In 1975, Leslie Zinza began her career at the California School for the Deaf as a substitute teacher. Three years later, Fall of 1978, Leslie began working as a full time middle school Deaf educator.
This is her signed oral history in a recent interview, these are her recollections and experiences of the California School for the Deaf while in transition from the Berkeley to Fremont campus.
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“The Spanish Mission style architecture of the California School for the Deaf was beautiful, and I will carry that memory in my heart forever. I remember when the California Department of Education and the California School for the Deaf began negotiating the possibility of moving our campus. There were discussions on going as far up North to Napa Valley or even Sacramento, overall just getting out of the San Francisco Bay Area.
Many Deaf people were furious about it, we thought this was too far. When we found out that the University of California, Berkeley wanted to build on our site, things began to get political. We felt like they were trying to play games – but it was a learning experience. Some families protested, but it was not easy, drugs were a rumored issue around campus – including the university. Many families wanted to keep their younger children safe, there was conflicting sides, when we went to Fremont we did not have any drug issues so it makes me scratch my head – was our school safer in Berkeley or Fremont?
Around the mid 1960s, there was an influx of children ill due to the spread of Rubella. The disease caused children to grow up with multiple disabilities, some of which began their education years later at the California School for the Deaf. In the late 70s the Berkeley site began to feel crowded with how many children were enrolled. Ultimately for the many children with multiple disabilities the move to Fremont was for the best, as the flat landscape of Fremont catered to their accessibility needs.
Ultimately a site was purchased in Fremont in the mid 1970s. At first they told staff the removal of the school was based on fire hazards, later it was earthquake faults, they could not agree on a specific reason – it was terrible. I know they were just trying to look out for the Deaf children, but there was an abundant amount of things happening at the time.
When we moved sites we took a lot of items from the Berkeley site including the auditorium theater door, the cafeteria lights, the Levi Strauss bird bath, and The Bear Hunt Sculpture. The sculpture must have been moved in the middle of the night to Fremont sometime around December 5, 1980. The University was livid we took the sculpture, but the Douglas Tilden was apart of our Deaf community, we loved him.
The school began to hire more staff as there was an explosion of middle school population due to Rubella, when we moved to Fremont, the school was purposely planned to be set up as individual schools within the site. There is separate areas for the middle school, high school, special education programs, and the farthest away was the elementary school. Even after the site was at Fremont, the middle school population was very full, we had to combine with the special education program and split classrooms and the multi-purpose room to have enough space for the middle school. After a few years and the generation grew up, we were able to use the space as it was intended for because the Rubella outbreak only lasted with that generation.
The Deaf school left Berkeley first, followed by the Deaf-Blind program, and ultimately the last to arrive to Fremont was the Blind school. In 1980, I continued my career as a Deaf educator and moved to rent an apartment in Fremont with my two children and a third on the way. At the time I was a lucky, compared to Berkeley, Fremont was a lot cheaper back then – dirt cheap. A lot of farmland, cabbage, and cauliflower, it was different than what I was accustom to. I remember the trees were tiny when they planted them around our school, everything looked empty. Others in the Deaf community felt indifferent, they were unhappy. I was unhappy, I felt like we were leaving behind a legacy, but ultimately we had to let go and move on.
Although Fremont was farmland, it began to rapidly grow as the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) expanded to Fremont in the 70s. Our Deaf community was tired of commuting so many began to move away from Berkeley and down to Fremont. I retired in 1999, and moved to Maryland, I did not want to stay in Fremont. As more people from my generation retire, they are selling their homes in Fremont and moving to different states, this has caused the Deaf community to dwindle in recent years due to the area being unaffordable. I went to visit recently, it has changed drastically from what I remembered. The enrollment for the schools have drastically decreased as families cannot afford to live anywhere near the schools. ”
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Leslie Zinza, and many other Deaf community members, highly recommend reading Ken Norton’s The Eagle Soars to Enlightenment to further expand any lingering thoughts or curiosity on the history of the California School for the Deaf, Berkeley.