Students are part of history at 150-year-old Dunbar

Dunbar School in Glen Ellen is so country, the students hold bird counts without leaving the schoolyard.

The school, which held its first classes in a chicken coop four years before the Civil War, is so old, students are videotaping oral histories with past administrators and graduates as part of its 150th anniversary.

"I have the kids doing the interviews. It's their thing; I even leave the room," teacher Mike Witkowski said. "It gives them a sense that they are part of history and it's not something you just study in books."

Dunbar, on an oak tree-lined, two-lane road leading into Glen Ellen, was founded in 1857 in a building donated by Alex Dunbar. In California, only Saratoga Elementary School in Santa Clara County is older.

"It means everything; our history makes our school," said Leticia Cruz, the 10th principal since 1922, which is as far back as written records go. "You can feel that this entire community is a family. It is more than a community."

The school, now part of the Sonoma Valley Unified School District, held its 150th anniversary event in October, but still is celebrating as students work to preserve its history.

"It's fun to know what it was like at Dunbar back then," said third-grader Andrew Toovey, who was taping an interview for the oral history project on Thursday. "Dunbar is a really cool school because it is really old and about the oldest in the state."

Andrew, 9, and fellow third-grader Shayla Finato, 8, were interviewing Rosemary Haver, who was a teacher and principal at Dunbar from 1982 to 1995.

They asked about former students; about Dunbar, formerly the school's resident dog; how Haver Stage got its name; and about the school mascot, which was changed from Dunbar Demons to Dunbar Dolphins.

"You know what a demon is?" Haver asked the interviewers. "There was much talk that maybe that wasn't what we wanted to be called. We had polls -- Sonoma County lent us their polls -- we voted to change the name to the Dunbar Dolphins."

Haver was the fourth person to be interviewed, following a student who attended from 1937 to 1944 and two who were at the school in the 1980s.

The oral history interviews are to be compiled on a DVD.

Haver said they were custodians of the school history, once holding an ice cream social to try to save the Trinity Building, a former schoolhouse that was on school property.

"It was important to us," she said. "Did we spend every day talking about it? No. The future is what is important."

Dunbar was the first of four schools that eventually were built as part of the Dunbar Union School District.

The present campus is on a site near the original school, and has 230 students.

There have been several school buildings over the years, but no one is sure how many because records were lost in a fire, school officials said.

There is one classroom building on the present campus that dates to the 1930s.

"It is still very country and it's still very small, so you know the names of all the kids," said Witkowski, who has been teaching at Dunbar for 30 years. "It's always been the proverbial village that raises the children."

The history is not lost on Joanna Greenslade, who has three children at the school and a fourth who starts next year.

"It is incredible it's been here 150 years," she said. "Some of the parents went to school here and their children go to school here now. It says a lot about the community and the school."

You can reach Staff Writer Bob Norberg at 521-5206 or bob.norberg@pressdemocrat.com.