City Schools Brace for Gain of 45,000 Pupils by Year 2000

The San Diego city school system must spend at least $130 million to build and renovate school buildings and assign children in more than two dozen schools to year-round schedules to accommodate an expected increase of 45,000 students by the turn of the century, a report released Wednesday recommends.

But the report suggests that revenue will be at least $15 million short of the amount required for school construction and renovation, and as much as $161 million short of the district’s total capital needs, including maintenance and renovation of older buildings.

“We do not see firm sources of income to meet all of the facilities’ needs that we define in the ‘master plan’ that’s coming to the board later this month,” said Supt. Tom Payzant. Instead, the district must take the “surest sources of income that we have and apply them to the most critical needs.”

The report released is a section of the long-awaited “master plan” for facilities that the district has been developing for the past two years. It provides a look at what can be considered a blueprint for the future of the school district’s building needs between now and 2000. The entire master plan will be presented to the board later this month.

If the plan is adopted without changes by the trustees--a premise that is by no means certain--it would have wide-ranging impact on families in the school district’s most crowded regions: the areas around Mira Mesa High School, Hoover High School, Morse High School, Lincoln Preparatory Academy and San Diego High School.

Among suggestions contained in the new report are:

- Construction of a new junior high school in West Mira Mesa by 1989; a high school in Scripps Ranch that would be open to 9th- and 10th-graders by 1991 and to students in grades 9-12 by 1993; two new elementary schools in Mira Mesa; a new school for children in grades 4-12 in Bay Terraces by 1990, and a new elementary school in East San Diego by 1996.

Numerous other schools are scheduled for renovation, the first being Adams Elementary School, which should be ready by 1989. Edison elementary would be renovated by 1990 and Central elementary would be renovated by 1991.

In later years, the report suggests that some closed schools--such as Darnall and Montezuma elementary schools--might be reopened. Others, such as Breen elementary, would be closed and replaced by a new school.

- Adoption of a multitrack, year-round schedule at 29 schools in the district’s most crowded areas beginning in 1988. There is one exception: the report recommends switching to a year-round schedule at the crowded Jerabek Elementary School in Scripps Ranch by July of this year.

Under four-track, year-round schooling, the students in a school are divided into four groups. Three of the groups attend school at any one time, which gives the school 25% more space. But the students attend classes at various times throughout the year, instead of everyone attending between September and June.

The system could be used with three separate groups of students or other configurations.

Schools in the Morse High School area would be heavily affected by such a plan. The report recommends that Audubon, Bethune, Boone, Encanto, Lee, Paradise Hills, Penn, Perry, Valencia Park and Zamorano elementary schools be placed on year-round schedules in 1988 or 1989.

Other areas would be almost completely unaffected by the suggestion. Because they are not crowded, the schools around Clairemont High are not suggested targets for year-round schooling.

- Adoption of a double-session kindergarten schedule in virtually every school that is not a magnet school or a “minority isolated” school (schools designated as unbalanced between minority and white students).

By asking some kindergarten students to attend school in the afternoon, the district would free up rooms for other students, said Ruben Carriedo, the district’s planning director.

Funding the changes will be the district’s greatest challenge over the next 13 years. On Tuesday, the trustees are scheduled to vote on a resolution that allows them to charge developers $1.50 per square foot for every residential dwelling built in the district and 25 cents per square foot of every commercial building.

The plan, made possible by a new state law, will bring the school district millions of dollars more than it can currently raise in developer fees set by an agreement between the city and developers. By 1996, those fees alone will raise $70 million for the school district.

Later, the trustees will have to decide whether to join another state program under which $800 million in construction and renovation funds will be available. Because of the formula that state officials will use in deciding how to distribute funds, the program might not be useful to the district, Payzant said.

But existing sources of revenue will not cover the district’s needs, the report suggests. Construction and reconstruction costs will total between $130 million and $143 million. Maintenance costs will add $145 million to the district’s tab.