History of the San Juan Unified School, James Cowan, 2000

In about 1998 the late James Cohen noticed the lack of a comprehensive history of the San Juan Unified School District, including the elementary, secondary and high schools. He set about to document the history, including extensive listings of principals, teachers, enrollments and significant dates and published in 2000.

Several years ago, the Fair Oaks Historical Society became aware of the book and tried to find a copy. Supposedly, the District Office had a copy, but when we asked for it they couldn't find it. It was signed out to a teacher who was no longer with the District and left no forwarding address. Such is the fate of many of our classic historical writings. The copies slowly disappear as time goes by. Would you believe that The Fair Oaks and San Juan Area Memories book originally had 500 copies printed. We would guess that we could account for maybe 20 - 30 copies today.

By some stroke of luck, we found an original copy of the San Juan School District book in our History Center holdings. In keeping with our mission to preserve the history of Fair Oaks, we scanned the 128 pages of the book into our computer for safekeeping. When we recently closed the History Center due to the Corona virus restrictions, the public had no access to this book or many other resources normally available to the public. We decided to create a "Virtual History Center" making as much of our resources as possible available on line on our website.

So, we give you Cohen's History of the San Juan Unified School District in PDF format. The Table of Contents in the first section and the Index at the end should allow you to find your way around the book. The PDF files are large and may take a minute or more to download. Be patient.