By Ashley Mackin | SDUN Editor

On March 9, parents, teachers and students of Normal Heights Elementary School gathered to protest the opening of the school’s play area and walking paths as a joint-use park.

Due to a joint-use land agreement between San Diego Unified School District and San Diego Parks and Recreation Department, the school grounds will be open as a public park from 4 p.m. until 8:30 a.m.

However, many parents expressed concern over their children’s safety with the campus being open to the public, as well as concern for the children in their after school program, called Six to Six.

Lisa Ames, head of the Parent Teacher Association (PTA), and her husband organized the protest. “We believe our children are in danger,” she said, “there are still children on the campus from 7 a.m. until 6 p.m. [and] there is a public bathroom that will be open on our campus, [which] only locks from the inside.”

Ames also said there are approximately 70 students in the Six to Six program, which offers tutoring and after school supervision for students until 6 p.m. and said she is concerned those children would have to be kept inside if the school grounds were open at 4 p.m. “They wont be able to go outside and play, they will have to stay inside the auditorium so they are safe… [and] they will be locked in their classrooms,” she said. “It’s not fair to our children. We feel like our children are being jailed.”

She added the Normal Heights Community Planning Group, who spearheaded the project to open the school as a joint-use park, suggested the parents come to the after school program to watch their children. Ames said, “The point of Six to Six is the parents are working. This is a lower income school; the parents all work.”

Approximately 75 parents and students gathered with signs in front of the school as a representative from Parks and Recreation unlocked the gate to the public space.

Penny Jones, whose daughter is in kindergarten at Normal Heights Elementary, said, “It’s a beautiful campus; [it’s] nice and clean. It’s just frustrating that they are going to open the school to the public. There is going to be a lot of vandalism and youngsters doing the wrong thing. I’m just not for it. I don’t think it’s right.”

She added she has found drug paraphernalia in neighboring parks and fears she will find the same at the School.

Jim Baross, chair of the Normal Heights Community Planning Group, said when the school was built in 2005, the joint-use agreement was in place and the plan had always been to have the school become a joint-use park.

“The community… knows the mid-city area of Normal Heights is park deficient. The City has guidelines for park space as a ratio of population and when a new community gets developed the developers have to provide a certain number of parks,” he said. “Our community has very few.”

Baross added, “When the school grounds were being designed, those involved helped configure the grounds so it could be used by the public when school wasn’t in session.”

Ames said her concern was that the park, in its proposal stage, was never brought to the parents or community for input. She said, “Let’s bring this to the parents of the kids who actually go here and see what they have to say about it.”

Baross said while he sympathizes with the parents that are concerned with the children being around strangers, he also sympathizes with the community members wanting more park space.

“I asked an area manager for Parks and Recreation if they have a history of pedophiles or what has been the criminal activity with Ward Canyon Park or other joint–use agreement facilities,” Baross said, “and he said they did have a homeless camp they had to eradicate but it was… adjacent to [Ward Canyon] park.”

Ward Canyon Park is on the same block as Normal Heights Elementary School, which is located at 3750 Ward Road. There are two other public parks within a one-mile radius of the school.

Baross said, “I want to encourage the police to know this space is going to be open to the public and they should do drive-bys as they would at other parks.” Baross added he was looking forward to people using the park.

As a compromise, Ames said, the PTA would be willing to open the campus’s soccer field for public use, which is fenced off from the rest of the school. “[There is] no kid access, Six to Six doesn’t use it and it’s better than opening the rest of the campus,” she said. “There’s playground equipment; there [are] bathrooms; [and] there’s a huge field they can play soccer in. They don’t need our school.”