District Uproots Tradition With Non-Vegetable School Names

For as long as most anyone can remember, Palmdale school officials have looked to only one source for inspiration when picking names for new schools--the array of plants and shrubs typical of desert environments.

So, instead of the more common Jeffersons and Washingtons and numbered street names heaped on campuses elsewhere, every school christened in the Palmdale School District during the last 34 years was named after local flora--until this week, that is.

Breaking with tradition, the Palmdale school board this week picked names for three intermediate schools scheduled to open in the fast-growing area during the next couple of years. Two of the three names had nothing to do with flora.

“We have in the past named them for plants. But we sort of ran out of plant names,” said Trustee Fay Harrington after the board’s 4-0 vote. “I kind of felt it was time we made a change.”

As a result, an $11-million campus for sixth- through eighth-graders, slated to open in about a year, will be called Saddleback Intermediate School. The two other schools, set to open in the early 1990s, will be known as Ana Verde and Desert Willow--the latter the board’s only concession to tradition.

The district’s present roster of 13 campuses not surprisingly reads like the inventory for a desert-area plant store: Cactus, Chaparral, Desert Rose, Joshua Hills (after the indigenous Joshua tree), Juniper, Manzanita, Palm Tree, Ocotillo, Sage, Sage Annex, Tamarisk, Tumbleweed and Yucca.

School Supt. Forrest McElroy said the practice began with the naming of the district’s oldest school, Sage Elementary, which opened in 1955. Though the school was named after the hometown of a then-school board member, not the desert plant, it set the trend for naming schools after flora, McElroy said.

This time, school board members sorted through about 300 names submitted by students, parents and others in response to a district invitation, officials said. In a few weeks, the board may pick more names for at least four elementary schools that are on the drawing board.

For the record, the community itself was named in 1890 for the ever-present desert Joshua tree, also known as a yucca palm. And, Ana Verde is a local mountain area, while Saddleback is the name of a local state park.