Ray M. Schmitt

History of Ray M. Schmitt School

Ray. M. Schmitt relocated to California in his youth, taking up dairy farming as a career in Garden Grove and surfing as a leisure activity. He eventually would move his dairy farm off Beach Boulevard near 13th street and Trask, in then rural Westminster. Over time, he and his wife became active in the Westminster community. While his daughter Leah attended 17th Street School in the 1940s, he was elected as a board member in 1944 just before the Mendez v. Westminster case desegrated the District, which at the time consisted of two schools. These would be followed by neighborhood schools such as Midway City, Meairs, and Boos.

By the mid-1950s, Westminster began to experience a housing and population boom as the old farmlands and vacant plots of land were paved away for suburban neighborhoods. On Trask Avenue, between Edwards and Hoover Street, two new schools were designed and constructed by two different architectural firms. One would become the Finley school; the other would be named Ray M. Schmitt school. 

Schmitt school was designed by the Morgan and Adams firm that would later design Anderson and Sequoia schools. It was a combination of stucco and the red brick schoolhouse style that the Board and citizen’s committee wanted from 1956 onward. It would be opened February 25, 1957, and was dedicated the next month on March 22nd — five days before Westminster’s incorporation as a city. This special school assembly, which would become common in the Westminster School District for the next thirteen years, was attended by special guests such as the Orange County School superintendent as well as district administrators.

The school’s first principal, Mr. Eugene Lyall, was a trusted associate of Superintendent John F. Land from San Diego. Under Mr. Lyall’s leadership, the school fostered a strong emphasis on student activities and community events. One notable example includes Mr. John Sessums, who would later serve as principal of Warner and Johnson schools, and whose sixth-grade students launched weather balloons that traveled as far as Long Beach. Since its establishment, Ray M. Schmitt School has continuously served the local community surrounding it.