Parents in Cardiff Battle Plan for New Junior High

CARDIFF —  Enough is enough. Parents in the Cardiff Elementary School District are not looking forward to shuttling their children long distances to different junior high schools.

Most Cardiff parents now must take their youngsters to Oak Crest Junior High in Encinitas--about a mile and a half away. A few make the three-mile bus trip to Earl Warren Junior High in Solana Beach. And the bus trip will get even longer when a third junior high opens in the western Village Park area about 3 1/2 miles from Cardiff.

Last summer, Cardiff residents circulated petitions and gathered enough signatures to call a special March 5 election to decide whether the Cardiff district could create a “middle school” to educate Cardiff children in their own hometown.

It seemed like a simple matter, but San Dieguito Union High School district officials didn’t think so.

The high school district is taking Cardiff officials to court because they believe all voters in the 80-square-mile district should decide whether Cardiff is entitled to withdraw its students.

Cardiff officials contend that only parents in the elementary school district should vote because the election will affect only Cardiff students.

Central to the controversy is the new $5.6-million Diegueno Junior High School in Encinitas that is due to open in September.

High school district officials say that the school is being built based on enrollment projections that included Cardiff students. Both parties will air their views on the issue in San Diego Superior Court on Feb. 14--Valentine’s Day.

“The basic issue is the impact this move could have,” said William Berrier, San Dieguito High School District superintendent. The new junior high school is being built to house additional seventh, eighth and ninth graders, Berrier said. And, because there is a “financial impact on the entire area, the high school district is challenging the validity of the election because it will affect more people,” he said.

Berrier said it was “common knowledge” that the new school was being planned and that Cardiff made its decision to withhold students “after they knew the application was filed.”

The high school district applied to build the junior high school five years ago and received funding for it from the state in January, 1984, he said.

Cardiff officials contend that population growth in the North City West and Encinitas areas will fill the void created if their students pull out.

Berrier said the potential for significant growth in the area does exist in the long run, but not for some time. Enrollment in the elementary grades is slumping since the baby boom of the ‘70s.

Cardiff’s plans to withhold students “will cause us some financial grief during that period of time.”

The San Dieguito district could lose about $500,000 a year if Cardiff withholds its students, Berrier said. The school receives $2,500 per student per year from property taxes and state funds. Cardiff officials receive about $2,020 per student per year and could gain $404,000 per year by withholding the students.

Cardiff’s decision comes at a “time when we have additional expenses of operation of another plant,” Berrier said.

Cardiff School District Supt. Joseph Fazio said that if the district’s plans are approved, no students would be withheld until September, 1986. By that time, he said, area population growth will replace the students in question.

A 1984 superintendent’s report issued from Berrier’s office said the high school district had more building projects last year than at any point in its history. The report said the district had to add 29 classrooms to accommodate students who had moved to the area during the summer. Berrier, however, said the added space was required for upper-classmen--in grades nine through 12--not for junior high students.

A study prepared by the Carlsbad-based North Coastal Consortium for Special Education said that, during the next five years, all schools in the district will have substantial growth. The study said that Del Mar will increase by about 100 students per year; Encinitas by 200 each year; Solana Beach by 45 students a year, and San Dieguito by 200.

Based on the results of the study, Fazio said, “there will be more than enough growth to offset the loss of 200 students over the next three years.” That 200 is the number the Cardiff superintendent estimates will attend a Cardiff middle school.

The middle school concept is not new, Fazio said. The number of middle schools nationwide grew from 1,000 in 1967 to more than 4,000 only 10 years later, he said. In California, the number of middle schools increased during that same period from 131 to 229.

“What we’re trying to do is not something revolutionary,” Fazio said. “It’s something that’s happening throughout the state.”

The question of who should vote in the upcoming election has become a burning issue.

Terry Knoepp, the attorney representing Cardiff, said the question is whether Cardiff parents will determine where their children are educated.

“If the whole district votes, then Cardiff parents are disenfranchised completely because they comprise only 12% of the voters,” he said. Cardiff parents in December numbered only 6,313 of the 53,388 voters in the San Dieguito district, Knoepp said.

A section of the California State Education Code says that “any school district within a junior high school or system of junior high schools . . . may withdraw from the junior high system when a majority of the qualified voters in the district . . . vote in favor of the withdrawal.”

The code “has been interpreted to mean that the elementary school parents will have the say over where their seventh- and eighth-grade students will be educated,” Knoepp said. “That’s the issue. The Education Code sections have been consistently used in the manner in which Cardiff is using them today.”

The code was used by Rancho Santa Fe in the early 1970s to withdraw from the San Dieguito district, Knoepp said.

Paul Loya, attorney for the high school district, said, “All citizens have the right to vote, not just those residing in the elementary district removing the students.” Not allowing all members of the district to vote is a denial of equal protection under the the law, he said.

Loya bases his argument on a 1982 California Supreme Court case involving the Fullerton High School district and the California Board of Education. In that case, the school district was trying to bring ninth-, 10th-, 11th- and 12th-graders into a kindergarten through eighth-grade elementary district.

“The court ruled that voters throughout the high school district must vote, not just those in the district withdrawing the students,” Loya said. “The district feels that all of the voters in the high school district should have an opportunity to vote on this.”