Orinda Schools

The first school in Orinda — named the Moraga School since it stood on Joe Moraga’s property between present-day Glorietta Blvd and Moraga Way — was built in 1861 and lasted until the early 1920s. Enrollment never topped 20 students, for which the teacher was paid around $20 a month.

Just over twenty years later, the Orinda Park School was constructed, on land donated by General Theodore Wagner, close to the present-day San Pablo Dam Road. Miss Nettie Parkhurst, the school’s first teacher, was paid $60 a month.

Within two years, the school had burned down but, once rebuilt, was used until the newly-formed Orinda Union School District (OUSD), opened the two-classroom Orinda Union School in 1925. This, in turn, morphed into the Orinda Community Center in 1973.

While the Orinda Union school was extensively rebuilt in 1939 to cope with the burgeoning population of younger students, there was still no high school, and teens had to get themselves to Richmond, Mt. Diablo, or Oakland until Acalanes High School opened in 1940.

By the end of the 1940s, school construction was taking off at a steady pace, and Glorietta, Sleepy Hollow, Del Rey, Inland Valley Elementary, Inland Valley Intermediate, Pine Grove Intermediate, and Miramonte High all appeared in the next dozen years.

Wagner Ranch School, Orinda’s sixth elementary school, opened in 1969, but this was followed by such a marked decline in student population that the OUSD now found itself closing schools down: Pine Grove Intermediate and Inland Valley Elementary both closed in 1975, and the Inland Valley campus became a single, merged school:  Orinda Intermediate.

By 1982, Wagner Ranch Elementary, too,  had fallen prey to the town’s shrinking enrollment, but as out-of-town house-hunters with young families began to learn of Orinda’s excellent school system, demand grew again, and in 1997, the beautifully renovated Wagner Ranch was granted a second lease on life.