Yorba Lindans come home for high school

This week’s opening of Yorba Linda High School marks a significant step in community history, with several factors explaining the 98-year gap between dedications for the city’s first elementary school and first high school.

Chance, unforeseen circumstances and a good dose of local politics played roles in the longtime division of Yorba Linda among three different school districts.

Early on, northeast Orange County was home to several small elementary school districts. Placentia and Yorba opened in 1878, Olinda in 1898, Randolph in 1902 (renamed Brea in 1903), Commonwealth in 1911, Yorba Linda in 1912 and Richfield in 1915.

Each district’s graduates attended Fullerton Union High School, until the Brea and Olinda districts merged, withdrew from Fullerton and opened Brea-Olinda High in 1925.

Similarly, the Commonwealth, Placentia, Richfield and Yorba districts combined, withdrew from Fullerton, formed the Placentia Union School District and opened Valencia High in 1933. (El Dorado opened in 1966 and Esperanza 1974.)

The Yorba Linda district, which eventually included Yorba Linda Junior High and Linda Vista, Mabel Paine and Rose Drive elementary schools, remained independent until 1989, sending grads to Fullerton High before the Troy campus opened in 1964.

But the same economic factors that led the other districts to merge also affected Yorba Linda, so trustees explored joining Brea-Olinda in 1925 and Placentia through the ‘30s.

Again in the ’50-‘60s, Yorba Linda trustees looked at joining Brea-Olinda or Placentia, as well as forming a K-12 district with Buena Park, Fullerton and Yorba Linda schools.

Also proposed was unifying the Yorba Linda district within its own boundaries, a move that made little financial sense but was probably a ploy to make joining Placentia easier because the Fullerton Union High School District opposed losing Yorba Linda students.

At one time, Fullerton trustees considered building a high school on 28 acres in central Yorba Linda they purchased in 1968, but the district sold the site to developers in 1984.

However, in the 1980s, a plan to merge the Yorba Linda district with Placentia and allow high school students to continue at Troy was accepted by Fullerton, which feared closing Troy due to a steep enrollment decline.

Meanwhile, the Troy faculty built a strong magnet program, which ensured the school’s survival, and the Fullerton and Placentia districts agreed to boundary changes putting all Yorba Linda students in the Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District in 1993.

At first, PYLUSD said attendance forecasts didn’t justify a fourth comprehensive high school, but a new regime saw conditions differently and YLHS planning began. Now, the challenge is to sustain enough enrollment to keep four campuses viable.