The new Eastside elementary school will be named for Ofelia Valdez-Yeager, the first Latina elected to Riverside’s school board and a leader of efforts to build a Cesar Chavez memorial and museum showcasing Cheech Marin’s Chicano art in downtown.
In a 5-0 vote Thursday, May 8, the Riverside school board named the planned campus after Valdez-Yeager, a community leader who died last year at 76.
It will be known as Ofelia Valdez-Yeager Eastside Elementary School.
Valdez-Yeager was elected to the school board in 1992 and served four years before resigning to become executive assistant to Riverside Unified School District’s superintendent. In 1999, she become the assistant to then-Riverside County Superintendent David Long. She also was an administrative assistant to former Riverside Mayor Ron Loveridge. Previously, she was active at Longfellow Elementary School on the Eastside.
The naming follows a 2021 board policy that reframed how the district chooses school names.
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A sign announcing construction of the Riverside Unified School District’s Eastside elementary school is seen Wednesday, May 7, 2025, at the corner of Howard Avenue and 14th Street. (Photo by Mark Acosta, The Press-Enterprise/SCNG)
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A sign announcing construction of the Riverside Unified School District’s Eastside elementary school is seen Wednesday, May 7, 2025, at the corner of Howard Avenue and 14th Street. (Photo by Mark Acosta, The Press-Enterprise/SCNG)
It states that facilities named for people should recognize those who “played a critical role or contributed to society in ways that supported the success and well-being of the individuals who live in Riverside County, California or the United States, now and in the future.”
The school will be built on 8.17 acres on Howard Avenue and 14th streets. The district is expected to take over the last piece of land it needs Monday, May 12. Construction is set to be completed in 2027.
The campus will be the first in the Eastside neighborhood since the 1960s, when Lowell Elementary School was destroyed by fire bomb in 1965. The school’s destruction pushed the school board to adopt a desegregation plan that bused the neighborhood’s minority students across town to all-white schools.
Riverside became the nation’s first city of more than 100,000 residents to desegregate without being ordered to do so by a court.
Measure O, a $392 million bond voters passed in 2016 to upgrade and renovate aging campuses and to build new facilities, will fund the project.
A subcommittee tasked with recommending a school name received nine suggestions. It forwarded two options to the board: Valdez-Yeager and the name of late Eastside community leader Dorella Anderson with “Eastside” woven into the title.
Board member Dale Kinnear, a retired Riverside principal, said facing these choices was a “wonderful position.” As someone who worked with both women, Kinnear said he could appreciate their work for the community.
He supported naming the school for Valdez-Yeager but also sought a way to remember Anderson and her work.
For four decades, Anderson worked with the Community Settlement Association, a nonprofit social services organization that serves the Eastside. She retired as executive director in 2006. Anderson was also a founding member of the Riverside African-American Historical Society and worked with the Riverside Sport Hall of Fame.
Anderson died in 2015 of complications stemming from Alzheimer’s disease.
School board member Naomi Hernandez Alexander asked the committee to consider naming one of the school’s facilities for Anderson to honor her memory.
Board member Amanda Vickers asked that administrators of the new school find a way to honor prominent community members.
“So our students know who worked in the community and fought and benefitted the community,” Vickers said.
Several people spoke in support of naming the school for Valdez-Yeager.
“The city of Riverside has a great history and every once in a while a new book in history comes out,” Gilberto Esquivel said. “The next historical book on Riverside must have a large chapter dedicated to Ofelia.”
Patricia Reynolds said: “It would be more than a gesture, it would be a legacy. Every child who walks through those doors would carry Ofelia’s spirit.”
Yolanda Esquivel told trustees that Valdez-Yeager “was a woman that we all respected — not only respected her, we loved her.”
The city’s other community of color, the Casa Blanca neighborhood, is also getting a new elementary school.
Casa Blanca Elementary School is set to open in August and will serve 750 students.
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