The Battle for Lowell

Many big-city high schools specialize in some vocation or art and draw commuter students from all over--but few offer the specialty that engages San Francisco's Lowell High School. It is an all-academic school that welcomes any youngster from any district on the basis of scholarly ability alone, and as a result is the No. 1 college-geared public school in the West.

Last week San Francisco hotly debated Lowell's fate. At issue: School Superintendent Harold Spears's plan to shift Lowell from its condemned building in downtown San Francisco to new quarters in a middle-income district--and slash its "outside" students to 40% of enrollment. "If you pile up all your top students in one place," said Superintendent Spears, "you're hurting the city as a whole. We believe in equality of education."

Two Nobels. Poor boys with rich minds have long flocked to Lowell's "old brick pile" at Hayes and Masonic streets. The lure is Lowell's topflight faculty and such courses as calculus, advanced biology, five foreign languages, outstanding English composition. While 21% of San Francisco high school students as a whole go on to four-year colleges, the average for Lowell is 49%. Lowell graduates consistently win honors at Caltech, Stanford, M.I.T. and Harvard.

Lowell (named after James Russell) is the only U.S. high school to claim two Nobel prizewinners: Physicist Albert Michelson ('68), the first U.S. winner, and Physicist Joseph Erlanger ('90). Lowell's other alumni include such diverse notables as Actress Carol Channing, Paper Tycoon J. D. Zellerbach, Author Irving Stone, Cartoonist Rube Goldberg, Baseball Player Jerry Coleman, the late Publisher (Washington Post) Eugene Meyer, Presidential Press Secretary Pierre Salinger, California Governor Pat Brown ('23).

One Opinion. When Lowell's ancient building was condemned in 1953, the board of education agreed to run its new quarters on the old undistricted basis. But then came a new board and New Superintendent Spears. To share Lowell's talent with the city's six other high schools, Spears set out to make Lowell a comprehensive school, vocational as well as academic, with 60% of its students from the local district. Spears thought of his 60-40 plan as "a happy situation" that would satisfy everyone.

When the public got wind of the plan last month, Spears was astounded at the reaction. A "Save Lowell" committee roared into action, rounded up thousands of signatures in protest. Chinese and Negro leaders argued that a 60-40 school would soon shut out their children. Summed up one prominent businessman: "What they're really doing is hurting the poor child who wants to go to college and has to rely on public education. Instead of being democratic, they're really being as undemocratic as they can."

At the board of education meeting called last week to decide the school's fate, 1,000 citizens heard three hours of speeches against a truncated Lowell. "No matter how thin you slice it," cried one Spears critic, "this will not be an academic high school." After nearly 40 speeches from the floor, the board of education voted 6 to 1 in favor of an undistricted new Lowell. A great cheer shook the hall.

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