Profits vs. Tradition Colors Bid to Move Oceanside High

Larry Hatter has more memories of Oceanside High School than he would care to count.

Hatter, Class of ‘62, was student body vice president his senior year. Both of his sisters attended the school, as did his wife, all of her brothers and sisters, her mother and several aunts and uncles. For years, Hatter and his father were the announcers at the high school’s football games.

Indeed, it would be hard to find a more devout booster of Oceanside High, one who can wax nostalgic at the drop of a No. 2 pencil about the good old days at the venerable institution.

But when talk turns to the possibility of uprooting the 80-year-old campus to make way for new development, Hatter is all business.

Cash Windfall

Owner of a successful insurance firm, Hatter sees a grain of wisdom in a proposal now before district officials to shift Oceanside High to another site, a move that proponents say could result in a windfall of development dollars for the Oceanside Unified School District.

“I think we’ve got to decide what’s best for the kids 20 to 50 years from now,” Hatter said. “We have to throw aside the politics and the nostalgia and say let’s do what’s best for the kids.”

Lots of folks around Oceanside, however, disagree with that sort of logic. As foes of the proposal see it, the idea of bulldozing the high school to make way for a shopping center or a tract of new houses amounts to historic heresy--and would do little to help the district’s students.

They like Oceanside High just fine where it is--nestled next to Interstate 5 and busy Mission Avenue with a commanding view of the Pacific--and feel a new high school at a different site would be hard pressed to surpass the educational and extra-curricular achievements of the existing institution.

‘Great Location’

“The school is perfectly sound, it’s in a great location, and the students can get a great education there,” said Dean Heyenga, a chemistry teacher at the high school for more than a dozen years and a foe of the relocation plan. “I think the desire to move the school is only in people who are not connected with Oceanside High, people who view the issue as one of economics and having a ‘higher and better use’ for that site.”

Opponents also say the timing of the proposal to uproot the high school seems oddly ironic. Just last October, Oceanside High celebrated its 80th anniversary, a multi-day fete including an old-fashioned bonfire that drew 3,000 alumni and friends as well as a dinner dance that attracted 2,000. Nostalgia about the old campus is running high.

“This is a piece of history in Oceanside,” said Richard Stanfield, an 18-year-old senior at Oceanside High and current student body president. “It’s been here eight decades. If they tear it down, it’s like tearing down the White House.”

The school board, if anything, is far from making such a decision. On April 21, the trustees took the first step in what will likely be a drawn-out process to decide whether the campus should be renovated or torn down. The board voted to have the 34-acre site included in a survey being performed by the Oceanside Redevelopment Agency that will determine whether the campus should be incorporated in the city’s redevelopment area.

Inclusion of the high school within the redevelopment boundaries is key to the concept of selling the existing site to make way for some type of new development.

Under a plan being discussed, the district could sell the land to help build a new school, then reap the benefit of taxes siphoned from the property by the redevelopment agency.

At the start of the school year, an 11-member committee established by district officials undertook a study of the relocation idea, weighing it against an alternative plan to renovate the school. After months of discussion, the group recommended in 6-to-5 vote in early April that the campus be moved.

In particular, the group pointed to the Orange County city of Brea as an example of how students might benefit if the high school were relocated.

Officials there ordered demolition of the old high school to make way for a shopping complex. In exchange, the school district got a ultra-modern high school campus that includes an Olympic-size swimming pool, a football stadium with a press box, eight tennis courts, soccer fields and a theater that seats 700. Moreover, the district’s coffers are flush with $1.5 million derived annually from taxes generated by the shopping center.

The Oceanside High site is just the sort that could attract such profitable new development, backers say. Situated near a major freeway and one of the city’s busiest thoroughfares, the land is the virtual gateway to the city and would undoubtedly command a high price. Estimates being bandied about by district officials exceed $22 million for the parcel.

“I think there’s a tremendous opportunity” at the site, said Pat Hightman, acting director of the Oceanside Redevelopment Agency. “But we’re leaving it up to the school district. All we’re saying is we’re doing this survey now. If they want to be part of it, fine. If they don’t, fine.”

District officials and school trustees, meanwhile, are keeping their options open.

“Certainly we’re not insensitive to the enormous tradition of Oceanside High,” said Dan Armstrong, the district’s chief spokesman. “The school has had a great impact on a number of generations. But we would be poorly serving today’s kids and future kids in Oceanside if we didn’t find out what’s available.”

Among the members of the district panel that studied the issue was Hatter. He argues that the on-going flood of money the city schools would receive each year from new development on the Oceanside High site would help fund district programs and reduce classroom sizes from elementary school through high school.

“If money could be garnered that could reduce class size by just two students per class, the benefit would be monumental,” Hatter said. “If we could do this, the whole district wins, all the kids from kindergarten to the 12th grade.”

Hatter and others also note that the campus is hemmed in by some of the city’s most crime-troubled neighborhoods, areas that have not helped cement a good image for the high school.

“It’s not the most attractive neighborhood,” district spokesman Armstrong conceded. “That’s not to say it has been besieged with problems, but there have been some incidents.”

Moreover, the Oceanside High campus is far from a designer’s dream, featuring a hodgepodge of buildings ranging from 15 to 50 years in age. As the campus grew over the decades, buildings were added in a crazy-quilt manner that proves confusing to many a visitor, district officials say. Some buildings lack adequate heat, but the district has undertaken efforts to upgrade the boilers.

But warts and all, many folks in the community love the campus and vow to fight to see it retained.