To introduce their examination of the social production of segregated space and power relations in Oxnard, California from 1934 to 1954, the authors utilize portions of a letter written by Alice Shaffer, April 21, 1938, to the Oxnard School Board of Trustees. Shaffer outlines the seemingly shared concerns of her neighbors about a disruption of the separate social and academic worlds established for Whites and Mexicans. As she urges the board to endorse residential and school segregation, she demonstrates the inextricable link between these two pervasive and persistent forms of racial discrimination. The authors analyze this interconnection between housing and education in Oxnard from 1934, when the trustees' minutes first mention school segregation, through 1954, after the second U.S. Supreme Court ruling challenging racially restrictive housing covenants and the landmark decision declaring segregated schools unconstitutional. Their analysis demonstrates that the trustees designed segregated schools to correspond with the very same racially identifiable residential spaces they themselves helped create. With this historical case study, the authors seek to document the ways housing and school segregation became interconnected "by design." (Contains 118 footnotes.)