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A Brief History of Juniper Elementary School
Our school district was still in its infancy back in 1958. We had joined the Chaffey Union High School District in 1922; however, as our community grew (due in most part to the opening of the Kaiser Steel Mill in 1942) it became apparent that we were ready to break-off from Chaffey and govern our own school district. In 1956, we finalized the formal process by which the Fontana Unified School District and the portion of the Chaffey Union High School District which lay within the Fontana School District were unified. Back in 1958, our entire school district was comprised of our District Office (1958), Fontana High School (1952), Fontana Junior High (1928), Sequoia Junior High (1957), Juniper Elementary (1958), Jurupa Hills Elementary (1958), North Tamarind (1951), Oleander Elementary (1955), Palmetto Elementary (was still being built and would open the following year in 1959), Poplar Elementary (1957), Randall Pepper (1951), Redwood Elementary (1950), South Tamarind (1951), and West Randall Elementary (1947). The Fontana of 1958 was very different from the Fontana we know today. In 1958, the population of our city was 13,695, our district budget was approximately $4.5 million, our number of employees on the district payroll was 360, and our student enrollment was a mere 6,900. Compare that to the Fontana of 2009: The population of our city is 189,021, our district budget approximately $340,000, our number of employees is 4,739, and our student enrollment is a robust 43,107. Juniper was designed by the architect Herman O. Ruhnau, who also designed FUSD’s District Office (1958), Palmetto Elementary School (1959), and Live Oak Elementary School (1962). The original 10-acre campus consisted of a kindergarten building, administration building, multipurpose room with kitchen, and four 4-unit classroom buildings, covered corridors, graded and paved areas for playground and parking, and equipped classroom for special education. The total value of the school, including furniture, was $517,218.
Juniper Elementary School, circa 1958 Al Artuso was hired as the first principal of Juniper Elementary School. He and Beth Velman, the first principal of Palmetto Elementary School, worked together to prepare for the opening of the “twin schools.” Ms. Velman remembers, “We worked with the architect making minor changes, planning playgrounds, selecting colors, etc. We also shopped together for furniture and equipment.” When Juniper Elementary School opened its doors on September 15, 1958, it became the school to all kindergarten through sixth grade students who lived north of Foothill Boulevard in Fontana. This made Juniper a truly integrated school. Some parents feared the worst – would there be fights, would there be behavioral problems? But when the school opened, the students soon proved to their parents that “school was fun and everything went without a hitch.” As with any new school, even after the first day of school, there is still much to complete. For Juniper, that meant landscaping. Before the ground would be ready for planting, there were thousands of rocks that needed to be removed. The school had “The Rock Drive.” The playground and yard areas were roped off into sections, and each class was assigned a section to pick-up as many rocks as possible within the given time. Since little girls could only wear dresses or skits to school in those days, they had a distinct advantage over the boys as they filled their skirts with more rocks than the boys could carry. The rocks seemed to multiply overnight. But they just held another drive and had more fun with prizes like ice cream parties that spurred everyone to do their best. Former teacher Betty Johns Cable remembers, “When months later the ground was finally ready for planting, everyone respected the new lawns after not having them for so long.” In the 1980’s, the city of Fontana continued to grow. Although Kaiser Steel Mill, the city’s major employer closed in 1984, the affordable housing that began to pop-up in large developments around the city became a major draw for new families so that even people working outside of Fontana came here to live. Because the district’s student enrollment grew so quickly, before additional schools could be built to keep up with it, our district chose to have some of our schools go on Year Round Education (multi-track) schedule. Juniper Elementary was one of the original four schools to go year round. While Year Round Education was first met with a bit of apprehension initially, it soon became part of the fabric of Juniper Elementary School, as well as many other schools in the district. Now, twenty-five years later, this is the first year that Juniper has returned to a single-track schedule. Juniper Elementary School has had many wonderful principals over the year, including:
If you have more information about Juniper Elementary School that you would like to share, please email it to webmaster@fusd.net. 
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