By Charly SHELTON

A new movement has come across the Glendale Unified School District in recent weeks. It’s called Schools Before Pools, referring to the allocation of Measure S funds to renovate Hoover High School’s pool and a future plan for renovating Crescenta Valley High School’s pool. But there are other projects for classrooms, facilities and walkways at other school sites that have yet to be tackled. This has created backlash for the school district sparked by parents at Monte Vista Elementary School.

“We recognize [the parents] have a need [at their school sites], but there’s two different things here,” said GUSD board of education president Greg Krikorian. “People don’t understand the fundamental aspects of how that funding process generally is handled. In other words, all of our pools – not just Hoover and CV high school pools – need to be updated, that’s a fact. Those pools are totally outdated. They’re 20-plus years old in most cases,” Krikorian said. “All three high school swimming pools are not CIF certified. All three are in dire need of upgrades and being brought up to current CIF accommodations.”

The swim teams of the three high schools compete under the California Interscholastic Federation, a governing body regulating high school sports in the state. Its regulations for pool size are vastly beyond what the schools have at the moment. To upgrade the pools to CIF standards requires millions of dollars. It is no small project, and that’s why it has taken so long to make it a reality. These upgrades were identified in the early 2000s, Krikorian said, and have been brought before the board numerous times. They were put on the docket of projects to be completed as funds were available and finally, after almost 20 years, the project is slated to start.

“It doesn’t happen in one swoop or one quick decision; it’s a well-thought-out decision,” Krikorian said. “There’s a myriad of projects going on. We just redid the science wing at CV High School, we upgraded air conditioning at a lot of our schools, we upgraded our technology at all of our schools, we brought up-to-speed all of our cameras. That’s because of what happened in Sandyhook, Connecticut and what happened in Parkland that we had to update all of our facilities for the safety of our kids. So money had to be allocated towards [those].”

The process of projects takes into account the order in which requests are received, the size and expense, the availability of funds, the immediate need, the longevity of the benefit and more. Once those more immediate needs are met, other projects for improvement can be undertaken. But the process is in place for a reason, Krikorian said, and helps keep civility among schools by taking requests up the chain of command.

  “At our Superintendent’s Facility Committee a parent from [a local GUSD elementary school] saw the need only for her school, which is a fair thing for her to

address, but that committee is based on looking at board-adopted policies and projects that are already in the pipeline,” Krikorian said. “I think she stirred up a lot of commotion and created signs for Schools Not Pools, which was unfortunate because you don’t want to pit one school against another. That’s not the appropriate way to do it. The appropriate way to do it is to submit a concern to your principal and your school site saying we have a need here. There’s a process.”

So far as putting “schools before pools,” Krikorian doesn’t see one as more important than the other, understanding that creating well-rounded students are the goal.

  “Pools, auditoriums, theater, music – they’re all an extension of the classroom. So when people say classrooms versus pools and athletics, arts and music, that’s not the right message,” Krikorian said. “I feel our students get the same education going to CV jazz class as they would going to the Korean Foreign Language Program – they’re equally important, as equally important as swim team, as equally important as the CV Theatre program or Glendale High’s Theatre Program. Athletics, music and arts are all unequivocally an extension of our classrooms.”

  Charly Shelton