Dana Middle School

Richard Henry Dana Middle School is a public middle school in San Diego, California, part of the San Diego Unified School District. It serves approximately 820 students in grades 5 and 6. It is located in the Loma Portal neighborhood of Point Loma. It draws students from all six elementary (K-4) schools in the "Point Loma Cluster", as well as accepting students on a space-available basis from throughout the district under the District's Volunteer Enrollment Exchange Program (VEEP) and Open Enrollment Program.HistoryDana is named after Richard Henry Dana, Jr., author of the book Two Years Before the Mast which described the San Diego and Point Loma areas in the 1830s.Before the opening of Dana, students in grades 7-12 attended Point Loma Junior-Senior High School, now Point Loma High School. The dates of Dana's opening are not entirely clear. A review of Point Loma High School yearbooks suggests that Dana opened in 1941 for 7th-graders only, served grades 7-8 from 1942 through 1945, and became a full 7-8-9 junior high school in the fall of 1945. This format was retained until Dana's closure in 1983. During the 1940s-1950s the school doubled as a Cold War era bomb shelter.In 1983, the school was closed as part of sweeping changes occasioned by declining enrollment. Prior to the realignment, two area junior high schools (Dana and Collier) served grades 7-9, and fed Point Loma High School which served grades 10-12. After the realignment, Dana was closed; Collier was renamed after artist Steven V. Correia and restricted to grades 7-8; and Point Loma High became a four-year school serving grades 9-12.