains. Our campus is full of oak trees and acorns, a creek that ebbs and flows with the seasons, towering evergreens and a broad variety of flowering plants. Classrooms are scattered in pods around campus, with every door opening to the outdoors. From the youngest ages children move freely across campus, and one of the most common – and heartening – sites on campus each and every day is children, even when they are in Middle School, running to and from a class. The campus is a classroom, a critical piece of the learning experience.
So, when we decided that we were going to find a Downtown location for our high school campus we knew that we had to create an equally compelling sense of place. Like our Los Gatos campus, we knew we needed a space that would be inspiring, a space that would create a sense of connection and meaning, a space that would allow high school students opportunities for growth and learning. In addition to thinking about the buildings themselves, we also knew that the location would matter. We envisioned a school in which the city itself would become a part of the classroom.
The two spaces we have found – the Moir Building and the Armory – are located in the heart of Downtown San Jose, and they are quickly proving to be the type of inspiring spaces we had hoped to find. The historic spaces are full of character and personality, and it is exciting to imagine them full of high school students in the years ahead. The location is ideal, located within blocks of a range of urban spaces, including City Hall, several major companies like Zoom and Adobe, a wide variety of non-profit organizations, the County Courthouse, and San Jose State University. The city will, indeed, be a classroom.
And that takes me to last Thursday, when I came across an article in the Mercury News by local columnist Sal Pizzaro. I was only half-paying attention as I read about the historic location of the United Farm Workers San Jose headquarters, a place where Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta gathered to rally people for things like the UFW grape boycott in the late 1960s. The address caught my eye – 227 N First Street. Wait, I quickly started reading the rest of the article. Isn’t that our building? As I read more about the local man who had served as the office manager in the late 1960s, I knew it was. And, Sal confirmed it in his final lines, noting the space was soon going to be used for Hillbrook School’s new high school campus in Downtown San Jose . It turns out that the Moir Building – what will become our main academic building – was a location for one of the most important Civil Rights leaders of the 20th Century. How fitting and inspiring that our school, with its deep commitment to social impact, social entrepreneurship and diversity, equity and inclusion, now has a campus building with a history tied to Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, and the UFW. I cannot wait for our students and our community to learn more about this period in the building’s history. It turns out place really does matter.