Harker School
private school in San Jose, California
The Harker School is a private, co-educational school located in San Jose, California. Founded in 1893 as Manzanita Hall, Harker has three campuses: Bucknall, Union, and Saratoga, named after the streets on which they lie.
Overview
The Bucknall campus houses the Lower School (kindergarten through grade 5), the Union campus houses the Middle School (grades 6–8), and the Saratoga campus houses the Upper School (grades 9 through 12).
Harker School's tuition is higher than comparable private schools in the Bay Area. Many of the 35+ after-school programs have historically been included in the tuition. As of 2026, annual tuition for the Lower School is $51,550, compared to $61,450 for the Middle School, and $66,950 for the Upper School. The San Francisco Chronicle noted that tuition at the most expensive private schools in the Bay Area, including Harker, exceeds "two of California’s top private colleges, Stanford University and Santa Clara University," and "far exceed undergraduate tuition rates for public colleges."
Upper school
The upper school, offering grades 9 through 12, is located on the Saratoga Avenue campus. The campus was previously home to an all-girls school, Mother Butler Memorial High School, which merged with Archbishop Mitty High School in 1969. The upper school was added to the K–8 program in 1998, with the first class of graduates in 2002.
Middle school
The middle school is located on the Union campus, the former site of the Harker Preschool.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Harker School” is private school in San Jose, California. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Harker, School and private, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “private school in San Jose, California” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q14682108. Authority coordinates are 37.313, -121.969. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1893, 2026, 1969 and 1998.
Later summaries often reconcile disputed chronology or motive more neatly than the contemporary record permits. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
- Institutional context
- Locating named record creators
Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Harker School”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Harker School primary sources, Harker School archive and Harker research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Harker School”?
- Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
- Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Harker School” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.