Photograph by Chad Pilster
Green Thumbs Up!: Volunteer Janet Burdick trims the rose bushes to prepare for Hoover School's reopening.
Old Hoover halls to open in September
Neighbors, friends make the reopening campus smell like a rose, once again
By Jessica Lyons
A little dirt never hurt anyone, and in some cases it can do a lot of good. Like the 60 yards of compost that volunteers spread under the bushes at Old Hoover, for example.
In September, the historic middle school will open its doors to students for the first time in 28 years. And on Aug. 14, the Neighborhood Alliance to Save Old Hoover School and the Friends of Kris Cunningham for City Council, District 6 teamed up to make sure the school puts on its best face for incoming sixth, seventh and eighth graders.
"It's a beautiful historic building and we almost lost it," says Kris Cunningham, who gave new meaning to the term "dirty politics," digging, weeding and planting flowers in the soil on Saturday. "I know how important the building is to that area and the city as a whole. It's a celebration that it was saved by the community members. And I do feel that I had a little hand in it," she says. So do the Rose Garden citizens, who fought to keep the school, located at 1635 Park Ave.
"It was an enormous fight that we waged against a formidable opponent," says Karen Vierra, president of the Neighborhood Alliance to Save Old Hoover School, who spearheaded the neighborhood efforts to save the school. "While my cause was still being touted as ridiculous, Kris [Cunningham] listened to me and helped legitimize the situation."
Opening for the 1931 school year, Herbert Hoover Junior High was designed by William H. Weeks, who also designed the DeAnza and the Sainte Claire hotels. The Spanish-style structure closed down as a school in the 1970s when the Field Act earthquake standards went into effect. The City Council granted Old Hoover landmark status in January 1995--five months before Rose Garden neighbors sued San Jose Unified School District to block its sale.
"I really thought it should have kids in it," Vierra says. "It's such a wonderful space, when our kids go to school in such dilapidated portables. I just felt it deserved to have kids in its halls."
Vierra says they might have lost the battle if not for Cunningham and the district's Excess Properties Committee, the group that decides what to do with the San Jose Unified's vacated buildings.
At the time, the committee was studying three unused properties, and Old Hoover wasn't one of them. Vierra said it should be, because state law requires community involvement in school sales. "I attended all meetings, and not being one to keep my mouth shut, I would bring up issues and suggestions," Vierra says. "At one point, Kris [Cunningham] spoke up and said, 'I've heard the district's side of the story, now I'd like to hear yours.' "
A Superior Court judge stopped the sale in November 1996, citing the same law requiring public input before a school can be converted to another use. The district spent more than $4 million to bring the center two-story section of Old Hoover up to code, refurbishing classrooms, a small theater and administrative offices. About 10,000 square feet at the south end of Old Hoover, including the large theater, will be leased to an "anchor tenant" as performing arts space, pending approval by the Board of Education. Neighbors are pushing for the San Jose Children's Musical Theater, but the district has yet to chose a performing-arts tenant. The board is scheduled to approve the new tenant on Sept. 2.
In the meantime, the Old Hoover supporters wait anxiously for the first day of school, and the sight of kids running through Old Hoover's halls, which have been vacant except for some traffic schoolers, district administrators and an occasional scampering squirrel.
"I have to go over there on September first and see the kids going to school," Vierra says. "I won't believe it till I see it."
Willow Glen, California Since 1992
