Cotati-Rohnert Park Unified School District

The building of schools always reflects growth. In 1900, there was only an 8-grade, one-room school house located on land donated by the Pages. When the first Rohnert Park children started attending school in Cotati, there were less than 250 students and only one school in Cotati School District. The Cotati-Rohnert Park School District today is a complete system. Many schools have been built. John Reed was the first school in Rohnert Park (dedicated in January, 1962), thereafter, Waldo Rohnert, Thomas Page (in Cotati), and La Fiesta Elementary Schools, Rohnert Park Jr. High School, and Rancho Cotate Sr. High School were built. Rohnert Park also has facilities for higher education---Sonoma State College. In 1957, the California legislature appropriated $500,000 for the purchase of a site for a "North Bay Counties Four Year College" in the Santa Rosa—Petaluma corridor to serve Marin, Sonoma, and Solano Counties. Many sites were considered. Rohnert Park had the most to offer, however: the ability to provide water and sewer services, and a central location. The 99-year agreement to extend these services provides that Rohnert Park may annex the College site into the City at any time, but no other City may annex the College. Ambrose Nichols presided as the College's first President when, five years later, the College was opened to students in the temporary quarters along College View Drive (behind the shopping center on Southwest Blvd.). In the fall of 1966, the permanent buildings located on 200 acres of the old Benson Ranch were finally opened for classes and the College was in full swing. The City has grown in both population and acreage. The population growth was strong and steady for a decade, from 2,775 at incorporation to 6,300 in 1970 when Rohnert Park surpassed Healdsburg as the third largest City in the County. Then the City rapidly grew; the population more than doubled to 15,100 by 1977. The pattern of the City's growth with respect to size is just the reverse: ambitious in the early years, but slow since 1968. The original District consisted of the 2,700 acre Rohnert land and the 580 acre Brians land. When the City incorporated, however, only a part of the District was included in the City limits, 1,325 acres. The City grew between 1962 and 1968 to 3,812 acres. Several of the annexations were routine. Some of the proposals to annex additional lands became heated battles with people to the north and south. The golf course and country club subdivisions were annexed, so was the high school site, land for Rancho Verde and Rancho Feliz mobilehome parks, and the "L" neighborhood. But lands to the north of Wilfred Road and acreage around the College were never annexed. The most ambitious proposal of the City Council was the tongue-in-cheek resolution to annex the entire city of Santa Rosa. (This unanimously passed resolution was not kindly received by the City to the north.) ==Schools==