“Unified” means the elementary and high school districts are merged. Not that they were once separate areas that got merged. There are still some places with separate elementary and high school districts. Cupertino, for example.
ETA: Ninja’d!
Fair enough. I was probably misled by Folsom-Cordova specifically (where I went), since it really sounds like the “Folsom and (Rancho) Cordova” districts were the ones that got unified. Still, the net result is likely often the same, since the boundaries of the elementary and high schools didn’t necessarily coincide.
That is quite interesting. And frankly a bit unexpected. Not that I’m disputing you or @Lord_Feldon just above you.
I am the proud product of a So Cal Unified school district. Graduated elementary in 1969, middle in 1972, and HS in 1976. Which district was the result of the unification of two adjacent city-level school districts while I was a lower-end elementary student. I recall the name of the pre-merger city-level district. The name of the new unified district was/is even a combo of parts of the two cities’ names. With no mention of HS versus the lower grades.
There is no doubt that the elementary schools pre-merger were named & organized coterminous with their respective city boundaries. And were merged to form the renamed “unified” district.
I do not recall, and probably never knew, how, when, or whether the high schools came to be connected to the elementary districts. And where the middle / junior high schools fit in pre-merger.
But the end result after (AFAIK) exactly one merger transaction was the for-certain fact of one district covering two adjacent suburban municipalities exactly, and covering all grades from K through 6/7 = elementary schools, plus 6/7 though 8 = middle schools, plus 9 through 12 = high schools. And all in one single combined district.
At least in the South, school district often have their own indepedent existance becauae of race, and an attempt at legal segregation. I started school in an Arkansas town of 15k people with two school districts (it has since been integrated). Here in Dallas, a whole region/set of neighborhoods in the city proper needed a new school and went out of their way to be annexed by a suburb (just the school disrrict part, not the city) to keep themselves majority white.
Often these things happened 50 years ago and demographic shifts have obliterated the original motivations.
OK, I’ve kept my peace, but I guess this has gone on long enough now that I can add. "Of course teachers in the US cannot unionise. But unionizing is fine.