Curbing skateboarders

Angelique Flores

Skateboarders have officially hit the skids on the Huntington Beach

High School campus. Officials have issued a ban on boards on the school

grounds that have long been a main attraction for sidewalk surfers.

Students had previously been allowed to use skateboards as

transportation to and from school -- where skateboarding is prohibited --

and a locker complex was set up for students to store their boards.

But now those lockers are gone and so are the skateboards.

“This is my life right here, skateboarding,” said Adrian Romero, 14,

motioning to his board.

Many of the skateboarders don’t like the new rule, and Romero now

leaves his skateboard at a friend’s house so he can pick it up and head

to the nearby skate park after school.

School administrators established the ban to reduce the possibility of

accidents, vandalism, classroom disruptions and truancies.

“We had tons of outsiders, and we had a problem not knowing who was a

student and who was not,” said Sal Sapien, vice principal in charge of

supervision. “The campus has been destroyed.”

Officials said the school had an ongoing problem of nonstudents coming

to the campus to ride their skateboards -- leaving the rails, benches and

concrete damaged by their tricks. Some also urinated outside the building

and in the hallways, Sapien said.

After school, the campus often had up to 30 skateboarders on campus,

Sapien said, and some of them were aggressive.

“We’d ask them to leave, and they wouldn’t leave,” he said.

Some skateboarders who attend the school don’t mind the ban.

“It’s not bad because there’s vandalism,” said Alex Robles, 14. “I

could understand the rule, because the school’s already messed up.”

Problems with skateboarders chipping away at concrete structures,

planters and stairs around the campus has been going on for years, even

after it was banned on campus. The skate park was built in 1993 in an

attempt to solve the problem.

Huntington Beach has two skate parks, one at Murdy Park and the other

at the high school, the latter of which has been featured in magazines

and on the Internet as one of the top spots to ride a skateboard.

“The park gets crowded, and they go to the campus,” Sapien said.

Having the park at the school seemed to be a temptation for some

skateboarders who would cut class to go skating, officials said. But now,

the park is closed to the high school students during school hours.

In 1996, the Huntington Beach City School District saw its own

problems at Dwyer Middle School, where skateboarders would come to skate

in the campus’ amphitheater. A skateboard even flew into a classroom, and

the amphitheater was closed.

The city passed an ordinance to help curb skaters in certain areas,

specifically private property. If caught, skaters could be charged with a

misdemeanor and fined, the amount of which varies depending on whether

the skater has had prior arrests and other circumstances.

However, Huntington Beach High is not the only campus that forbids

skateboards on campus. Skateboards are not allowed at any schools in the

Huntington Beach Union High School District. While skateboarding is

forbidden at Edison and Westminster high schools, the students are

allowed to carry them on campus.”Kids use them for transportation,” said

Dave Adams, vice principal of activities and athletics at Edison High

School.

Most of Edison’s students comply with the rules, but the visitors are

usually the culprits who ride their skateboards on campus, Adams said.

Edison hasn’t seen the same problems as Huntington Beach High, but

Mesa View and Dwyer middle schools have. The two campuses were once

popular for skateboarders in past years. Neither school allows

skateboarding on campus anymore.

Only two students have brought skateboards to campus since school

started and the new ban went into effect. And the penalty for them, or

any other student caught with a skateboard on campus, is that it is taken

away and a parent must pick it up.