ELECTIONS : Voters to Decide Whether to Let District Create a High School

Suzanne Paine says she’d rather enroll her son, an eighth-grader, in private school next year than see him attend a public high school in Alhambra.

“I don’t feel they get enough individual attention in Alhambra,” said Paine, who lives in San Gabriel. “If you need encouragement or special attention, you’re just lost.”

Right now, those are Paine’s only two options because the 3,449-student San Gabriel School District enrolls children only through eighth grade. After that, they transfer to the Alhambra High School District, which has about 9,750 students.

But Paine and a number of other San Gabriel parents hope that the situation will change on Tuesday. That day, San Gabriel voters go to the polls to decide whether to unify their district so they can add a high school.

A yes vote for unification would mean local control of education from kindergarten through 12th grade. But San Gabriel school officials say it also might lead to a bond measure asking residents to pay up to 50% of the cost of a new high school.

The unification measure was initiated by the San Gabriel school district and parent committees, and it appears to have broad support within San Gabriel.

The district has not decided whether to buy land for its proposed high school or build on an existing site. Officials are considering building a high school on the site of 14.7-acre Madison Elementary School and relocating its pupils to other nearby elementary school campuses, said Joseph B. Crawford, assistant superintendent for business services at the San Gabriel district.

Crawford estimates that it will cost $25 million to build a new high school and from $3 million to $4 million to relocate students from Madison and build facilities for them at nearby elementary schools.

He said the district is also contemplating the purchase of a parcel of land in San Gabriel, but he stressed that all such proposals are preliminary. If unification succeeds, the district plans to set up committees from throughout the San Gabriel community to reach a consensus on how to proceed.

“First we get unified, second we get ourselves a high school,” Crawford said. “We’ll have intelligent, experienced people looking at this problem.”

Meanwhile, the proposed unification has drawn staunch opposition from Alhambra officials, who say it would cost their district $1.8 million in state money that is tied to the number of pupils enrolled.

Alhambra would lose about 1,300 students who currently attend San Gabriel High, which is part of the Alhambra school district and would remain so even if unification succeeds.

Additionally, Alhambra educators say that unifying the San Gabriel School District would increase segregation in Alhambra and throw educational programs into chaos. The Alhambra district serves students in Alhambra, Monterey Park and parts of San Gabriel. San Gabriel High School would lose 61% of its non-minority students if San Gabriel schools are unified, an Alhambra district report states.

“They have no facility, no curriculum, nothing to offer their students,” Alhambra Supt. Bruce H. Peppin said of San Gabriel. He denied accusations that Alhambra school officials have failed to respond to educational complaints made by San Gabriel residents.

“We don’t believe that comment,” Peppin said. “We’ve had very close working relationships for many, many years in curriculum and other programs. We certainly think we are responsive.”

There have been three unsuccessful attempts to unify the district in the past 25 years, Peppin said. But, unlike previous elections, which included voters in Alhambra and San Gabriel, this time only residents within the San Gabriel School District will vote.

Approval for the vote and designation of who is eligible to participate came last winter, after a hearing by the State Board of Education. The board overruled the Los Angeles County Committee on School District Reorganization, which had recommended denial of San Gabriel’s petition for unification.

San Gabriel officials point out that Alhambra would have several years to adjust its enrollment and curriculum to reflect the loss of the 1,300 high school students.

San Gabriel officials plan to form their first high school classes in 1996 from that year’s graduating eighth-grade class. Until then, students would have the option of continuing to attend San Gabriel High School in the Alhambra school district or applying for transfers to attend another district.

San Gabriel will also have several years to develop its own high school curriculum, although officials concede that students might be attending school in portable classrooms for several years while a permanent facility is built.

But parents say they are ready to make sacrifices. They point out that San Gabriel High School in the Alhambra district is overcrowded, so that a school built for 1,800 is now housing twice as many students. It has inadequate bathroom, cafeteria and parking facilities, they say.

“I wouldn’t care if they dug a hole and put a sheet over it,” said parent Roy Seltzer, who said she wants her seventh-grader, Raymond, to attend high school in San Gabriel, even if it is only a muddy construction site.