Captain Cooper School

Captain Cooper School is an elementary school built in 1962 near Big Sur Village on the Californian Central Coast. The school has strong community ties. The land for the school was donated by Frances Molera, who stipulated that it be named after her grandfather, Juan B. R. Cooper who owned the original Rancho El Sur in 1840. The school was built by community members without assistance from the Carmel Unified School District, who assumed management of the school once it was complete. J.B. Cooper built the Sur schoolhouse and community center in the region on the Cooper Ranch. That was followed by the county-owned Pfeiffer School which opened on October 20, 1916..
The residents requested a local school from the Carmel Unified School District. They agreed to include the school in its boundaries only if the residents built it themselves. Francis Molera and other members of the existing Pfeiffer School Board of Education picked a site for the new school. Frances Molera donated the land. The community
successfully passed a bond that raised funds from among local land and business owners. The school was forced to open prematurely when the old oil stove in the prior Pfeiffer School leaked a large amount of oil within the building. The Pfeiffer School building is now part of Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park.
It is the smallest of three elementary schools in the Carmel Unified School District. The California State Department of Education designated Captain Cooper a California Distinguished School in 1989. The School Site Council also hosts an annual Captain Cooper Carnival that provides funds to the school.
A mural was funded by members of the School Site Council in 1999 that depicts the Big Sur Coast in the 1820s. In that year, Captain John Baptista Rogers Cooper saw Big Sur for the first time when he brought his schooner, the Rover, to the mouth of the Big Sur River. The mural portrays the area from what is now Andrew Molera State Park and El Sur Ranch, formerly about one-half of Rancho El Sur, to the volcanic rock that is the site of Point Sur State Historic Park and Point Sur Lighthouse. Upon completing elementary school, students must travel to Carmel High School to continue their education. As part of the physical education program, a Children's Garden maintained by the students grows vegetables, herbs, flowers, local wildflowers, and fruit trees.
The school serves students in grades K-5. It's enrollment has shrunk from 90 students in 2004 to 52 students today. There are five teachers. It has a student/teacher ratio of 10:1. There is also a pre-school on site.

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