Palm Springs Unified School District

Palm Springs
Unified School District
Type and location
Type Public
Grades K–12
Established 1958
Region Palm Springs, California
Location 980 East Tahquitz Canyon Way, Palm Springs, CA 92262
District information
Superintendent Christine J. Anderson, Ed.D.
Students and staff
Students 23,943
Other information
Website www.psusd.us
William E. Diedrich, Ph.D., Administration Building

The Palm Springs Unified School District, or PSUSD, is one of three public education governing bodies in the Coachella Valley desert region of Southern California. PSUSD governs the western half of the valley; the Coachella Valley Unified School District and Desert Sands Unified School District oversee communities in the eastern half. Administrative offices are located in Palm Springs. The PSUSD was established in 1958 from the Palm Springs Public Schools, later included Palm Springs High School in the 1960s.

Summary

PSUSD employs more than 2000 administrators, certificated staff and classified staff. More than 22,000 students are enrolled in sixteen elementary schools, four middle schools, four high schools and a continuation high school. Preschools, Head Start programs and adult education are covered as well.

The district covers the following communities:

Unincorporated areas within the region are covered as well.

Schools

Elementary

Cathedral City

Desert Hot Springs

Wenzlaff Elementary is scheduled to be the home of the alternative school in DHS - 2014.

Palm Springs

Rancho Mirage

Palm Desert

Thousand Palms

Middle

Cathedral City

Desert Hot Springs

Palm Springs

High

Cathedral City

Had the second highest test scores of all Coachella Valley high schools in the 2000s and 2010–11.

Desert Hot Springs

Palm Springs

Originally K–12 grade school in the 1920s and had the College of the Desert campus from 1958 to 1964.

Rancho Mirage

Alternative Education

Cathedral City

Desert Hot Springs

Palm Springs

Historic schools

The PSUSD used to have 5 other public schools in Palm Springs and one other in Cathedral City.

Until the 1950s, the PSUSD had separate school campuses for African-American, Latino, Asian-American and American Indian students when school segregation was then legal, then came the mandated policy of racial integration affected local schools.

Local celebrities and billionaires like Walter Annenberg and Frank Sinatra boosted public schools in the city and desert, whom also personally fought against racial and ethnic segregation of public schools. At the time, even American Jewish and American Catholic students would choose church-run and religious day schools over public ones, until the end of WWII when their parents were comfortable sending them to secular public schools. By the start of the 1960s, the PSUSD was integrated of all races and creeds.

The private Palm Valley School in the 1920s on the city limits of Cathedral City, closed in the 1970s.

The Smoke Tree school which faced the Walt Disney ranch and the Bob Hope and Elvis Presley residences.

The Frances Stevens school now the Palm Springs Theatre.

The Harry Oliver school became the Palm Springs Community School run by Riverside County Department of Education.

The Ramon School now the St. Theresa's Catholic school.

The El Camino Continuation High School, on Demuth Park (the park and school's original site was on west Ramon and south Palm Canyon Dr.) in the late 1970s, on the PSHS site in the early 1980s, then became the Esperanza High School for teenage mothers in 1986, then closed in the early 1990s.

And the Mount San Jacinto School on Section 14, the land parcel on the Agua Caliente Indian reservation.

References

  1. ↑ http://www.psusd.us/node/1813
  2. ↑ http://www.psusd.us/Index.aspx?page=857

External links

33°49′24″N 116°32′14″W / 33.82333°N 116.53722°WCoordinates: 33°49′24″N 116°32′14″W / 33.82333°N 116.53722°W