Palos Verdes Peninsula High School

Letter of the Day: No Friday night lights: Did wealth win out over children?

No Friday night lights: Did wealth win out over children?

When I picked up my Daily Breeze on Saturday morning I was shocked to learn that the Palos Verdes Peninsula school board had decided to prohibit night-time football by ending efforts to install stadium lighting at Palos Verdes Peninsula High School ("District: No lights for field").

This follows a decision earlier in the year to prevent Marymount University in Rancho Palos Verdes from providing more room for its students. In both cases, residents cited the fear that their property values would decline.

Have we really reached a state of moral depravity in this country where wealth is more important than our children? Perhaps cities should be more up front about its discrimination by posting "no children allowed" signs on its boundaries.

Palos Verdes Peninsula High School Pool Restoration Effort Gets ...

Marilyn and Ken Prindle’s lead gift of $150,000, in tribute to their late daughter Jackie, has boosted a grass roots effort at Palos Verdes Peninsula High School to restore and expand the existing swimming pool.  Jackie Prindle was a water polo player and swimmer who graduated from Peninsula in 2003.  She passed away at age 24 in February 2010 from complications of Marfan’s disease.

In their grief, the Prindles looked to the water that energized their gangly, rambunctious daughter as a way of honoring her memory.  According to Ken Prindle, “Jackie was always in the water.  She loved it, and loved competing for Peninsula.”

PVPHS Principal Mitzi Cress recalls Jackie as a student at PVPHS.  “She always traveled around campus with a group,” Cress said.  “Jackie was full of life, and always up for fun, and any activity she joined was that much better for her participation.”

Fellow water polo player and PVPHS graduate Eliza Hynes recalled their days together competing for Peninsula.  “She was always smiling and laughing — and her laugh was contagious!  She embraced challenges and adventures like no one else I know,” Hynes said.  She added, “No matter if you failed a test, got yelled at by the coach, or just had a lousy day, Jackie could hug the sadness out of you. She embraced people, physically, mentally and emotionally, with all of her heart.  Although her heart was the part that failed medically, emotionally it is what made her such an amazing person.”

The forty year-old pool at Peninsula is decaying and, because it is too small and too shallow, is not suitable for many CIF events.  Swimmers leave the pool with skin rashes, and bumps and bruises from hitting the exposed rebar in the decking. The Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified School District has agreed to spend $1.3 million to address the health and safety issues posed to students by the deteriorating systems and decking.  Even with that generous allocation, however, the pool would still not be CIF-compliant for water polo matches.  The Peninsula Pool Capital Campaign Committee is seeking an additional $800,000 to build a facility that would regain PVPHS’s competitive advantage within the league, and better serve the community members and aquatic clubs who use the pool for swimming instruction and other activities.   The Prindles’ generous gift is a start toward that goal.

Most of the parents on the fundraising committee never knew Jackie Prindle, because their children attend PVPHS now.  However, they appreciate the legend of her big hands and feet in goal, and her huge heart.  Former teammate Eliza Hynes recalls, “Jackie would LOVE the idea of this pool. Nothing would suit her memory more than a great pool, with something really, really unexpected at the bottom of it….something surprising, just like Jackie was.

Palos Verdes Peninsula High School

Congressional Record, V. 146, Pt. 7, May 24, 2000 to June 12, 2000

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Palos Verdes High School

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