www.BeachandBayPress.com | Thursday, December 8, 2011 On Dec. 9, 7 p.m. Mission Bay High School’s Music Department will present a special Winter Concert in the Mission Bay Auditorium. The program will include all of the school’s performance groups under the direction of JP Balmat, including the Jazz Ensemble and the Mission Bay Preservationists, with a total of 80 musicians taking part in the event. The show will feature a mixture of seasonal classics, swing standards and New Orleans jazz, with the Preservationists also debuting some of their new original material. Anyone looking for holiday-themed family entertainment needs to look no further than this heartwarming performance from some of the area’s most promising new talent. • MBHS Music Department Winter Concert: 7 p.m. on Friday, Dec. 9 at Mission Bay High School, 2475 Grand Ave. All ages. $5. Students and children free. www.missionbaymusic.com. — Bart Mendoza
PACIFIC NISSAN “Highway 5 on Mission Bay Drive” www.PacificNissan.com
(858) 581-3200 • 4433 Mission Bay Drive, Pacific Beach
MB woman, 71, wins world championship Ironman in age group BY KAI OLIVER-KURTIN | BEACH & BAY PRESS
Mission Bay schools
fight to preserve status quo
Pacific Beach Middle School student Nicole Moore displays some of her clothing items for sale at the school’s fundraising rummage and craft sale on Dec. 3. The Mission Bay High Cluster is pinning hopes on a recommendation by the San Diego Unified School District’s staff to reject a possible closure of PB Middle School in a possible consolidation move with Mission Bay High. DON BALCH I BEACH & BAY PRESS
BY PATRICIA WALSH | BEACH & BAY PRESS With San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD) trustees canceling most of a special committee’s campus closure proposals, the raucous chant that reverberated across the city for nearly two months to “save our schools” was rendered nearly inaudible. Not in the Mission Bay High Cluster, however, where neighborhood parents are still raising their voices to keep Pacific Beach Middle School open and Mission Bay High School viable. Cluster parents presented a plan last week to stop a recommendation by the SDUSD that would close Pacific Beach Middle school and consolidate the middle school and high school campuses into a 6-12 international baccalaureate academy. “Parents have done an amazing job,” said Michelle Scherrer, a parent with two children in cluster schools, who addressed the school board during a special meeting Nov. 29 at the district education center. “More and more of us are keeping our kids in (neighborhood) schools.”
The two biggest issues facing the Mission Bay Cluster are low enrollment of students within its boundaries and the murky future of district-funded transportation for students brought in from outside the cluster. The parents’ plan to keep the cluster schools open is to increase student achievement with a specific focus on Mission Bay High School (MBHS) and Bayview Terrace Elementary School, and to promote local campus choices to boost neighborhood-based populations and choice populations at the high school from its current 25 percent enrollment to 60 percent enrollment by the 2015-16 school year. The SDUSD board is scheduled to act on the Mission Bay High Cluster’s recommendation at its next meeting on Tuesday, Dec. 13. Jennifer Tandy, chairwoman-elect of the Mission Bay High Cluster, said that because of the busing component that impacts the out-of-cluster enrollment figures for local schools,
Susan Norman, a longtime Mission Bay resident and grandmother of four, is 71. She is also one of only two women over the age of 70 to hold both half- and full-Ironman world championship titles within the same year. Norman took the top prizes in the 7074 age group in September at the Las Vegas half-Ironman and again in October at the Kona, Hawaii full-Ironman World Championships. She bikes, swims and runs six days a week in and around Mission Beach to keep her body in optimum shape for triathlons. At age 38, Norman’s friends introduced her to running as a sport. She attended a marathon clinic to get started with proper exercises and to began entering 10K races, which she always seemed to win. The physically demanding trend runs in her family. Her husband won the fullIronman event for his division at age 50, and her sons and daughters-in-law have all completed triathlons, so Norman figured she was just as capable. While training for what would have been her first half-Ironman competition in St. George, Utah, Norman suffered her first and only training injury in January. While biking on Kearny Villa Road, she hit a pothole and tumbled to the pavement, breaking her arm and pelvis in two places. Norman underwent months of physical, rehabilitative, sports and water therapy at Wave House Athletic Club in Mission Beach, where she likes to get all her exercises in under one roof — taking
Mission Beach resident Susan Norman, 71, claimed first-place in her age division during the full-Ironman World Championships in Kona, Hawaii in September, becoming only the sixth woman over the age of 70 to complete the 2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike ride COURTESY PHOTO and 26.2-mile marathon run.
spin classes, swimming in the pool and relaxing for a massage once a week. Forced to miss the St. George race at the beginning of the year, Norman set her sights on the half-Ironman competition in Oceanside in April. Crediting her strong muscles for a swift recovery, Norman was the oldest female competitor in the race and placed first in her age division. Along with the trophy came a qualSEE RACE, Page 3
SEE SCHOOLS, Page 5
R E F L E C T I O N S F R O M T H E PA S T
Line from Mission Beach to La Jolla once served important purpose BY JOHNNY MCDONALD | BEACH & BAY PRESS Shipping magnate John D. Spreckels used his wealth to build great hotels, expand transportation facilities, establish a business district and to develop San Diego’s cultural features. One of those features was an elaborate seaside and bayside resort at Mission Beach. An area was selected in 1922 for an amusement center, dance casino, bath house with a plunge, provisions for surf bathing, concessions, a roller coaster and a miniature San Diego & Arizona Railway system. Three years later, the carnival-like amusement center, later known as Belmont Park, opened to considerable public interest with its tent city, much like
that near Spreckels’ Del Coronado Hotel. The question of obtaining adequate transportation for larger crowds was brought to the builder’s attention. Since he operated the ever-expanding San Diego Electric Car Co., why not establish a streetcar line? First, a shuttle service with two old street cars was installed from the Ocean Beach line to a track from the defunct Bay Shore Railroad Company. This included a bridge across the channel that had been built in 1914. Eventual plans called for a new electric railroad line from Kearny Boulevard and Broadway in San Diego all the way to Mission Beach. The bridge was restructured to accommodate the consistent trav-
el. On Sept. 8, 1923, the San Diego City Council accepted the bid of the San Diego Electric Railway for the new line. In doing so, Spreckels had given San Diego one of the finest electric streetcar systems in the country for a town its size. “It was just plain business sense,” Spreckels would reflect. “The city would not grow without an abundant water supply and adequate streetcar facilities.” People in La Jolla, without rail transportation since the folding of the Los Angeles-San Diego Beach Railway, clamored for electric trains and a line extension. The old railway tracks were used to SEE LINE, Page 4
The “Red Devil” train at Prospect Street sometime between 1908 and 1917. PHOTO COURTESY LA JOLLA HISTORICAL SOCIETY