San Dieguito Seeks Grant to Boost School Security

After a series of violent incidents, including the sexual molestation of three 13-year-old girls at a junior high school, the San Dieguito Union High School District has applied for a grant to hire a sheriff’s deputy to patrol the area near four of the district’s schools.

Over the last six months, “a series of incidents that have occurred around that area . . . have raised our concerns and parents’ concerns,” said Supt. Bill Berrier.

Most recently, seven boys ranging in age from 13 to 16 were arrested after three teen-age girls at Oak Crest Junior High were assaulted March 28 at the school’s locker compound, according to a police report.

“(They) encircled them and grabbed their breasts and vaginal area through their clothing,” the report said.

The incident occurred after school hours as the girls were leaving an audition for a school play, said a parent familiar with the incident.

The district’s response has been to do what other North County school districts faced with fast-growing populations and rising gang activity have done in recent years: beef up security.

Oceanside Unified hired its first full-time security officer four years ago, and now the district has five full-time, uniformed, armed security personnel to cover the district, in addition to several campus supervisors.

Vista Unified has employed private security firms to protect computers and classrooms in new schools from theft and has begun installing security devices at older schools.

The city of San Marcos and San Marcos Unified four years ago hired an armed, plainclothes sheriff’s deputy to monitor area schools. Last year, the district hired a second deputy because of an increase in school population.

“We wanted to be aggressive with response to substance-abuse protection, and we felt that if you’re going to be aggressive, you go after it in two ways. The first way is you get someone who is really skilled in counseling, and the other thing you do is have someone from law enforcement involved,” said Mac Bernd, superintendent of San Marcos Unified.

Growth has been the main impetus for hiring security guards.

“There is no factor that is more important than growth in the need to have some security,” said Dan Armstrong, a spokesman for Oceanside Unified. “Part of that is enrollment growth, but a big part of that is that Oceanside is 130,000 people and growing.”

San Dieguito Union has just begun to learn that lesson.

“We haven’t had a significant problem since (March 28), but there is always potential for that kind of thing. This is a rapidly growing area that is becoming more dense . . . and we are anticipating the possibility (of problems) by asking assistance from the city,” Berrier said.

San Dieguito Union High officials met with parents of the victims shortly after the incident was reported.

“We felt that probably the only thing that we needed to do was to be more vigilant and encourage the kids to come forward with those concerns so that they can be dealt with as early as possible,” Berrier said last week.

Berrier said the girls should have told school staff earlier about the teasing that had apparently gone on before the March 28 incident.

“If that had reached a stage where a staff member would have been alerted that it had gone beyond teasing to a more critical level, then we could have brought the kids together and brought it to their attention about how critical it could have become,” Berrier said.

But that did not satisfy one parent.

“I blame the schools. I send my daughter there with the respect that my daughter is safe there,” the parent said. “I would like to see the schools have security on campuses to avoid anything like this happening again.”

The district responded by saying that budget cuts do not allow for permanent security officers at each of the schools.

On April 30, however, the district applied for a $60,000 grant from the city of Encinitas to pay for an armed sheriff’s deputy to be devoted full-time to areas around Oak Crest Junior High, San Dieguito High, Sunset High and Ocean Knoll Elementary schools.

“They would basically control the outside perimeters of the campuses and the neighborhoods therein,” said Donald Kemp, assistant superintendent at San Dieguito Union High.

The application for the grant cited “gang activity within several blocks of the high school (that) has resulted in several shootings . . . (that) occurred on streets adjoining or near the district campuses.”

The application also stated, “Students from the Eden Gardens neighborhood in Solana Beach . . . fear they will be assaulted by students living in the vicinity of San Dieguito High School/Sunset High.”

A custodian at Ocean Knoll Elementary School was “threatened by a group of gang members this past fall,” and “several non-students threatened a teacher on campus after school during the fall semester,” the application said.

Oakcrest Park, near Oak Crest Junior High, has attracted transients that parents and the district fear may pose a threat, Kemp said.

“These were all incidents where non-students--adults in the community--came onto the campuses, and it raised our concerns and parents’ concerns,” Berrier said.

Grant money is available for projects that enhance Encinitas, said Berrier. The application comes at a time when the district is considering laying off two campus security officers at high schools, Berrier said.