Oceana High School is facing new reality

That prep sports arrangement features much larger schools and extensive sports offerings for male and female athletes at various age levels.

Some PAL member schools to the south contain well over 2,000 teens. By themselves, Menlo-Atherton High School and Carlmont High School in Belmont each contain twice as many youngsters as Terra Nova and Oceana put together.

As noted in these pages last month, Oceana will leave the PAL in just over 18 months, bowing to the reality that the enrollment numbers on the coastside are simply too daunting to ignore any longer.

It isn’t just athletic opportunities that tend to suffer as a school’s pupil numbers diminish. So does participation in other extracurricular options, such as music, art, drama, journalism, public speaking, debate, video/technology, etc.

Officials of the Jefferson Union High School District, which governs both Oceana and Terra Nova, have stated in the not-so-distant past that there have been no plans to close one of their shrunken Pacifica campuses any time soon.

Still, at some point, if the negative enrollment trend continues and options for students diminish further (along with the worrisome fiscal implications), that divisive subject may have to be revisited.

OTHER SCHOOLS FACE CLOSURE: There are similar challenges in the Pacifica School District, the community’s elementary education arm.

The district’s Board of Trustees has begun preparations for the closure and consolidation of two of its schools, Ocean Shore and Vallemar in 2025-26. The impending moves have created considerable controversy among students, parents and staff involved in the two targeted campuses.

Declining district enrollment and serious financial ramifications stemming from that circumstance are the immediate causes of the disruptive and divisive plan. But the numbers don’t lie.

According to data provided by the state’s Department of Education, the district lost 12% of its pupil population between 2019-20 and 2023-24.

That’s a loss of one out of every eight district children during that span. Something has to give.

IT’S TIME TO FILL’ER UP: Hundreds of years from now, archeologists poring through the remnants of our civilization may marvel (or frown) at our reliance on fossil fuels. Hints of our insatiable need for petroleum products could be tough to find in coming centuries if other forms of energy become dominant. Fortunately, a tidy book on the one-time prevalence of gasoline service stations here is available. “Lost Gas Stations of San Mateo County” is a book authored by Bruce Cumming and Nick Veronico. They have a discussion and book signing event scheduled for 3 p.m. March 16, at the Pacifica Public Library, 1850 Francisco Blvd. The public is invited.

COUGARS TEMPT HOOPS HISTORY: Hope was alive and very much present Tuesday night in Half Moon Bay. Its prep girls’ basketball team was on the cusp of history. The Half Boon Bay High School Cougars were playing Lowell of San Francisco for the Northern California Division IV championship and a ticket to play in this week’s state divisional title game. If favored HMB managed to win last night (the result was too late for this column’s deadline), it would mark the first time in 37 years that a San Mateo County public school girls’ hoops team had qualified for a state championship berth in any division.

GIVE THESE FOLKS A HIGH-FIVE: If awards are handed out for dogged religious persistence, we have some candidates for such an honor. A group of Jehovah’s Witnesses spent part of an afternoon not long ago quietly touting their faith near a gaggle of anglers casting their lines off a fishing pier on the Burlingame Bayfront. The proselytizing wasn’t at all aggressive or intrusive. But copies of “Awake” were readily available for those pausing to bait their hooks.

John Horgan has been writing about San Mateo County’s ins and outs, to the tune of an estimated 7 million words, since 1963, beginning at the defunct Burlingame Advance Star. He can be contacted by email at johnhorganmedia@gmail.com.