Soon, the Freshmen Who Were Kings Will Be Graduates

In 1994, when the doors of Gabrielino High School opened for the first time, hordes of 14-year-old freshmen walked in and took over.

Because Gabrielino was the San Gabriel Unified School District’s first high school, officials had to introduce students one grade at a time, creating a first-year campus populated entirely by ninth-graders.

Other pressures complicated the adjustment: As teachers tried to convince students that theirs was a real school, a neighboring school district’s lawsuit threatened to close Gabrielino. Meanwhile, a vocal handful of tax protesters opposed funding to enlarge the school.

Over the years, Gabrielino--a converted middle school campus--has inched toward normalcy. The threat of litigation eased, plans to seek more construction funding were finalized, and since September the school has had a full compliment of 1,370 students, from pubescent freshmen to seniors who shave.

Last week, Principal Dan Mooney kicked off official plans for the final validation: the first high school graduation the city of San Gabriel can call its own.

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In his office, Mooney stands in front of a flip chart he and his colleagues have constructed detailing graduation duties. Names are attached to tasks: Murphy: music. Crist: speakers. Tait: senior gift. More firsts need to be planned: college admission announcements, scholarship awards, homecoming and the senior

prom--standard high school ingredients that San Gabriel has never experienced.

“It kind of crept up on us,” says the burly principal. “Someone had to say, ‘Guys, guess what? We’re going to have a graduation this year.’ ”

Senior Annie Allen, who remembers feeling cheated upon her arrival at Gabrielino in 1994, now concedes that the experience “helped us to mature a lot faster. I never got to feel that uncertainty that you feel when you’re a freshman.”

Before the establishment of Gabrielino, the San Gabriel school district operated only kindergarten through eighth grade; the city’s teenagers left San Gabriel to attend high school in neighboring communitiies, usually Alhambra.

In 1992, residents approved a ballot measure that reorganized the district and created a local high school. Gabrielino began admitting students two years later, creating a world in which freshmen were king.

“It was funny,” said Gabrielino English department Chairwoman Kathryn Konoske. “You had a high school, but you only had very small people. We had a student body president who was a freshman, we went out debating other schools with only a freshman team, and it was kind of strange to see our 14-year-old varsity cheerleaders.”

Senior Selma Mashri recalled the awkwardness of lacking older students as role models. “We didn’t know what to do, what to expect, or how we should do things.”

From classes to couture, Gabrielino’s seniors / freshmen had to set the standard. They chose the school’s colors, wrote the cheers that would inspire future Gabrielino athletes, set the tone and tradition for years to come.

It occasionally took a toll on Gabrielino’s collective ego. The first varsity football team, consisting of the school’s sophomores and juniors in 1996, went winless.

But football captain Jason Coble said that made this year’s victories that much sweeter. Years from now, he says, he’ll tell his children about scoring Gabrielino’s first winning touchdown. “I can say I was on the first varsity team, and we can say we were the pioneers.”

Student adjustment was also filled with the tension of wondering whether the school would survive.

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Gabrielino’s creation had riled the neighboring city of Alhambra, whose school district stood to lose thousands of prospective students as well as the yearly $1.4 million in state educational funding they represented.

The year before Gabrielino was to open, the Alhambra Unified School District legally challenged the 1992 San Gabriel district reorganization on the grounds that Alhambra residents were not included in the vote.

Five months before classes began, a Superior Court judge ruled that the reorganization vote was invalid. But San Gabriel Unified gambled that it would win on appeal, and opened the school.

“The people hired . . . took a job here knowing that if we lost that lawsuit they were out of a job,” Mooney said. “It was pretty scary.”

Students circulated rumors that they might soon be sent to other schools. Some Gabrielino teachers turned the experience into a learning tool. George Carney, coach of the school’s mock trial team, took a handful of his budding lawyers to one of the court hearings.

In December 1994--three months into the first school year--a state appeals court ruled in San Gabriel’s favor: Gabrielino would remain open.

Student Lauren Martinez remembers how her classmates reacted upon hearing the news. “The teachers passed out this orange slip of paper that said, ‘Alhambra has lost!’ with big exclamation points, and everyone clapped. We were all ‘Oh, yay!’ ” she said with a laugh.

The relief, however, didn’t come cheap. According to San Gabriel Unified Supt. Gary Goodson, the district spent more than $200,000 on legal fees connected to the Alhambra suit. San Gabriel Unified is also still waiting for voters to approve a bond measure to add buildings to the school. Voters have twice rejected similar proposals. The first campaign, in 1993, gave rise to a “Save Our Homes” movement that opposed the creation of the school because of the increase in local property taxes.

Goodson, who hopes the next bond election will be held next spring, has tried to assure voters that the bond money will be used for all grades, not just the high school.

Cramped as it is, the faculty accepts the challenge with enthusiasm.

“I’m more tired now than I have been in my entire life,” said Sharron Heinrich, chairwoman of the social studies department. “But there’s still so much to do. Now we have the attitude that it’s really, truly beginning.”