Frank S. Greene Jr. Middle School

Frank S. Greene Jr. Middle School is the public middle school for much of north Palo Alto. It stands at North California Avenue and Middlefield Road, a short ride from Crescent Park, Duveneck/St. Francis and Midtown. Until 2018 it was Jordan Middle School. Plenty of residents still call it that. The California Department of Education counted 762 students in grades 6 to 8 in the 2025 to 2026 school year.

This page adds detail to our overview of the three PAUSD middle schools. It covers the renaming as the board and local press documented it, the man the school honors, the programs on Greene's own site, the shared bell schedule and the school's long list of traffic rules. We do not rank schools. For official performance data, the state's California School Dashboard reports it in a standard format.

Location

The address is 750 N. California Avenue, Palo Alto 94303. The campus faces North California Circle, a semicircular driveway, with a second lot off Middlefield Road and tennis courts behind the multipurpose room. OpenStreetMap places it in the Leland Manor area. The Oregon Expressway is a few blocks south and the Community Center neighborhood, with Rinconada Park, is a few minutes north by bike.

The school sits on Middlefield, one of the city's busiest north to south streets. That location shapes almost everything about the morning commute, as the sections below explain.

History of the campus

The school opened in 1937 as David Starr Jordan Junior High, named for Stanford's first president. Wikipedia's district history says it closed in 1985 when enrollment fell, leaving JLS as the only middle school, then reopened in 1991 after a remodel. A 1995 bond measure paid for further upgrades.

The dolphin was the mascot from 1937 to 1985. When the school reopened in 1991, students voted for the jaguar. In 1999 they brought the dolphin back as co-mascot, which is why Greene still has two.

The renaming, step by step

The change came from a parent. According to Palo Alto Online, Lars Johnsson started a petition after reading a seventh grade book report by his son about Jordan's advocacy of eugenics. That petition led to two district committees.

1. March 2017: the decision to rename. The Board of Education voted unanimously to remove the names of Jordan and Lewis Terman from two middle schools because both were leaders in the eugenics movement. Our David Starr Jordan profile covers his views and Stanford's own later removal of his name from a campus building. The board agreed to use school bond funds for the cost, which Palo Alto Online put at about $60,000.
2. Committee work. A renaming committee recommended six individuals' names. The process drew criticism because the committee had no Asian American or Hispanic members, a concern raised by two trustees and by some parents.
3. March 27, 2018: the new names. After public comment from more than 60 people, trustees voted 4 to 1 to name both schools after people and then 5 to 0 to name Jordan after Frank S. Greene Jr. Terman became Ellen Fletcher Middle School the same night.
4. Fall 2018: the new name took effect at the start of the 2018 to 2019 school year.

Board members said at the time that both new namesakes would have been targets of the eugenics movement, a point they saw as central to the choice.

Who Frank S. Greene Jr. was

The school's history page, reprinted from East Palo Alto Today, gives the outline. Frank S. Greene Jr. (1938 to 2009) was among the first Black students at Washington University in St. Louis, where he earned a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering. He earned a master's at Purdue in 1962, served four years in the U.S. Air Force and became a captain. In 1970 he completed a Ph.D. in electrical engineering at Santa Clara University, where he later became the first African American trustee.

At Fairchild Semiconductor he worked on high-speed semiconductor memory and was part of the team that patented what was then the fastest chip design. He founded a technology development company and Zero One Systems in the 1970s. In 1993 he co-founded New Vista Capital, a venture firm that funded businesses started by women and minorities. He taught electrical engineering and computer science at Stanford, Santa Clara, Howard and Washington universities. The Stanford Daily noted he was assistant chair of Stanford's electrical engineering department from 1972 to 1975. For the wider story of the chip industry he worked in, see our history of Shockley, Fairchild and the semiconductor boom.

Programs and electives

Greene says it offers more than 40 elective courses. Sixth graders start with an exploratory wheel, rotating through five-week sections:

• Art wheel: five short projects, with a ceramic container as the usual favorite.
• Computer wheel: keyboarding, graphics, animation, video and basic coding.
• Drama wheel: pantomime, improvisation and short skits.
• Explorations in Technology: a 30-day lab section where students build a paper bridge and a wooden toolbox.
• Family and consumer science: simple cooking and sewing.
• Language wheel: basic phrases in the four languages taught at Greene, which are Spanish, French, Japanese and Mandarin.

Seventh and eighth graders choose from music (band, orchestra and choir), drama, art and ceramics, multimedia art, computer applications, video production, web design, broadcast, foods and nutrition, money matters, creative writing, yearbook and school service. Leadership is an eighth grade semester class that requires an application. AVID runs in all three grades for students in the academic middle who plan on college.

Language Bridge

Greene hosts Language Bridge, the district's middle school continuation of Mandarin and Spanish immersion. Students who finished elementary immersion can continue. Others can qualify through a fluency assessment. Our choice programs guide explains how it works.

Greene's site also notes that brunch and lunch are free for all students. The school runs in-school and after-school academic support programs and clubs that meet at lunch and after school every day of the week.

Bell schedule basics

Greene follows the shared PAUSD middle school bell schedule. Classes start at 8:30 a.m. every day, with a warning bell at 8:25.

• Monday: all seven periods, ending at 2:30 p.m., then office hours to 2:40.
• Tuesday and Thursday: long blocks for periods 1 to 4, ending at 3:15 p.m.
• Wednesday: periods 5 to 7, then PRIME advisory, ending at 2:30 p.m. with office hours to 2:40.
• Friday: periods 5 to 7, ending at 1:45 p.m.

Brunch is 10:00 to 10:10 a.m. and lunch is 11:40 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. Greene posts special schedules for each holiday week, minimum day Fridays and suicide prevention training weeks on its daily schedule page.

Attendance area and high school path

To see whether an address is zoned for Greene, use the School Finder linked from PAUSD's school placement page. Boundaries follow streets in ways that are hard to guess. Families new to the district register first through Registration Services. Our enrollment guide covers the documents.

Greene students do not all go to the same high school. Wikipedia lists Greene as a feeder for Palo Alto High School and for Gunn. The School Finder shows the full elementary to high school path for any address.

Getting there safely

PAUSD does not run buses for the general student population. Greene's site says more than half its students bike, walk or take a shuttle. It also reports that 81 percent walked, rode, carpooled or bused in 2021. The school links the city's Walk and Roll map, with suggested routes from east of El Camino Real and from East Palo Alto. It asks parents to ride the route with their child before the first day. The PTA and the city hold a bike safety clinic before school starts, with helmet fitting and bike checks.

Rules for drivers

The school, the PTA and the Palo Alto Police Department publish a long list of rules. Police patrol the area and parents have received tickets. The main points:

• Use the drop-off zones on North California Circle and in the Middlefield lot. Pull all the way forward and do not park there.
• No left turns from 7:30 to 8:30 a.m. and 2:30 to 3:30 p.m. out of the Middlefield driveway or the semicircular driveway.
• No right on red at Middlefield and North California when students are present.
• Street parking on North California between Middlefield and Louis Road is restricted from 7:30 to 8:30 a.m. to keep the bike lane clear.
• Do not stop in red zones, bus zones or the shuttle loading area. Do not open car doors into the bike lane.

The calmest bike approach for many families is the city's network of bike boulevards. Students should lock bikes with a sturdy lock and register them free with Bike Index, which local police use to return stolen bikes.

Frequently asked questions