Dept of Education Declared SJHHS Site is Deficient

If you make the time to wander around San Juan Hills High School as I have, you will come away with the feeling that the site is crowded and small. And once all the "land not owned", setback issues, and portable classrooms are resolved, usable space will be even less. You would think that $150 million would buy a large facility, especially in a remote and unimproved area such as this. How did this happen?

The California Department of Education (CDE) has a standard for the size of public high schools. This standard is used by CDE to evaluate applications for school approval and matching funds for school construction. We are repeatedly told by CUSD officials that SJHHS is "approved by CDE". But how can it be that this school is only 75% of the required minimum size?

The CDE standard requires 67 acres of land for the 2691 student enrollment planned by CUSD and yet the school itself consists of only 50.3 acres -- and not all of this area is usable.

Credit: SJHHS ASB.

CUSD accomplished this trick by doing the site development process backwards. They bought the land, designed the school, and even started construction before obtaining approval from the state. CUSD was committed to the site -- in fact, they owned it and construction was underway -- before it was approved. In the application for approval CUSD set the projected enrollment of the school at a very low figure that made it appear that the school would comply with the state standard. The state was tricked!

CUSD kept all this a secret, in case anyone locally might question why they needed to build the school at all.

Within hours of obtaining CDE approval, CUSD announced the true plan for enrollment in revised documents. The state was quick to react, issuing an "Supersede Site Approval" letter only two weeks after issuing the original approval. This second approval letter stated that the site is deficient.

The property approved for acquisition and/or use is 50.33 gross acres of which 50.33 are usable for school purposes. This represents 75.12% of the California Department of Education's recommended master plan site size of 67 acres as contained in the California Department of Education's Guide to School Site Analysis and Development (2000).

Unfortunately, by the time this was written nobody was paying attention.

CDE then went on to recommend financial support and the State Allocation Board approved $65 million in matching funds. Why was the subterfuge tolerated? Whose interest was protected? Answers to these questions will require an investigation. However, documents already obtained by Public Records Act request paint a picture of strong dissent among CDE staff regarding SJHHS, including serious concerns about the size of the site, the pipeline, the power lines, and the excessive costs associated with landscaping and street improvements. Without actually addressing any of these questions, senior CDE staff intervened and issued the approval.

It is interesting to note that one dissenting CDE staff member, a person with more knowledge of the actual site conditions than anyone and whose name is printed on the signature block of the Site Approval letter, never signed either version of the document. Instead, her "signature" was provided by others.

This now explains the installation of portable classrooms at a brand-new school. CDE could not approve construction of permanent classrooms in excess of those required to serve the original false enrollment plan. The portables were added afterward to make up the difference between the fake plan and the actual need.

Why did CUSD do it? The answer is found at the school itself. It is obvious that an additional 17 acres of land is not available at this location. This site would have been abandoned because it is too small, had site approval been sought before becoming committed to the project.

SJHHS remains too small for projected enrollment yet today, and conditions surrounding the site threaten to make it smaller still.