Questions have been swirling around Palos Verdes High School’s campus, prompted by Dr. Stephany’s recent announcement that the PVHS administration has decided to “discontinue any recruitment efforts for eighth grade students” during this school year.  Mostly notably, the administration has cancelled the Freshman Open House.

Last year’s Open House was marked by rock-concert special effects, cheer and song performances, and the unveiling of the school’s first music video, the Lip Dub.  Although the Open House was a deciding factor for many incoming students such as freshman Jihana Mendu, the school administration cancelled these recruitment activities for this year, citing cost ($25,000 last year) and rivalry tensions with Peninsula High as factors for its decision.

       The cancellation has sparked controversy among the Sea King population; some students feel that the cancellation of the Freshman Open House is a good decision while others feel that it will negatively affect PVHS.

For example, junior Matt Gyerman, who is part of our California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) champion football team, says that cancelling the Open House “won’t be that big of a deal. PV is already doing enough good things so that incoming freshman will want to come here. We’ve already won a few CIF titles this year and have [very high] test scores.”

         Likewise, senior Kari Thurman, ASB Commissioner of Special Events, said that cancelling Open House will also “help bring the PV/Pen rivalry back to when it was just something fun and will help it from escalating again.”

       However, other students do not think that the cancellation of the Open House will ease the rivalry with Peninsula.

Junior Song leader Lauren Maslauski views the Open House as an important “opportunity for the school to come together and get everyone excited about coming here” rather than as a cause of the cross-town rivalry tensions with Peninsula, and senior cheerleader Kelly Baxter said that at the Open House “we [PVHS] are not worried about what Peninsula is doing; we are worried about trying to show how great our school is.”

Many students agree that cancelling the Open House will not only fail to ease the rivalry tensions but also prompt the community to  “have a view about PV [High School] based on what they have read in the newspaper and what they have heard from Peninsula rather than what our side of the story is” Baxter said.

Another common fear among students is that the cancellation of the Open House and the suspension of the recruitment process will result in too few freshmen next year.

However, PVHS principal Dr. Nick Stephany said that the decision to cancel the recruitment activities will not result in a undersized incoming class.  He also pointed out that every year PVHS has “done something different for Open House.  There’s no game plan for it, there’s no playbook.  And there hasn’t really been a whole lot of correlation between how much money we’ve spent and how many kids we’ve received.  There has been a correlation, however, between how our test scores go and how many kids we get.”

By cancelling this year’s recruitment activities, Dr. Stephany is trying to put the “money and resources into the classroom where [they belong].”   According to Dr. Stephany, much of the staff supported his decision to use the money to save teachers and supply classrooms.

Dr. Stephany also said that because this is a public school and much of the money is donated by parents, he felt the Open House and the recruitment process was “a misuse of funds.”   He also said “between 80 and 90 % of kids know where they are going to go to school [regardless of any recruitment activities by either school]” and thinks that our enrollment numbers for the 2013-2014 school year will not fall dramatically.

Although Dr. Stephany has decided to cancel the recruiting process, ASB is continuing this year’s school wide music video, the Lip Sync.

Thurman, who initially suggested the idea to have a school music video last year, stated, “There [will be] no effect on the Lip Sync with the cancellation of Open House.”

Although the Lip Sync was originally intended to recruit 8th graders, it is now designed to promote school unity, according to Thurman.

She believes that “the Lip Sync will help the school unify again as [the video] is something that our whole school can be proud of” and thinks that both “the school and community will still be very excited” about the Lip Sync, despite the cancellation of the Open House and related activities.

Thurman continued, “The cancellation of Open House will not have any effect on ASB [in general]. We [ASB] are still going to give 110% to the school and do everything as we have always done.”  She believes Stephany’s policy changes will be “a very positive step forward with our relations with Pen.”

This “positive step forward” is Stephany’s goal.  He said that he feels “the whole recruitment process really contributes to the unhealthy nature of the rivalry between PV and Peninsula” and hopes that through the cancellation of activities such as the Freshman Open House, the school’s reputation will “transform into one that we are taking the high road [and that] we are teaching the kids the values that we want to see in them as people.”

Although Peninsula has not announced any alteration to its recruitment process this year, Dr. Stephany said that he hopes Peninsula will “follow suit” and share his efforts to mitigate the rivalry tensions.  However, Dr. Stephany reminded the community in his email that despite rivalry tensions and differing policies, “both [Palos Verdes and Peninsula] are exceptional schools.”