It was initially set up in 1859 as a segregated school for schoolchildren of Chinese (and later Japanese and Korean) descent, part of the growing anti-Chinese sentiment in the United States that arose in the late 1800s.

The school has been renamed a number of times, most recently in 1998 to its current name in honor of the city's first Chinese-American supervisor.

A small private school was briefly mentioned as having started in late 1852 in a letter to the editors of the Daily Alta California, warmly concluding "if the Chinese can be induced to settle permanently among us, that in time our country will be greatly benefitted by their accession.

Speaking no language but the Chinese, born and nurtured in filth and degradation, it is scarcely probable that any serious attempt could be made to mingle them with the other children of our public schools without kindling a blaze of revolution in our midst.

In 1880, the Political Code was modified to lift the restriction of enrollment to white students (§1662) and the sections requiring separate but equal (§1671) segregated schools (§1669) were repealed.

[11] With the change to the Code, in 1884, Joseph and Mary Tape challenged San Francisco's practice by enrolling their daughter, Mamie, in the all-white Spring Valley School.

[14] In the wake of Tape v. Hurley, Andrew Moulder, the Superintendent of Public Schools in San Francisco, sent a telegram to Representative W.B.

"[15] May responded by pushing through Assembly Bill 268, which once again allowed the establishment of "separate schools for children of Mongolian or Chinese descent.

[18]: 166  The Primary School was mentioned in an 1896 San Francisco Call article profiling the kindergarten at the First Chinese Baptist Church.

[18]: 169  The Chinese American Citizen Alliance had requested that the name be changed to the Harding Primary School, stating a dislike of implied inferiority in the term "Oriental".

[26] The first Chinese teacher, named in 1927, was Alice Fong Yu, who initially assisted the principal with translation duties to interact with parents and students.