San Gabriel : Suit Over School Expansion

The often-divided City Council has voted unanimously to file a lawsuit against the Alhambra School District, charging that a plan to expand crowded San Gabriel High School is ill-conceived and injurious to residents of the city.

The school, San Gabriel’s primary public high school, is actually in Alhambra, just across San Gabriel’s western boundary. The district plans to build a new cafeteria, increase classroom capacity by more than 300 students and build a parking lot with access onto Fairview Avenue in a residential section of San Gabriel known as the Village.

City Atty. Stephanie Scher said an environmental impact statement prepared by the district gives little indication how many students would be assigned to the school, which city officials say already has 50% more students than it was designed to handle.

Village residents worry that their streets will be flooded with school-related traffic. “The problem is that it would dump traffic onto the streets all at one time, like opening a spigot,” said City Administrator Robert Clute.

The council and the district have held numerous negotiating sessions on the issues.

“They’ve turned a deaf ear on us,” said Vice Mayor Frank Blaszcak.

Scher said the suit would be filed before the end of the week in Los Angeles Superior Court.

District officials declined to comment.