NEWBURY PARK : Students May Help Re-Create 1st School

Wood shop students at Conejo Valley Unified School District’s four high schools may be asked to build a full-size replica of Conejo Valley’s first school--a one-room schoolhouse used by their counterparts more than 100 years ago.

Timber School, complete with a replica 13-inch-high bell, would be reconstructed next to the Stagecoach Inn Museum in Newbury Park, near where the original schoolhouse was built in 1888.

Conejo Valley school district officials have been asked by local real estate agent Doc Needham to allow high school shop students to help build the school. Board members will decide the matter at their Nov. 8 meeting.

“This will give the students a real sense of history,” said Needham, a member of the Thousand Oaks Rotary Club. “It’s an opportunity for today’s students to be involved in the re-creation of the school, and the younger students will be the beneficiaries.”

Construction of the walls is expected to take three semesters and could begin next spring if the school board approves the project, Needham said. Once completed, the walls would be brought to the museum site and erected in an old-fashioned barn-raising ceremony. Completion of the school is expected between fall of 1992 and fall of 1993, Needham said.

Architectural drawings were done free of charge by Camarillo architects Neal Scribner and Jeff Thomas. The plans have been approved by the Conejo Recreation and Park District and must be sanctioned by the city of Thousand Oaks before the walls can be erected.

Members of the Thousand Oaks Rotary Club have agreed to donate $9,000, and members of the Newbury Park Rotary Club will pitch in $3,000, Needham said. Communitywide fund raising for the project, expected to cost $30,000, will begin in the spring.