She first became associated with Valencia
School when, after ten years as principal at MacQuiddy and
the Tri-County School for the Deaf (on the same MacQuiddy
campus in Watsonville) the District decided that all principals
would be transferred every five years – “so that's the way
it was-it was a good idea, it really was” Mrs. Soldo was
transferred to Aptos Junior High in 1972. At the time the
Jr. High campus was at the present Valencia campus on Aptos
School Road .
She had been an elementary school principal
in the community for many years and then an elementary school
principal; however She did teach the eighth grade for five
years before she became a principal, and she enjoyed that
age group very much. So when the District came to
transfer her, the superintendent said he would transfer her
to the Hall District again. But Ann said “I don't want to
go to the Hall District.” Both
Ann and the superintendent were determined to prevail. Ann
knew there was an opening for a principal at Aptos Junior
High and she thought she would like to go to a junior high
because she had been in elementary education for a long time
and she thought it would be interesting to go to a junior
high as principal. She finally convinced the superintendent
to make her principal of Aptos Junior High. Mrs Soldo is
believed to be the first woman principal
of a junior high school in the Pajaro Valley Unified School
District . Before her, Ted Leach had been the principal at
Aptos School quite a few years, and George Beattie before
him, but everyone was transferred out of their school that
year (1972).
So when she went onto the campus in1972, she knew she would
be there until 1977, a five-year period. She believes the
junior high moved to the junior high campus in 1977.
While she was there, Aptos Jr. High had no school song,
but the school colors were blue and white. The physical campus
was the same in 1972 when she was there as it is in 2003,
except there were no portable buildings in 1972.
While she was principal they had the graduation ceremony
right on the school grounds using the baseball diamond backstop
as the back of the stage. Later they moved the graduation
ceremonies to the Aptos Junior High campus near the polo
fields. When the graduations were on the present Valencia
campus, they would seat the parents in the quad and have
an area for small children behind the right off the cafeteria.
During the graduation ceremony you would see deer come down
and graze on the grass of the lawn during the ceremony. “It
was wonderful! Can you imagine it?.“ says Mrs. Soldo. They
had a lot of quail in the woods and the creeks and owls.
The reason she liked it there was because it was like a big
country school, and you did not have any traffic around you.
You were completely isolated. You were in that "school
world"
and you were not bothered and you did not have cars buzzing
by. “It
was just a wonderful spot.”
The students at that time were acting up a lot (the early
1970s), and she can remember an instance where they had lockers
then and they needed more lockers than they could fit under
the eaves against the walls of the schoolrooms. So they had
freestanding lockers, they were near the girls' bathroom,
but some students were not good citizens and turned over the
frees standing lockers. Mrs. Soldo would have the custodian
set them up but the students would push them over again.
Finally they caught the culprits and they were suspended.
Mrs. Soldo would never allow a student to go home alone
with a suspension notice. She knew it was human nature for
the story to change when the student got home and was confronted
by parents. So after being suspended, Mrs Soldo required
that the student remain benched in Principal Soldo's office.
The students were not allowed to go outside and mingle
with other students. They had to wait for their parents to
come and get them and meet with Mrs. Soldo.
One time a student was suspended and the parent worked at
IBM in San Jose . The father called and said he could not
come to the school to pick up his son from suspension until
after 6:00 p.m. Mrs. Soldo said "That's okay-I'll be
here”.
He said "I will be late". Mrs. Soldo said "That's ok, I'll
be here and so will your son when you arrive". The father
finally came at 7:00 p.m. to sign the papers to agree to
the suspension. So the students learned that to be suspended
did not mean grabbing a suspension slip and going home early.
She required that the students stay and the parents come
to get them. She was strong on this issue, and was strong
on discipline generally while at the school.
When two students fought, she would bring them into
her office. She had a box with five- by seven-inch cards.
When a student came in for discipline she would date a card,
put the students name on it and write out one card for each
student. She required that each student would speak in turn
and that the second student could not talk until the first
student had completed his or her story. Then she would listen
to the complete story of the second student. She did not
allow interruptions. She then made a decision about who was
right and who was wrong, and would record that decision on
the card. And if the student came back, Mrs. Soldo would
pull out all the cards on that student and say “You
are not a good student.” “You have been here before.” This
might occur one time or two times or even four times. The
discipline might be affected by prior experiences with the
student. Mrs. Soldo believed you had to be very careful with
discipline at the junior high level.
| She thought that that discipline was her
job-the teachers did a great job at the school teaching,
and her job was discipline. |
|
Once a quarter they would also have a dance in the evening.
This practice of having evening dances for the kids started
when she was there. After her first quarter at the school
she met with faculty. They said that they would have a dance
after school from 2:30 to 4:00 p.m. in the afternoon. Mrs.
Soldo said no, we need to have a dance "at night",
7:00 to 9:00 p.m. The faculty was not happy about this because
a few people would have to chaperone. The faculty thought
the kids would be wild and were concerned what might happen
after the dance. But Mrs. Soldo said no, we will have a sheriff
there.
So when the parents drove up to the turnaround behind the
multi-purpose room to drop off the students for the dance,
they saw the deputy sheriff in full uniform, wearing a hat
and a gun, and they said “Isn't this wonderful-someone is
in charge of the kids.” And they also had four parents present
acting as chaperones, and they were at every door of the
multi-purpose room and if the kids left, they could not get
back in.
The kids loved it. They had a disc jockey there. Many students
thought it was the best event of the quarter and they behaved
well. And at the end of the year they held a big eighth grade
graduation party with the parents decorating the multi-purpose
room.
The school had a wonderful drama department then and still
does. The drama teacher was outstanding. She is still
doing this because Mrs. Soldo still reads about it in the
newspaper. At the time, the drama teacher put on a big production
every year and they would run for three performances over
three nights, and a big crowd would attend. They did The
Music Man one year. They did not have a stage then, so they
had the custodian run a wire across the room for the curtains.
The kids were wonderful actors.
She enjoyed the German classes at the school then. Mr. Hammer
taught German. He has since retired, but the kids liked languages.
And they also had a big typing class in those days. They
had a lot of things going on campus. It was great.
Two creeks border the school, Valencia and
Aptos Creeks. Boys would leave campus and go down the ravine
across from the administration office following a path down
the creek to Piggy Market near Soquel Drive and Rio Del
Mar Boulevard. When they returned, Mrs. Soldo could tell
they had gone to the Piggy Market store because when they
got back, the bottom of their pant legs were wet from walking
in the creek. At first she did not know how to handle
it. Finally, she bought a scrapbook and called it “Why I
Went to Piggy Market”, and
if she caught kids going to Piggy Market, she made them write
in the scrapbook why they went to the market. She does not
know what happened to the scrapbook, but she would love to
have it now that the kids have grown up.
So the kids kept going down to Piggy Market every day anyway.
So one day, Mrs. Soldo decided to go to Piggy Market herself.
She drove to the Market introduced herself and
talked to the owners of the market. She asked what the kids
did when they came to the Market. The owner said they
buy candy. Mrs. Soldo said she did not want them to leave
campus because they could be suspended for leaving campus.
So Mrs. Soldo and the owner made an arrangement. Every time
a student would walk in to the MArket during school hours,
the owner would call the school. And he did do that. He would
call and say, “The
kids are here.” So Mrs.
Soldo would get in her car and drive to the Market and park
in front and walk in casually, like she was interested in
buying something. Then she would see two or three kids and
would ask them what they were doing at Piggy Market. They
were surprised and stammered, but did not have an answer.
She told them to get in her car and she would drive them
back to campus and have them write their story in the scrapbook.
Soon after that, the Piggy Market trips stopped.
Then in about 1974 the campus became overcrowded. There
were about 600 students at the school, and they were trying
to figure out how to handle that number of students. With
the number of classrooms then, it would have been about 50
students to the classroom, 12 classrooms and 600 students.
The assistant superintendent and Mrs. Soldo developed what
they called the extended day plan. They had students come
at 7:00 a.m. and stay until 11:30 a.m. and occupy all of
the classrooms and stay for lunch. Then a second group came
at 11:30 a.m. and stayed until 4:30 p.m. , and they would
have lunch at the school also. The second group was taught
from 1:00 to 4:30 p.m. It overlapped, but it was like a double
session. It was a very long day for the faculty and everyone
involved. They did that for just one year before they decided
to send two or three classes of students up to Valencia School
(at the present site of the junior high). It was new and
interesting, but Mrs. Soldo would not want to do it again.
They had fun day once a year called Renaissance Day where
they came in costume and just had fun all day long. Even
the principal and teachers came in costume and they had games
and relays and it was a wonderful day.
Traffic and parking were an issue even then. The parking
was tough because the teachers all parked near the original
building and the buses drove all the way down to behind the
multipurpose room to load and turn around. At the time, the
school had a special education teacher who drove a small
foreign car. One day the boys picked up her car and turned
it around heading the opposite way in her parking space.
At the end of the school day when the teacher found her car,
she came into Mrs. Soldo's office and was furious, but Mrs.
Soldo thought it was funny and was laughing to herself thinking
about the boys picking up the car and turning it around.
The teacher never forgave the boys.
Mrs. Soldo's favorite thing about the school was working
with seventh and eight graders. There were so many bright
boys and girls there and they were very creative. She had
one boy with a very, very high IQ but he was getting bad
grades so she invited him into her office and asked him, “You're
a bright boy, why do you get Ds?” he told Mrs. Soldo that
he was not interested in school. Mrs. Soldo would like to
follow up with him now and see how he is doing today. He
told her that Cs and Ds were okay for him and he was not
interested in working harder or doing better in school.
The seventh and eighth grade kids were fun to be with, with
all their exuberance. She enjoyed both the students and the
teachers at the school.
Mrs. Soldo retired from the Pajaro Valley Unified School
District (PVUSD) in 1978, thirty-six years after beginning
her teaching career at Hall District School.
In 1979, Mrs. Soldo was elected to the Watsonville City
Council. She was appointed Vice-Mayor, and served in that
capacity until 1981. She remained on the Council until 1983,
when she was elected to head the Council as Watsonville's
first woman Mayor. Mrs. Soldo was the Mayor of Watsonville
from 1983-1987.
She served as past President of the Salvation
Army Advisory Board, Senior's Council of Santa Cruz County,
Association of Watsonville Area Senior Center, Watsonville
Soroptimist Club, California Elementary School Administrators
Central Coast Section, Y.L.I. Institute 138 - Catholic Women,
Watsonville Women's Club, Pajaro Valley Performing Arts (Mello
Center), and the Multiple Sclerosis Society of Monterey Bay.
She is a past Board Member of the Watsonville Chapter of
the American Red Cross, Watsonville Community Hospital, Pajaro
Valley Children's Center - YWCA, The Cabrillo College Foundation
and the Visiting Nurse Association of Santa Cruz County.
She was a co-chairperson of funding drives for the rebuilding
of St. Patrick's Church in Watsonville after the devastating
Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989 and for Dubrovnik, Croatia.
She co-chaired the fund raising campaign to furnish the furniture
and equipment for the new Watsonville campus of Cabrillo
College in 2000. She campaign exceeded its goal before the
commencement date allowing the College to open the campus
with all new furniture and computers. She is active in the
City of Watsonville- Kawakami, Japan Sister City program
which allows students to visit Watsonville's sister city,
Kawakami, Japan.
Her awards and recognitions form a list nearly as lengthy
as the list of community organizations she has supported.
They range from Pajaro Valley Chamber of Commerce's 1967 "Woman
of the Year" to being named one of the Santa Cruz Sentinel's
25 Most Influential People of the Century in the Santa Cruz
County area.
Ann Soldo Elementary
School in Watsonville is named after
her. |
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