Trustees Support Policy Allowing Closed Campuses : Neighborhoods’ Wishes Likely to Win Out Over Those of Principals

A majority of San Diego city schools trustees said Tuesday they favor allowing individual high school communities to decide whether to close campuses and keep students on the premises during lunch.

The board left unresolved for two weeks several major details of the expected policy change, notably that of how to create a representative school committee to study the pros and cons of the subject.

But it is clear that, if the policy change is approved, one or more campuses will be closed at lunchtime within a couple of years. Some trustees argued for initially limiting the number of schools in order to make sure the policy does not create unforeseen problems of security or expense.

Lengthy Public Hearing

Trustees held a lengthy public hearing Tuesday on a proposal by board Vice President Jim Roache to alter the district’s existing open-campus policy as a way to cut down on lunchtime truancy and tardiness, drug and alcohol use and traffic and litter in many of the neighborhoods of the district’s 15 high schools.

Parents and business representatives from several communities, particularly those from Tierrasanta, who want Serra High School to close its campus, backed Roache in no uncertain terms.

“I lived three doors down from Serra, and it was a nightmare,” said parent Terry Starr, a county probation officer for 26 years. “At lunch, 1,000 kids come through like a herd of locusts, stripping everything . . . and, like other parents (who have testified), I want to know where my youngsters are.”

Ed Fischer, manager of a Carl’s Jr. fast-food restaurant in Tierrasanta, told trustees “that if you want to see a bad situation, come to my place between 11:45 a.m. and 12:10 p.m. You’ll never see an adult because they don’t want to be hassled by students . . . and I don’t want to be a baby-sitter in my dining room, either.”

Roxanne Baxter, a mother of two, said that “my children are my responsibility, not that of the school board, and I don’t have control over them at lunch if you give them the option. . . . Consider the rights of parents, and give us an option to say how our kids should be raised.”

Opposed by Principals

The district’s high school principals unanimously opposed any change in the open-campus policy, with spokesman J. M. Tarvin of La Jolla High saying that “someone must stand up on behalf of the kids, to take a chance and say we believe in the kids . . . to be citizens in the community.”

But their plea fell to the belief of board members that they must respond to community desires.

“I personally agree with J. Tarvin and (schools Supt.) Tom Payzant that the campuses should be open,” Trustee Ann Armstrong said. “But I know all parents don’t agree with me, and we should be sensitive to the way that communities and parents feel.”

Trustee Shirley Weber disagreed with Tarvin’s argument that senior high students are young adults and should be given greater freedom.

“What about the 14- or 15-year-olds, those in the ninth grade?” Weber asked. “And it strikes me that, on this issue, there aren’t a whole lot of parents saying open the campuses.

“Rather, they feel the board is not supporting the values they want in the home, in the school and in the community . . . that we are giving kids options that they wouldn’t give their kids, that they have a feeling things are out of control.”

Board members reached no conclusion Tuesday over the mechanism for a campus changing to a closed site. During the next two weeks, Roache will revise his proposal to suggest specific ways of setting up a committee representative of school personnel, parents and community people. In addition, a board majority indicated that any recommendation from a study committee should come before trustees for final approval.

Although approval of the closed option is expected March 28, Roache said after the meeting Tuesday that the earliest change for any high school probably would not come until September, 1990. And the board said that the issue might not come up at many campuses, where students either do not have ready access to autos or where the surrounding area is largely commercial.