ARTICLES

It Looks Like It Is Going To Happen

Uni High Death Agony

By Robert Kumpel

In 2006, University of San Diego High School is scheduled to close, and Cathedral High School will open. Slated for location in Carmel Valley, near the merge of Interstates 5 and 805, Cathedral High School will accomodate 2000 students, compared with University's current enrollment of 1450. The diocese claims that the move is necessary to accomodate the growing Catholic population of North County, but some Catholic parents in central San Diego are not pleased.

One University High and USD alumnus, who asked to remain anonymous while his daughter's acceptance to the high school was pending, said, "We deal with families every day whose kids are in parochial schools, and they can't understand why they want to close Uni. We're concerned because the location of this new school leaves us in the central part of the city without a co-ed Catholic high school. Almost any parent you talk to is going to tell you, 'Great, build that school. Build all the schools you want, but don't abandon us,' because that's basically what the bishop is doing. The most difficult thing that I can't understand is that he (the bishop) has not come out and talked to us. He has not sent his director of the schools out to talk to us. No surveys have been done. They had a spokesperson come out about a year ago, and the guy didn't have any answers to any of our questions as far as the drive up there and trying to fight the traffic and the concerns we have as parents about sending our kids way up there. The thing is, there is a new Jewish academy that's going in there, there's a new business park, projects for more housing and the traffic is bad already. I can't understand it. He's effectively locking us out. It's a tough decision, but when my son gets to that age, I'm not going to send my wife and children to drive up there every day in that nightmare traffic." So where will he send his son? "I don't know. We had it all planned out.

"Now we have to sit back and think about what we're going to do. There are public school options, other private schools, and Saints. I'm not real high on single-sex education, so they're not high on my list, but we have to consider it now. I'm sure not sending him all the way up there."

One University High secretary seemed to agree with the alumnus. "We've been trying to fight this for a while. However, it's kind of in the bishop's hands. Nobody has been thrilled about it by any means. There is a lot of unhappiness about the relocation. We do know that we need a new school. It would be nice to keep this one and fix it, because the school is in disrepair in a lot of areas, but we were hoping to build a new school closer in. However, the bishop has chosen to do it there to meet the needs of this area and North County." When it was suggested that perhaps the bishop was just taking the high school to a more financially lucrative population, she agreed. "Mm-hmm. You're probably right. We did fight this, and our parents did talk about it. It's almost like your hands are tied. It's his vision. Now the question is whether or not he'll be able to get the funding to do it."

Probably the greatest impact will be felt at St. Augustine and Our Lady of Peace Academy, the only two Catholic high schools that will be left in the center city area. Both are already at capactiy enrollment.

Tony Sabatino, acting principal at St. Augustine's (principal Father John Sanders, died in November, 2000) said that there's no practical way to expand enrollment to meet the increased demand that will result from University's closing. "We're in a position now where the physical size of the campus would not allow us to grow any larger than we are. The board of trustees just wrote a strategic plan and one of the parameters of the plan was to decide the limitation of student enrollment. Father John wrote the proposal for the board to review. In October, after much discussion, the board indicated that as a guideline for our planning for the future, that Saints would not grow any larger than 700 students. We recognize the issues of the diocese, but for our purposes here at Saints and what we try to accomplish as the Saints experience, we recognize that even if we were at a larger facility, 700 would be the limit of what we feel would give us the opportunity to convey that Saints experience to kids. Once you start getting into that 1000 to 1500 student range, you'll lose what's offered here at our school. Our board felt that even though there is that prospective interest in our school, frankly, that 700 limit is what we need to stay on. It would not be St. Augustine High School if we went to a higher capacity."

As for the parents in central San Diego, the only alternative Sabatino sees is Marian (which will be moved from Imperial Beach to Otay Ranch and re-named Mater Dei). "It's a fantastic school under terrific leadership. In terms of the central city, I don't know what to say. Those are questions that Tom Beecher (diocesan superintendent of schools) would answer. I wouln't feel comfortable commenting on it. I'm so focused on what we do here and not to eliminate our position in secondary education -- it's a tough call. It's more directed toward what the diocese has intended to do."

Mrs. De Winter, who works in admissions at Our Lady of Peace, said that as far as she knew, there were no plans to try to accomodate additional enrollment. "We only have so much actual land that we can even build on and we're at capacity right now. I don't see that changing in the future."

One parishioner of St. Mary Magdalene Parish in Bay Park has a daughter who is a senior at University and a son in the seventh grade at the School of the Madeleine who she had hoped to send to University. "I'm not happy about this. I called the office at Uni one time and they said not to worry about it, it probably wasn't going to happen, but I just got the monthly letter and now it looks like it is going to happen. There's Torrey Pines and La Costa Canyon, so they already have two good high schools up there. Moving Uni and changing the name is terrible. The name change really irritates me because there's no continuity with the Uni tradtion and it's not something you would associate with USD." While University was once at the top of her son's list, his plans have since changed. "I've already had him apply to Bishops, and I would obviously look into Saints. Other than that, I don't know. The traffic is another thing. They couldn't have picked a worse traffic-congested area in San Diego. I don't understand having this huge school. We don't want a huge school. Part of what makes Uni special is that it is small. Bishops has just 100 students! I don't know any parents who are happy about this. So many come from Chula Vista, San Ysidro, Tijuana, El Cajon, every place. I was told that USD wanted the land back, but I don't know if that's true or not. But when you hear that they're going to move it, build it and change the name, it sounds like there must be more to it."

With only two months on the job, diocesan schools superintendent Tom Beecher, has taken much of the heat for the decision to move University High School -- a decision he had no part of. Beecher has studied the project and is convinced that there were no other options. "We did a feasability study about five years ago and, at that time in those dollars, we were faced with a 20 million dollar rebuilding project for University. That would have refurbished their campus -- a campus that is woefully indadequate in terms of what a modern high school could offer its students. Because of its 'postage-stamp' size, the site is unable to support extensive extracurricular activites. That was in the mid-90s. At the same time, there was a search on to find property where they could relocate, which would make more sense -- build a brand new school instead of refurbish the old one. Right now they have 35 modular buildings scattered all over the hillsides on campus. Those were temporary measures to meet an expanding population. What we found out in trying to rebuild there is that the city would not allow us to rebuild for the current population -- if we spent 20 million dollars on that site, the maximum population would likely be between 800 and 1000 students. That would require the school to reduce its current enrollment by a third. That was unacceptable.

"That forced the diocese into looking for additional property that they could move to. We tried to get a property off of 52, which would have been ideal, but we were unable to secure it and lost our right to purchase it. That forced the diocese to look at properties further north, which is unfortunate because I do know that's going to cause difficulty for the center city population. There was also a lot of discussion about building a smaller school off of 56 and keeping Uni open. But we would have still faced the rebuilding project at 20 million dollars.

"The second thing is, 75 percent of the enrollment right now comes from either the city beaches or north of Interstate 8. Most of those students would probably have gone to a brand new high school, so a new high school up there would have been an attraction for the students going in that direction. What that means is University would have been more or less suspect because of the nature of the enrollment. Enrollment would have decreased significantly, and, in addition, the service area would have been coming from the lower income areas of center city, which probably would not have allowed them to remain open for long. In the minds of the feasability people, it would have been a slow death. We have an expanding population with nearly a million Catholics. We have about 1200 to 1300 eighth graders graduating from Catholic schools each year. Overall, the number of seats we have available to them in all of our high schools is about 850, so if every student wanted to go to a Catholic high school, they couldn't, because we wouldn't have enough room for them now. We're trying to broaden the number of seats available for Catholic students throughout the county. This school that we're planning is the first in a series of three that we hope to build. All the properties have already been purchased by the diocese and set aside as part of this initiative. We're in the midst of a campaign to try to raise money for each of them, but specifically for the Cathedral site first. Probably 80 percent of the Uni population would move in that direction and we feel that their needs need to be addressed first."

The first parent mentioned in this article is not convinced of the accuracy of Beecher's numbers. "When a spokesman from the bishop came out to talk to us--it wasn't Beecher or the previous superindentent -- this spokesman had a map of where the students who attended Uni came from with the number of students and their zip codes. About 75 percent of them came from Point Loma all the way out to Tierrasanta. That means that 75 percent of the population of Uni comes from the central part of the city. Uni is a small school and it doesn't have all the facilities, but for 40 years we've made do. The parents, teachers, and students have gone out to find the facilities. We've had championship soccer teams, championship football teams, championship basketball teams ... you can't tell me you don't have the facilities there and we don't find them."

Beecher hints that the name change could hint at more changes to come. "I'm not sure how long the cathedral's going to be downtown. The initial study that was done was to put the cathedral near this new location in the central part of the county. The area of St. Joseph's Cathedral and the population they're serving is fairly small in comparison to what they used to serve 10 or 20 years ago. This is me -- it's not coming from the diocese and it's not official in any way -- but I don't know if, long term, St. Joseph's Cathedral will stay there. That may not be for another ten years. I'm new, but that's the undergound of what I'm picking up here."

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