Maple area parents generally accepted the initial bussing process in 1966. But, in 1972, the FSD Board of Trustees’ proposal to close Maple School by continuing to bus children encountered stiff resistance. The parents were supported by an ad hoc group, which included the Maple Neighborhood Council, Fullerton Fair Housing Council, and the North OC Human Relations Council. Their main grievance was that the burden of bussing had to be a district-wide effort and not one placed on a single segment of the community.

Close the School – Open a Community Center:

To comply with desegregation laws, the Board of Trustees proposed Plan E, which would have closed Maple School, transferred out the remaining students, and created a combination of preschool and community centers. The Maple ad hoc coalition proposed a different, two-way bussing plan.

In a Fullerton Observer Mid-September 2006 article about the 1972 Maple closure, Dr. Richard Ramirez, the spokesman for the Maple Neighborhood Council in 1972, stated, “The Maple Neighborhood Council proposed Plan Z, which would keep Maple open, and promoted a voluntary, two-way bussing plan with bilingual instruction at Maple and other receiving schools. He further stated, “The ad hoc group opposed Plan E (District’s Plan) on the rationale that one-way bussing was unfair and that integration should be a shared responsibility by the whole community.”

After a lively FSD Board of Trustees meeting, Karen Grinstead of the Fullerton News Tribune reported, “The Board of Trustees voted 3-2 to approve Plan E on February 8, 1972, in front of 400 people packed into the Wilshire Auditorium.”

A Maple Area parent, Isidro Lopez, later filed a lawsuit against the FSD, alleging the desegregation plan violated his civil rights. According to Jesse La Tour’s series, The Limits of Desegregation: A Story of Maple School, Fullerton Observer, Early-June 2021, “The lawsuit called for closing Maple School and one-way busing was “invidious discrimination” that “imposes the entire burden of desegregation on minority students.”

Eventually, Superior Court Judge William Speirs sided with the FSD in 1974 by upholding their decision, as reported by Thomas Fortune, Los Angeles Times, July 4, 1974. The FSD transitioned Maple School into the Maple Community Center in 1972. Maple School remained closed for 24 years.

The Maple Community Center Opens:

Community starts an Open School

The newly created Maple Community Center housed a variety of community services. One was the Community Open School (COS), which was an alternative school operated by the FSD and available to all students district-wide.

The Fullerton Observer’s article Limits of Desegregation: A Story of Maple School, Part 3, Mid-June 2021 by Jesse La Tour reported comments by Judith Kaluzny, a local attorney and one of the founding mothers to establish the COS in 1972 – 1984. She stated, “Arriving at Maple School with my VW busload of kids the first day of school, I was abashed.”

Kaluzny remembers, “Mothers were standing on curbs waiting for their children to be bused to other neighborhood schools, while I and others were busing our children to their neighborhood school (Maple).”

The Maple Community Center’s other programs included a preschool, daycare, the OC Tenants & Homeowners Association, Friends in Service to Humanity (FISH), Fullerton Interfaith Emergency Services, and the Summer Youth Enrichment Program (La Escuelita).

Maple Community Center in Trouble:

The FSD Board of Trustees’ promise to keep the Maple Community Center operational was short-lived. They proposed closing it two times in 1978 and 1983, citing budgetary issues. Yet, the FSD Board of Trustees found ways to keep it open, as reported by Fullerton News Tribune on March 23, 1983, “Statements from the Trustees indicated that none favored closure of the programs at Maple (Community Center.) “Part of the reason they said, is a legal obligation to keep the center open following the district’s decision in 1972 to close Maple as an elementary school.”

Changing Demographics Leads to Reopening Maple School:

Clipping from the July 4, 1974 issue of the Los Angeles Times

In the years after Maple School closed, rapidly changing ethnic demographics in other schools in the FSD were creating similar, segregated conditions. Jesse La Tour’s series Limits of Segregation: A Story of Maple School in the Fullerton Observer 2021 reported, “Throughout the 1980s and 1990s the percentage of ethnic minority students (mainly Latino and Asian) in the Fullerton School District rose steadily…. 1982 the minority student population rose 38%, up 4% from last year and more than three times what it was 15 years ago, states a 1984 article in the Fullerton Observer.”

These emerging demographic changes would prod the FSD Board of Trustees, in partnership with the City of Fullerton, Redevelopment Agency, and State funding sources – to reopen and refurbish Maple School.

Next is Part Four: Maple School Celebrates Reopening and Moving Forward, reviews the school’s reopening, the parents’ fight to expand Maple School to sixth grade, and the future vision for Maple School.