By Christy Scott
The Alpine Sun
     ALPINE — A projected drop in Grossmont Union High School District enrollment may later impact plans for a new high school in Alpine, but GUHSD officials assured residents at a Nov. 7 meeting, that the district will go forward with current efforts.
     There was a packed room for this, the latest meeting of the Alpine High School Citizen Committee, which featured a report by GUHSD officials.
     In recent weeks, GUHSD board members voted to hire the services of a site selection company and are moving forward with a search for an appropriate site for a new high school.
     “This board has been very single minded in bringing this high school to Alpine,” said GUHSD Superintendent Terry Ryan.
     “The board has been very clear that they intend to build a school in Alpine,” Ryan said. “The state ultimately has the final say, but we’re not looking at any other sites and we’ve been very consistent with that goal.”
     The newest player on the Alpine high school team is Daryl Hernandez of Essentia Management Services, LLC, the company that has been selected to help in the environmental and land acquisition process.
     In the summer, eight firms submitted statements of qualification for state environmental and land acquisition consultants. The firms were reviewed by a panel of school district personnel and, on Sept. 2, five of those firms were interviewed by the district, Essentia ultimately won the contract. Hernandez has been building and permitting schools since 2000 and has dealt with the strict environmental rules set by the state.
     “It’s a pretty rigorous review process that they make us go through,” Hernandez said.
     “There is a regulatory framework that exists, that will drag this process out for much longer that it should be,” said GUHSD board member Ron Nehring at the Oct. 13 board meeting. “It is an exhaustive, time consuming, and mind numbing process, which is subject to all kinds of litigation if it’s not done properly.”
     “It’s important for the community to know and understand that we have to live with this myriad of regulations that are set by the state. We do not have the power to waive them,” Nehring said. “We have to live in this box and go through this process — it takes too long.”
     Several meeting participants were concerned about the placement of the new high school and questioned Ryan and Hernandez about possible building sites. Neither would answer specific questions about possible sites, as Essentia has not begun its search for land in Alpine.
     “This has to be done with confidentiality,” Ryan said. “We’re not interested in making a lot of money for any particular developer or land owner. We’re just not in that business. We’re only interested in bringing quality education to students.”
     Ryan also said that, although at later stages the district will seek public input on the school, the site selection is not one of those.
     “Site selection is a private endeavor,” he said. “We do want public input, but the site selection process is not the time.”
     For Essentia to begin its search for the school site in Alpine, the board must give them some direction. This includes determining the size of the school via future population projections for the area and funding sources. According to Vincent, a school with a population of 1,200 to 1,600 students will need more than 30 acres in space.
According to Hernandez, “If everything lined up perfectly — if we got land and everything was moving forward — I figure it would take a year to two years to find a site.”
     “Right now, we’re getting ready to have all these discussions,” Ryan said. He said he expects that the board will provide direction to siting company in the next three to four months. At that point, Essentia will begin the process of searching Alpine for possible sites.
     A major funding source for the construction of the new school is Proposition H, which was passed by voters in the March 2004 election. $274,000,000 was granted for the purpose of GUHSD repairs and maintenance, as well as the construction of the district’s twelfth high school.
     Some concern was raised by participants about the threat of new eminent domain regulations on the search for a site.
     “The school district, by law, has the right to confiscate property,” Cornelius said. “This option is always available to us, but our hope is to always be good negotiators and avoid having to do that.”
     The struggle for a new high school in Alpine has been ongoing for many years, and advocates are finally seeing the fruits of their labors.
     “We have never gotten to this point before,” said GUHSD board member and Alpine resident Larry Urdahl. “This is the closest we’ve ever gotten to getting a high school in Alpine.”
     “We were ready for this high school, like, last year,” he added. “We’re tired of waiting.”
     “I’d like to think that we’re on the shorter side of five to seven years to get this high school,” Urdahl said. “I shouldn’t say this as a board member, but I’m really very optimistic about this school.”
     “Larry Urdahl has really been an advocate for Alpine,” said GUHSD board president Jim Kelly at the Oct. 13 board meeting. “I think that we all here would consider ourselves advocates for Alpine as well.”
     “There were big plans a long time ago and things were promised by this board, and somewhere along the way, before any of us here were on the board, things sort of got sidetracked towards Steele Canyon,” Kelly said. “We want to show that we’re still going to follow through with the things that this board said it would do.”
     Jerry Vincent, GUHSD’s executive director of school construction and building services, was also on hand at the citizen’s committee meeting and said he is glad to be part of the long-awaited Alpine project. He brings with him the experience of being involved with the construction of 24 new schools, four of which were high schools.

Dropping enrollment could affect new school
     According to district officials, the majority of area schools are seeing a drop in student enrollment numbers.
     “These schools are all seeing dramatic and constant drops in enrollment,” Ryan said.
     The high school district is best able to forecast future enrollment numbers by looking to the elementary feeder schools in the area.
     In general, looking at school enrollment numbers for the previous five years, there has been a slight downturn at the elementary school stage of about 100 to 150 students per year. At the high school levels, total enrollment jumps significantly between the eighth and ninth grades. About 1,000 new students are on the books each year.
     However, the numbers for the 2005-2006 year are only slightly lower, the projections that reach until the 2010-2011 school year steadily decrease. Bob Cornelius estimated approximately 4,000 fewer students enrolled in the district in the next five years.
     GUHSD loses about $6,000 in revenue from ADA money per student and that leaves the district with an estimated loss of $53 million over the course of 10 years.
     “The last few years, I haven’t been very popular because I’ve had to cut the budget to the tune of $23 million dollars,” Ryan said. He added that the drop in student numbers are a major contributor to lacking funds, as well as cuts at the state level.
     The 4,000-student drop is also equal to the average occupancy size of two high schools — a problem that the board will have to consider as they move toward building a new high school in the district. 
     “This doesn’t mean that we won’t get a high school in Alpine,” Ryan said. “But the board will have to look at the situation and make some tough decisions.”
     “We need to look 25-30 years into the future,” Urdahl said. “These demographics are temporary. We know that. Has San Diego County ever really experienced a population drop? Not really.”
     Some of the options that Ryan laid out for dealing with the decline in students include school closures and redistribution of students to other sites or the operation of smaller schools. According to Ryan, there are several ways to deal with the problem and the board will have to discuss the matter.
     “I’d rather close an old school in Grossmont that’s going to cost $30 to $40 million to fix, and build a new high school in Alpine for probably half that,” Urdahl said.
     Several participants at the meeting wondered where these students were going, and why, with the growing population in San Diego County, are schools seeing this decline.
     According to Bob Cornelius, the GUHSD assistant superintendent of business services, many families have moved away from the area due to high cost of living and condo conversions of apartment buildings. Some students no doubt attend private schools or are home-schooled, Cornelius guessed.
     “We use all the info available to come up with these demographics,” Cornelius said. “Sometimes we get contacted and told that the student is leaving, but other times these kids are just gone and we have no record of where they’ve gone.”
     Mark Price, chair of the Alpine Union School District board, believes that the area loses many families due to the fact that there is no high school in Alpine.
     “We would grow if we were able to keep the families here,” he said. “We have to stop busing our kids hours and hours to get them to school.”

E-mail Christy Scott