I would like to add some information about the proposed project at the high school that wasn’t conveyed in your recent story. The project is more than a pool and a parking structure. The actual project includes two pools–one 50-meter pool (more than twice the size of the current pool) and a second 25-meter pool. This would amount to more than triple the area of the current pool. The pools, which would host meets with swimmers from out of town, would go where the current tennis courts are, and the courts would be moved to a deck over the current high school parking lot. Then, the current pool area would be turned into a two-story parking garage. Finally, the district offices would be moved across the street to a corner in front of the high school administration building at Short Street and Legion Street. It would be two stories, and let’s face it, would have a great ocean view down Legion Street.
Does this make any sense for a high school that has enrollment of 1,000 kids, and declining? And how are people going to get to this aquatic center on our tiny streets that are already jammed every day after school, and on the weekends when traffic can back up all the way up Park Avenue?
Every year the Laguna Beach Independent does a story about the exorbitant salary of our school superintendent–currently $331,000 plus retirement, health benefits and a monthly $1,000 allowance for a cell phone, internet and other expenses. This is comparable to the superintendent of the Irvine School District, in a system of 43 schools, and 36,000 students. There are also various assistants hired at over $250,000 each to study some shiny new social program. And every year. I think, “Wow, that’s crazy. I should write a letter to the editor expressing my shock.”
Over time there have been several other stories of parents’ wishes being ignored when it came to keeping the high school shut down after the younger kids got to go back to class or rearranging the school calendar. This seems to be a pattern with this superintendent: move into a tiny school district with a lot of money and start changing things that no one asked for, seemingly to build some sort of legacy and to justify the immense compensation. The ocean-view office just seems like the icing on the cake.
Susan Elliot, Laguna Beach
