Jim Groth sits in front of newspapers from November 1978 from The San Diego Union and the Los Angeles Times taken at Harborside Elementary School in Chula Vista. / Photo by Ariana Drehsler
Author: To read Jakob McWhinney's article, please click here.
Jim Groth moved to Chula Vista in early 1975. He’d come from Minneapolis, where he worked in community education, largely on summer school programming. John Pletcher, the principal of Harborside Elementary in Chula Vista, had recently come back from an education conference where he learned about the concept of community schools – schools that provide students wraparound services alongside local resources. Excited by the idea, he hired Groth to make it a reality.
Now, nearly fifty years later, community schools are in vogue again. Groth has reflected on his experience as he’s watched their renewing popularity.
During his ten years at the helm of Harborside’s community school initiative, Groth said he worked in tandem with locals to provide services to both students and the community surrounding Harborside. In 1978, for example, California passed Prop 13, a measure that limited the amount that property taxes could increase each year. It was a blow to school funding, which at the time came largely from property tax revenue. Across California, schools immediately began cancelling summer school.
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