From Speeding to Nerf Gun Battles: Why One Neighborhood Is Fed Up with a San Diego School

When Terrence Morrissey moved to Altadena in 2021, he expected it would be a quiet community. Then, one afternoon he heard the roars of engines up and down his street. He stepped outside and saw what he called a “Daytona 500 situation,” referring to the famous NASCAR series in Florida.  

“High school students were literally racing down the street, and I was really confused,” Morrissey said. 

One of his neighbors happened to be outside and Morrissey asked what was going on. His neighbor said students at St. Augustine High School, the 100-year-old all-boys Catholic school that sits right down the block, were getting out of school. 

“Is it always like this?” Morrissey asked.  

“Yeah,” his neighbor responded. 

The school wasn’t the only source of traffic. Large trucks bound for Interstate 805 trundled through on occasion, as did cars bound for other local schools, but the traffic always seemed worse during St. Augustine students’ commute. 

Morrissey began documenting the incidents and advocating for traffic-calming solutions in the neighborhood. He started a whole website to keep track of where things stood. He even set up a meeting with the school’s leaders and community members, but said St. Augustine later canceled.  

So, Morrissey turned to the city. He invited an aide from City Councilman Stephen Whitburn’s office to sit in his front yard during the afternoon exodus of students. The normal procession of expensive cars manned by teenagers speeding through stop signs showed up right on cue, but the pair was also treated to a bonus sight. A couple cars of students circled the block firing foam darts from Nerf guns at homes. A teen in one car even stood halfway out of the moonroof armed with the plastic rifle. 

In a sort of full-circle moment, the aide turned to Morrissey and asked, “Is it always like this?”  

Morrissey responded, “The speeding? Yes. The Nerf gun? That’s new.” 

It seems like everyone in Altadena has a story about St. Augustine, or Saints as it’s often referred to. The prestigious all-boys school, which looks more like a college campus than a high school, is an odd fit for the neighborhood. Then again, when it opened in 1923, both the school and the neighborhood were a fraction of the size they are now. In the century since, Saints has expanded from serving about 20 students to nearly 700. 

For years residents have complained that the school is an outsized contributor to the traffic problems the neighborhood has experienced. But beyond that, many residents feel the school has failed to treat the community with the respect it deserves. They say that cars speeding to and from the campus are rampant, that they routinely run stop signs and even at times collide with residents’ vehicles. 

Lizzie Weigele lived near the school and has worked as a nanny for nearly two decades. She said the most terrifying experience of her life was when a student sped through a stop sign while looking at their phone, coming just feet from a 4-year-old she was teaching how to ride a bike.  

She still thinks about that moment often – the petrified look on the girl’s face, how all three began crying right there on the sidewalk – not only because of how seriously she takes safety, but because of just how life-altering it could have been.  

“They could have ruined everyone’s life at that moment,” Weigele said. 

The city recently installed traffic calming measures like speed humps, and the problem has diminished, but the community’s frustration still lingers. That’s because the traffic nightmare was only part of their problem.  

‘Intensification of Use’ 

For neighbors, a huge part of the beef was the school’s perceived indifference to their concerns. But they also were frustrated with what they view as the school’s flouting of conditions put in place by a permit issued two decades earlier and the city’s failure to stay on top of them. Meanwhile, Saints say they’ve worked hard to address neighbors’ concerns. 

In 2003, the city gave the private school, whose campus was once cut in half by Bancroft Street, permission to take over the street to build new facilities. Over the following years, the school embarked on a remodel.  

The permit the city issued to close the public street came with strings attached. The city set limits on the usage of the facilities, required the school to build off-street parking and keep its track and field open to the public. Neighbors say many of those conditions are now being ignored. For example, they say the required number of on-campus parking spots wasn’t built and the field is now locked and inaccessible to them. Saints officials dispute that and say while they’ve had to take steps to make the school more secure in the age of school shootings, they make the field available after hours. 

Residents of Altadena also say traffic has only gotten worse since the rebuild because the school now hosts events like basketball tournaments and rents its field to other groups, drawing people to the campus seven days a week. In their mind, this means the school has run afoul of the permit’s requirement there not be “intensification of use,” of the campus. 

The city also set a commitment for itself: to check that the school was upholding its end of the bargain every five years. At the request of neighbors, the city’s Development Services Department in 2023 reviewed whether the school is following the requirements of the permit but only found one violation: that the permit hadn’t been reviewed in nearly a decade, which was the city’s job.  

Suki Jacala with the Development Services Department wrote in an email that the school hasn’t increased enrollment and that it uses its facilities in ways that are typical of schools. Another investigator wrote that there had been no increase in activity since the permit was issued. 

The results were disappointing to neighbors. To them the issue isn’t about enrollment and more about how often the school uses its facilities. They plan to continue to follow up with the city about what they view as the school’s failure to adhere to requirements. 

‘We’re an Easy Target’ 

Saints officials flatly disagree with neighbors’ assessments. School leaders have told neighbors that they’ll speak to students about their vehicular etiquette, but that they can only do so if the student parks on campus and they’re provided with their license plate number.  

“We work with the city and the neighborhood group pretty regularly,” Principal James Horne said. 

St. Augustine President Edwin Hearn drives to school every day and said he’s never seen a student driving recklessly. Saints is a good community member, Hearn insisted, while wondering out loud whether the complaints were coming from just a couple community members who have something against the school “playing ‘gotcha.’” 

“I feel like we’ve been beat up, because we’re an easy target,” Hearn said. 

In a follow-up email, Horne included a list of ways he said the school has worked to mitigate traffic. Those included intentionally not raising enrollment while building more onsite parking, petitioning the city for a crosswalk in front of the school, encouraging students to take online classes to reduce the number of trips to the campus and launching a campaign in 2019 to make students and parents aware of the traffic issues. 

The Gospel Values of Community 

Morrissey, the Altadena resident, insists he doesn’t have anything against Saints. He’s not an old man shaking his fist at kids on his lawn, he said. He appreciates having a respected institution in the neighborhood, and unlike some others thinks it’s quite beautiful.  

After months of advocacy, and the close encounter with the Nerf gun, Whitburn’s office helped install speed humps and stop signs in the neighborhood.

They’ve helped a lot, Morrissey said, but what he views as the school leadership’s unwillingness to meaningfully engage with the community still rubs him the wrong way. He’s not alone. 

Douglas Bailey, another Altadena resident, has many of the same complaints about Saints. But for Bailey, who himself attended a Jesuit Catholic boys high school in Washington D.C., his frustration is also rooted in the ideological tradition on which the school is founded.  

Saints, as its name would suggest, is part of the order of St. Augustine, which is based on the teachings of Augustine of Hippo. Much of Agustine’s teachings were centered on the importance of community, something that remains a foundational Augustinian principle. 

Villanova University, a Catholic school itself founded in the Augustinian tradition, writes on its website “the essence of (Augustine’s) rule is to value community life over seeking for oneself.”

Saints similarly extolls the need for community everywhere, writing in its mission statement that “we communicate to the world the gospel values of community, truth and love,” and describes its community life as being built on “mutual acceptance and respect, a willingness to listen to others and to open oneself to them, kindness and concern, a spirit of forgiveness.” 

Much of Augustinians’ preoccupation with community seems centered on insulated religious communities rather than those who live downwind of its schools. Still, Bailey feels the school’s lack of concern for its neighbors is glaring. 

“They’re not part of the community, they’re trying to separate themselves from the community,” Bailey said.  

Bailey is no longer religious, but he still carries with him many of the values that were instilled in him during his time in high school. Those values are an important legacy that he worries students at Saints may be missing out on. 

Saints’ leadership also disagrees on this point.

“These boys are receiving an education that will someday put them, I would think … in leadership positions. And I think that they are going to be people that see the world a little bit differently, in a more communal way and I think really offer a lot of value to the community,” Hearn said. 

Despite his misgivings, Bailey is holding out hope that at some point the school’s leadership will one day engage with the community and give peace a chance. 

“We would welcome them back in to be part of the solution with open arms, because that’s the only way forward, for us to all kind of let go and kind of be a part of the solution,” he said.