PALOMAR: New school opening on Palomar Mountain

Schoolhouse to be replaced with faith-based campus

By SHAYNA CHABNER - Staff Writer | Thursday, August 21, 2008 6:13 PM PDT ∞

PALOMAR MOUNTAIN �“�“ Rural mountain residents who lost their one-room schoolhouse in February �” when the Valley Center-Pauma Unified School District closed it to cut costs �” have a new option starting Monday.

The Escondido-based Light and Life Christian School will open a satellite kindergarten-through-eighth-grade campus on the mountain Monday with as many as a dozen students, administrator Al Fiske said.

Classes will be held in a single-room portable building in the parking lot of the Crestline Group Campground, he said.

“It’s going so fast I can’t even tell you,” Fiske said of preparations for Monday’s first day of school. “It’s still a big surprise to many in the community.”

Light and Life’s officials said they began exploring the possibility of opening a satellite campus on the mountain in June, after longtime mountain rancher and schoolhouse advocate Dutch Bergman proposed the idea.

Residents were upset about the school closing, saying they were concerned their children would have to ride a bus 20 miles down windy, narrow mountain roads to the nearest school.

“We wanted to help them out,” Fiske said, adding that having a satellite campus also provides Light and Life with a unique opportunity to enhance its science curriculum.

Light and Life has roughly 400 students enrolled in its kindergarten-through-eighth-grade campuses in central Escondido.

“We can go to the observatory, we can learn from the environment,” Fiske said. “We are planning monthly field trips up there, so that we can learn from each other.”

School officials and the new schoolhouse teacher, Andrew Kish, said this week they have received a warm welcome from residents.

Some families interviewed this week said they’re happy to have a school on the mountain. The former schoolhouse had been a fixture in the community since the 1950s and was a gathering place for many residents.

“I’m happy to see another school open,” said parent Judi Easton. “I totally support the school and what they are doing.”

Easton said she hopes Light and Life will better handle fluctuations in school enrollment than the Valley Center-Pauma Unified School District did before closing down the school.

When the school closed in June, there were only seven students enrolled �“�“ down significantly from the 21 who were enrolled a decade ago.

District officials said then that they could cover less than half of the $104,000 operating budget with such enrollment numbers. The majority of state funding for school districts is distributed based on the number of students attending school on a daily basis.

Light and Life school officials said they’re optimistic they can keep the school going, adding that they have already drawn a number of families who had decided to leave the Valley Center district to homeschool their children.

“We have had a really positive response,” Kish said.

Contact staff writer Shayna Chabner at (760) 740-5416 or schabner@nctimes.com.

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