Planned School in the Hills Has ‘Torn Apart’ San Juan

These should be the best of times for San Juan Capistrano -- the swallows are on final approach, the mission’s 15-year remodel is nearly complete and construction on what will be the town’s first public high school in 40 years is but a few months away.

But it’s hard to find anyone in a partying mood. A yearlong debate over the merits of building an upscale housing tract and a public high school in the foothills east of the city’s picturesque downtown has put folks on edge.

“Our community has been torn apart by this,” Mayor John Gelff said. “I feel like we’ve been through a civil war. You’re either blue or gray and there’s no middle ground. It’s almost like if you’re against the school, you’re a traitor. I think there will be scars from this that will never heal. And that hurts me.”

Marlene Draper, a 15-year board member for the school district that is building the high school, said she said has never seen her town endure such a battle.

“This is not an issue that should cause this much divisiveness,” said Draper, who has lived in San Juan for 25 years. “The high school is for the betterment of San Juan and for its children. All of us should be focusing on that and celebrating that.”

But it hasn’t gone that way. The school -- San Juan Hills High -- originally was part of a proposed housing tract and some thought that when the development was soundly defeated in a citywide vote last fall, the campus would go away with it.

San Juan Capistrano has been fiercely protective of the hills along the east side of town, repeatedly voting down plans to build homes in the canyons and along the ridges. So when the Capistrano Unified School District opted to push ahead with its plan for a high school in the hills, it left a bad taste with some locals.

“I’m hearing a whole lot of people saying, ‘What’s the point of going to the polls and voting when your elected officials ignore the vote?’ ” said Mark Nielsen, co-chairman of a citizens group that opposed the Whispering Hills development and led the drive to put it on the ballot.

Nielsen said he is disappointed the City Council hasn’t intervened and thinks town leaders have turned their backs on their constituents.

“They could have done a number of things to take more of a leadership role,” he said. “The appearance is that the school is running the show.”

Councilman David Swerdlin, who supported the Whispering Hills development, said it’s out of the city’s hands.

“The [citizens group] wants us to fight the school every step of the way,” Swerdlin said. “But that would be fruitless. The city has no power to stop the high school.

“I’d rather have the town draw together and find consensus on issues that we can deal with,” Swerdlin said. “This is one issue that we’ve lost control of.”

While voters clearly gave a thumbs down to the Whispering Hills plan, the town’s mood has been in doubt since 1999 when more than two-thirds of the voters agreed to tax themselves to help fund construction of a high school.

Some residents, like Ruth Lobo, believe the city needs its own high school, a campus the city can rally around. As it is, public school students in San Juan Capistrano are divided among four schools in neighboring cities.

Lobo was in the second-to-last graduating class at Capistrano Union, the town’s original high school, which shut down in 1963 when it was deemed to be antiquated and too small. She still lives a few blocks from her alma mater -- now a continuation school -- and said she has grown weary of the arguments against a new school.

“Sure, the school will cause traffic problems, but San Juan needs a school,” she said. “People say they want a high school, but they want the kids to be educated in some other area.

“I’ve found in my late years that you have to learn to compromise,” Lobo said. “It’s a disgrace that our kids have been without their own school for 40 years.”

District officials say that by fall 2005, the scheduled opening date of San Juan Hills, enrollment at each of the other four high schools in the district will exceed 3,000 students. The new campus will draw about 1,600 students from San Juan Capistrano and 400 from the communities of Talega and Ladera Ranch.

“Once we finally settled on a site, the concern was about the number of houses in the development and traffic,” said Dave Doomey, Capistrano’s associate superintendent of facilities planning. “Then after the election, they were upset with the district. Now the charge is simply, ‘Not here.’ ”

Mayor Gelff, who cast the sole vote against the 175-home development and school last year, is among those who wonder why the district didn’t just build the school. Once it became part of the housing development plan, he said, the school was tainted by the costly and sometimes ugly election campaign.

But district officials say it is the district’s practice to team with developers when building schools to guarantee that the students and the community get the amenities they desire, such as ball fields and parks. For San Juan Hills, developer Dennis Gage would have funded a pool, a football stadium and $3 million worth of improvements to a nearby grade school.

Gage also promised to front the district $42 million in case Proposition 47, a state school bond issue, did not pass.

“If the state bond had not passed, we’d be dead in the water right now,” said David Smollar, a district spokesman.

The $100-million school will initially be built without a pool and football stadium. That upsets school backers such as Lobo, who don’t see an end to the conflict anytime soon.

“The bottom line now seems like it’s not so much about the school, but who’s going to win,” Lobo said. “These people keep saying we want to preserve our small-town character, so let’s stop the school and the extra traffic. But what small town do they know of that doesn’t have a high school for their kids?”