Save Junior High, Panel Is Urged : Education: Crowd at school board meeting speaks against a task force’s proposal to tear down First Avenue school.

Parents, teachers and students urged the Board of Education on Monday to maintain First Avenue Junior High School rather than tear it down to raise money for the Arcadia Unified School District.

More than 400 people attended the public hearing, the last of four on recommendations by a 36-member task force formed last year to deal with increasing enrollment, overcrowded elementary schools and aging classrooms in the 8,037-student district.

No board action is expected for several months. In the meantime, school officials said, a committee will study the recommendations and public reaction to them.

Residents also expressed concern over a proposal to add the ninth grade to high schools that currently have grades 10 through 12 and to set up middle schools for sixth- through eighth-graders.

Demolishing First Avenue Junior High and leasing the property for residential and commercial development were among the controversial recommendations.

“Multifamily and commercial use would bring in more children, families that would exacerbate overcrowding,” said Cathryn Warren, whose daughter is a seventh-grader at First Avenue.

“I’m appalled,” said Leal Collins, whose daughter attends First Avenue. “I’m humiliated. We’re here basically begging the five people we elected not to bomb this school.”

Students at the hearing praised First Avenue’s small enrollment--about 630 students. “The unity at the school is great,” ninth-grader James Cary said. “The kids here all like each other.” The 14-year-old credited his teachers with helping him raise his grades from Cs and Ds to A’s and Bs. “A lot of the teachers helped me,” he said. “It’s a small school, so most of them know me.”

School officials said they favor selling and leasing unused school land because of the prohibitive cost of renovating buildings. For instance, they said it would cost $1 million to reopen Santa Anita Elementary School and $300,000 per year to operate it. The school was closed because of slumping enrollment in the early 1980s.

The task force has proposed selling the Santa Anita property to pay for new classrooms at Dana and Foothill junior high schools and Arcadia High School.

Under the task force recommendations, Dana and Foothill would serve sixth- through eighth-graders and have 1,000 to 1,200 students each. Ninth-graders would attend Arcadia High School.

But residents said adding more students to the 2,040-student high school would burden its already overtaxed restrooms, auditorium and other facilities.

“Adding another 600 to 700 students (at Arcadia High School) surpasses the limits of my imagination,” said Erica Liang, 13, a ninth-grader who takes an advanced algebra course there. “It is always crowded, and as I walk to my class, I get pushed around by people who are up to 6 1/2 feet tall,” she said as the audience howled. “There, I am just a tiny presence among these towering students.”

Arcadia High junior Becky Taft said: “The bathrooms are always filthy. Lots of times there’s no supplies. They’ll be spending money on reconstruction instead of new janitors.”

At several of the hearings, residents asked for a bond issue to allow district officials to rehabilitate school sites without having to sell, lease or close schools, board President Joann Steinmeier said.

Parent Alvin Albe echoed that Monday. “You pretty much have a dream situation,” Albe said. “Tax me, tax me, tax me. Let everybody have the vote.”

Other task force recommendations include:

* Leasing Bonita Park Elementary School, which currently houses the Huntington High and Rancho High continuation schools for troubled high school students.

* Closing a mini-school within Hugo Reid Elementary School that serves kindergarten through third-grade and moving those students onto the main Hugo Reid campus down the street. The old K-3 mini-school would house continuation students who currently attend school at the Bonita site.

The board decided to consider the issue of starting pilot year-round school programs at Baldwin Stocker and Holly Avenue elementary schools separately from recommendations on restructuring schools and selling and leasing school property.

NEXT STEP

* At the school board meeting Monday, Supt. Terry Towner will name an eight- to 10-person committee to study the task force recommendations and the comments from the four public hearings. The committee will be told to report back to the board in about a month. No firm date has been set for board action.