Alpine Student’s Death Haunts Board as Attendance Boundaries Change

The auto death of a Granite Hills High School student was a tragic backdrop as the Grossmont Union High School District board Thursday night voted to change attendance boundaries for its nine traditional campuses.

Thousands of new students may attend a different school than originally planned as soon as the fall of 2012. 

The school board voted 4-1 to change the district’s boundary areas (attached). Priscilla Schreiber cast the dissenting vote at the meeting in El Cajon. (Helix and Steele Canyon charter high schools, with their own admissions polices, are essentially unaffected by the new maps.)

Students, parents and community members argued against the new boundary map, known as Model 9, because it does not include a new high school in Alpine. Students living in Alpine have been commuting to other schools in East County.

Alpine resident Albert Haven said a new high school is needed to decrease travel time and increase safety. He cited the death of Devon Sambhi, a 16-year-old Alpine resident killed in a crash Thursday morning while heading to Granite Hills High School. (Authorities suspect he wasn't wearing a seat belt in the Old Highway 80 incident.)

“Tragically, we realized today, we lost another student," Haven said. “Use your head. Build that school for Alpine. We don’t want to lose any more kids.”

Grossmont High School ASB President Grace Crummett echoed Haven’s thoughts.

“We lost one student today,” Crummett said. “We can’t risk losing another student. It’s really important that the safety of every single student in our district is thought of when making this decision.”

(Adding to the tragedy, Sambhi’s father also died Thursday on the same highway, a head-on crash being investigated as a suicide.)

Boundary Committee Chairman Doug Deane said his only disappointment with the Model 9 study is that the new boundaries would increase the number of students outside the walking district boundaries by about 24 percent.

“Reality is that you can’t equalize the populations of the schools without moving the students around,” he said. “It’s inevitable. We saw the consequences of putting students on the road today, and we sincerely did our best to try and minimize that impact.”

Board member Schreiber said the panel was “pigeonholing our students in our district” by accepting Model 9.

“We lost a child today,” Schreiber said. “Reality just hit home today. Big time. The whole reason we wanted to build that school was to service the needs of the community in Alpine and Blossom Valley. We have done everything to the contrary.

“If the intent of this board is to truly build a high school when we can connect all the dots, then why are we putting a long-lasting boundary in place tonight?"

Board president Robert Shield reaffirmed the board’s intent to build a high school in Alpine, and the boundaries will be adjusted again once the school is built.

“When the day comes that we construct a 12th high school, we will adjust the boundaries because we need students to go to the 12th high school,” Shield said. “But to simply say that we are not going to do anything with the boundaries until we have a 12th high school, we’ll only, I think, exacerbate a problem that exists right now, and you will see ever-increasing disparity in enrollment numbers between the largest and the smallest school in our district.”

Speakers also argued against the boundary changes because of differences in programs at the East County campuses.

“We are in a declining enrollment. You are in a declining enrollment,” Tamara Otero said. “It’s a good time for choice. You think that you should make the choice for us? You’re wrong.”

Andrew Otero warned that some parents might choose charter or private schools over GUHSD schools if board members approved the changes, which won’t affect existing students at any of the campuses.

“If you don’t give us a choice, you will lose enrollment, guaranteed,” Otero said. “You’re supposed to represent your constituents and their desires, a few people representing many. Hopefully, by your vote, you’re going to represent them and you’re going to vote against these boundary changes and you will vote for choice."

Superintendent Ralf Swenson reminded board members that current district boundaries were established in 2000. In March, the district formed a volunteer boundary committee to make recommendations to the board that would address demographic changes in student populations.

According to Swenson, Grossmont High School, Granite Hills High School, El Cajon Valley High School and Valhalla High School are overcapacity with 2,609 students, 2,751 students, 2,283 students and 2,140 students, respectively. Santana High School, Mount Miguel High School, Monte Vista High School and El Capitan High School have fewer students than the 2,000-student average recommended by the boundary committee.

The district recently held three public information forums on proposed changes to the boundaries—at West Hills High School, Los Coches Creek Middle School and Monte Vista High School.

To address some of the concern of district parents, Swenson said the district would extend the sibling privilege until 2016. A child can now attend the same high school a sibling attended even if that sibling has already graduated from the school, he said.

“Ours is a changing community. We have changing demographics,” Swenson said. “This model has addressed a lot of those concerns and moved us in the direction of achieving many of the goals that we had hoped to do so in this study.”