Our school is named for Elizabeth Freese, a trailblazing woman who taught school and advocated for education, especially for giving equal academic opportunities for girls.
Miss Freese was born in 1873 on a square-rigged sailing ship off Cape Horn, on the coast of Africa!
She became well known as teacher and administrator who started at San Diego High school in 1907, just after the turn of the century. She spent 33 years on the faculty, impacting many generations of early San Diegans.
She served as Vice Principal for Girls until retiring in 1940, and she died in 1953.
While at San Diego High, she organized the Girls' League, the first such organization in the nation. She was instrumental n forming San Diego High School Scholarship Foundation, the source of financial assistance enabling many to enter college.
She attended high school in Bangor, Maine, at the tip of the United States on the exact opposite corner of San Diego, where she settled 1893. She moved to Coronado to study at San Diego Training School. She then traveled to the opposite end of California, to student at University of California at Berkeley, at a time when it was rare for women to finish high -- let alone go on to a prestigious college like Berkeley.
In 1895, she returned to Coronado to teach primary grades and Latin. In 1905, she taught at Polytechnic High School in San Luis Obispo, in Central California. She returned to San Diego in 1907 to teach at San Diego High, where she remained. In 1910, she headed the Caver's Department of Ancient Languages. She devoted her life to the children of San Diego, so they might build a better future.