Lakeside Booster Club Quietly and Effectively Champions Schools

With no fanfare, the El Capitan Stadium Assn. quietly voted last month to pay $30,000 for a teacher who works to keep at-risk students from dropping out of El Capitan High School in Lakeside.

After the Grossmont Union High School District changed its mind and decided to fund the position itself, despite budget woes, the association--again without publicity--approved the El Capitan principal’s next request: $25,700 to buy textbooks.

That’s the way the stadium association has worked for the past quarter of a century in this still semi-rural community, where the single high school is the most visible symbol of Lakeside for the East County area’s 40,000 residents.

“We don’t blow our own horn, we’re just satisfied to help out,” said Charles Perkins, one of the original members of the association, which was formed in 1964 as a temporary group to raise money for a first-class football field, stadium lights and bleachers.

After completing the stadium, the organization decided to remain active after Marian Carlson, a nearby resident, offered to deed the group 14 acres next to the school. In return, the group agreed to use any money generated by the land for the benefit of Lakeside-area children.

“We just take the old-fashioned view that, if a government agency can’t do it, then, damn it, we’ll do it,” said Perkins, whose family for years ran the Descanso Store in East County, at the old Highway 80 junction that longtime residents often call Perkins Corner.

The group’s activities remind Carl Wong, Grossmont’s assistant superintendent for educational services, of a “throwback to the Old West, where the Grange and the Cattleman’s Assn. took care of a lot of things. It has that flavor.”

That Old West flavor pertains to more than just the association’s sense of community spirit. The group, with about 30 active volunteer board members, runs the annual, well-known Lakeside rodeo on the 14-acre site, and also sponsors boxing, circuses and frequent country-Western concerts with well-known performers, most recently Waylon Jennings, George Strait and Kathy Mattea.

The association uses profits from the entertainments--it has a current kitty of more than $100,000--to support not only the neighboring El Capitan High School but the community’s eight junior high and elementary schools, youth athletic programs and youth clubs.

“It’s impossible to calculate how much the association has donated over the years to this year,” said Principal Art Pegas, who began his career almost 30 years ago as an El Capitan teacher and taught Perkins’ children, both of whom are now teachers.

Unlike almost all booster clubs and parent support foundations that exist at several San Diego County schools, the El Capitan group does not limit its support to athletics or extracurricular school activities. Among its contributions over the years: Spanish-language texts, banquet tables, sewing machines, equipment for the agricultural program, drum sets, band uniforms and $10,000 worth of library books.

“We’re a solvent organization, and we can do more than just give out $100 or $200,” Perkins said.

But even Pegas was somewhat surprised at the association’s offer last month to commit itself to two years’ salary, at $30,000 a year, for a special dropout-prevention teacher. The group traditionally has not paid for either salaries or transportation, reasoning that the purchase of equipment can have the “biggest bang for the buck,” in the words of member Herbert Lipp.

Had the Grossmont school district not reinstated the money in its budget, the association’s offer would have been the largest single expenditure in its history, Perkins said, “even more than the $27,000 we spent on replacement of lights” at the football stadium.

Association members had gone to Pegas during the summer to ask how they could help soften the budget crisis facing the school district and learned from the principal about the need to support a special teacher who helps struggling students by working with them in one-on-one or other closely supervised situations.

“Without such a teacher, I could lose 150 to 200 kids a year” as dropouts, Pegas said.

“I thought it was a great idea” for us to support, association member Sheila Crossland said. “I thought about it a little and realized I could have been one of those students” when I was in high school.

The association never hesitated, member Donald Hickle said, despite the fact that expenditures for at-risk students come with none of the glamour that accompanies donations for football or baseball, or music and art enrichment courses.

“People just think we’re a bunch of rednecks out here,” Lipp said, laughing.

“We liked the idea immediately because our purpose is to help as many kids as possible for each dollar,” Hickle said. “To be able to help put 150 kids back on the right direction is very important.”

Pegas believes that trustees subsequently voted to fund the at-risk teachers throughout the district “in part because they saw that the community was willing to make the need a top priority.”

“If the community is saying that, then how could the board say it was not important?” he said.

Pegas was quick to request association funds for textbooks, which will allow the school to permit students to keep a set of their core subject texts in math, English, science and history at home during the school year.

“Without the association’s help, it would have taken us at least three years to save enough money in our (own school) budget to buy them,” Pegas said.