Valencia Elementary School

Interview with Jim Baker

Mr. Baker was principal of Mintie White School in Watsonville. In the summer of 1968, he got an unexpected call from the School District. Aptos Elementary School was to be no more. The District wanted Mr. Baker to start a new school at the half built junior high school and call it " Valencia Elementary". The "Mission" for Jim and his "Mission Impossible" team was to create a new elementary school at the half built out Aptos Junior High School site.

Jim Baker (R) after interview

Mr. Jim Baker in April, 2003 with Molly Smith after interview

The Aptos District didn't have enough money to complete the junior high site and so it was moving the Aptos Elementary kids to the new but incomplte Aptos Junior High site and all the kids who were to attend Aptos Junior High would do so on the campus of what is now Valencia Elementary. Jim would be the first principal of Valencia School, on the Aptos Junior High campus and re-named "Valencia Elementary School" after the old logging town and school. Both the Valencia school name and the Valencia School building on Valencia School Road had been abandoned forty years earlier in 1928 when the Valencia District merged with Aptos to become Aptos Union School District. Ann Soldo would be the principal of the new Aptos Junior High on the Valencia campus.

Mr. Baker remained at Valencia for what he recalls as three wonderful years before being elevated to be in charge of all the elementary schools in the District, then Assistant District Superintendant and finally Superintendant of the Pajaro Valley Unified School District in 19____, a position he held for five years.

Valencia students voted to call themselves the Valencia "Oranges". Remember, this was about the time that UCSC students voted to call themselves the "Banana Slugs" and UC Irvine students decided to call themselves the "Anteaters". So being an "Orange" was not so unusual for the time. The school colors were green and (you guessed it) orange

The audio interview of Mr. Baker is a large file. It takes five to seven minutes to download on a high speed internet connection. When downloaded it is a thirty-eight and one half minute interview. It is available for downloading as either a wav (49,840 kb) or Real Audio (65,826 kb) or a Windows Media file. Depending upon your computer software, internet connection speed and other factors, the interview may begin to play before the entire file has been downloaded.