A City-in-Waiting for High School

San Juan Capistrano prides itself on its small-town feel, its equestrian lifestyle and its 200-year old mission. But for nearly four decades, it’s lacked a key piece of Americana: a hometown high school.

Capistrano Union High closed in 1963, antiquated and undersized. The old campus is now a continuation school, and the school’s playing fields--once the site of Friday night football games with rivals such as Laguna Beach and Tustin--have fallen into disrepair.

“One of the things that really makes a community is a high school, somebody to cheer for and a homecoming parade,” said Phil Schwartze, a longtime resident and a former mayor of San Juan Capistrano. “It’s a missing link here.”

Because of shifting school boundaries and open enrollment, Schwartze’s four sons attended three high schools in all--Dana Hills, Capistrano Valley and San Clemente, each in a different city.

“There are many stories like mine,” Schwartze said. “People are stuck with wearing all sorts of different colors when it comes to football season.”

But such confusion over school loyalty should draw to a close when San Juan Hills High opens, a state-of-the-art campus that will unify the town’s public high school students. The school, expected to open in fall 2005, will be near Ortega Highway, next to the planned development of Whispering Hills and near the Oaks Blenheim Rancho Mission Viejo Riding Park.

The opening of San Juan Hills High, being financed in part by a $65-million school bond approved in 1999, will help the school district solve a more pressing problem than school pride: crowding.

Capistrano Unified School District officials say their five high schools--Dana Hills, Aliso Niguel, San Clemente, Tesoro and Capistrano Valley--are bursting at the seams. Each has an enrollment of roughly 2,500 to 3,000, more than they were designed to handle. If San Juan Hills opens on schedule, and with coming attendance boundary changes, enrollment at each of the other schools would drop to a more manageable 2,200.

About 1,600 San Juan Capistrano students would attend San Juan Hills. Most of the other students would come from new communities outside the city, such as Ladera Ranch and Talega.

“Our children are much better served with smaller schools,” Superintendent Jim Fleming said. “We think 3,000 is too much. The kids get lost.”

Six elementary and middle schools will be built in Capistrano Unified by the time San Juan Hills opens. By then, boundaries will be redrawn for many schools in the district, which, at 200 square miles, is one of the state’s largest in area.

San Juan Capistrano lies smack in the middle of the district, but the town is carved up like a pie--some students attend high school in Dana Point, some in San Clemente and others in Mission Viejo.

Ruth Lobo remembers when most San Juan Capistrano students could walk to the town’s high school, which was just around the corner from the historic mission. Lobo, who still lives near the old high school, graduated in 1962, the year before the school closed.

When the school closed, students had to drive or take the bus to campuses in neighboring towns. Lobo’s son attended Capistrano Valley in Mission Viejo, a 10-mile round-trip from San Juan Capistrano. Others sent their children to one of three private high schools within city limits: St. Margaret’s, Capistrano Valley Christian and Saddleback Valley Christian.

District officials began looking for a new high school site more than a decade ago, but the pickings were limited. In 1999, about the time the school bond passed, officials found a suitable piece of property about a mile from the equestrian center on La Pata Road.

To the south and west is open land that eventually will be carved into Whispering Hills, a 193-home housing tract. Future residents of Whispering Hills, and those who live in nearby Talega and Ladera Ranch, will be assessed to help pay for the new school.

District officials expect construction to begin in 2003. Preliminary plans show a design similar to that of a small college campus. Each building would open onto a central courtyard.

“We wanted to create the idea of a school within a school,” said Austin Buffum, the district’s deputy superintendent. “We’re hoping to create clusters of 200 to 300 students per building so we can create closer relationships with students, teachers and administrators.”

The school’s specialty will be its performing arts complex, with a 650-seat amphitheater, an orchestra pit, catwalks, and dance, drama and video editing studios.

Those plans were borrowed from the proposed Orange County High School for the Arts in Los Alamitos, which was never built.

But athletics will not be left behind. The campus will have two gymnasiums, an aquatic center, tennis courts, a track, and fields for soccer, softball and football.

Lobo, who remembers her old school cheer--”Blue and white! Go team, fight!”--is among those looking forward to the new school.

“You’ve got to give the kids something to be proud of,” she said. “When they win, they don’t just win for themselves, but for the moms and dads and for the city.”