Donald M. Cleland A History of the Santa Monica Schools 1876-1951, Santa Monica Unified School District, February 1952 (Copied for the Santa Monica Library, July 22, 1963). 140 pp., 1935
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The rehabilitation of the schools proceeded on funds appropriated from the districts, and on money borrowed from the county unapportioned fund. [16. Board Minutes, April 23, 1934.] The work was organized as projects of the State Emergency Relief Administration, a dozen or more in number, including the demolition of the old Roosevelt, Washington, and Grant elementary schools and the old Garfield building, then occupied by the Santa Monica Junior College. But even before these projects were completed, it was rumored that Federal funds were to be made available for school reconstruction. Accordingly Morton Anderson, President of the Board of Education, was sent at once to Washington to represent Santa Monica and make a personal appeal for the needs of the district. He was the first of such representatives to arrive at the national capitol. Upon his return, Anderson reported that Congressman John Dockweiler, Senator Hiram Johnson, and Admiral Peoples, chief of the Public Works Division, had agreed to allocate $1,500,000 to the Santa Monica School District for the rebuilding of its schools. [17. Santa Monica Evening Outlook, Sept. 9, 1935, p. 1.]
With this heartening assurance from Washington, the Board of Education called another school bond election for November 12, 1935, with bonds totaling $290,000. This sum represented 20 per cent of the total cost of the proposed program as required by the Works Progress Administration. The campaign for the bonds that followed stirred Santa Monica as no previous campaign had done, with civic organizations, women's clubs, parent-teacher associations, and even high school students and children from elementary grades taking part. Nevertheless, the opposition was strong, and to the usual cries of waste and extravagance it now added lurid charges of graft and corruption. The Outlook commented editorially:
"That Santa Monica needs new school construction is undeniable; that anyone should attempt to controvert such a movement is unthinkable.
"A more sound and completely invulnerable plan could scarcely be devised whereby any municipal corporation of any bond district would receive an outright gift of four dollars for every dollar voted in a bond issue.
"If the city repudiates this measure at the polls, certainly it will be performing a nasal excision, for some other city will get the allotment, and Santa Monicans will have to pay their share of the bill in exactly the same amount as though the $1,500,000 was being spent upon the improvement of Santa Monica, and the safeguarding of Santa Monica school children.
"The work must be done. Only one issue exists, whether the citizens of this city want the work to be done with a Federal grant, and reduce the municipal taxes, or whether they want the work to be done with money from the already heavily budgeted municipal treasury and the added load of stiffly increased taxes." [18. Santa Monica Evening Outlook, Nov. 9, 1935, p. 6.]
There is no question that the fact of the Federal Government's willingness to make an outright gift to the district of $1,500,000 armed the bond campaigners with a powerful argument. [19. Pearl, op. cit., pp. 62-3.] But even more powerful was the argument that if the bonds carried, the immediate employment of some 1400 Santa Monica residents would follow, and via their wages a large part of the $1,500,000 would begin to circulate through local channels of trade, blessing empty tills as it traveled. The school bonds carried, and with a record-breaking nine-to-one majority. [20. Board Minutes, Nov. 18, 1935.]
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The present Washington School Building was constructed in 1935 as a cooperative project of the Works Progress Administration and of the Santa Monica Board of Education. The building is mainly one-story construction of the Monterey type of architecture. There are two buildings, one housing the kindergarten and primary grades, and the other accommodating the upper grades.
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" . . . Again, the earthquake of 1933 had seriously damaged the older buildings on [the Sixth and Ocean Park Blvd. John Adams Junior High] campus. Thus, the board decided that available funds would be spent to better advantage by beginning construction of a new building rather than attempting to rebuild the old ones. [23. Board Minutes, May 22, 1935.] The old buildings were condemned and torn down and the site abandoned for school purposes."