Santa Ana : State Funds Earmarked For a New High School

Santa Ana’s plan to build a new high school has received the blessing--and the funds--of state government.

The State Allocation Board in Sacramento has allocated about $28 million for the project, Clarke Stone, associate superintendent of the Santa Ana Unified School District, announced Thursday. “We think this money will be sufficient for buying the land and constructing the new school,” Stone said.

The high school will be built on 25 acres of land on South Grand Avenue, between McFadden and Edinger avenues. Stone said the new school is expected to be open in September, 1988.

A new high school--Santa Ana’s fourth--is a rarity in Orange County in the 1980s. This one is necessary to accommodate the growing number of students in the district, a result of the influx of Latino and Asian immigrants.

“We’ve been growing by about 1,000 students a year for several years,” said Stone. The district grew from 28,708 students in 1979 to 35,265 in the recently ended school year. Enrollment is expected to reach 45,655 children by 1988.

An advisory committee last year recommended the addition of a high school and perhaps as many as five new elementary schools to relieve overcrowding. Stone said Santa Ana Unified intends to ask the State Allocation Board next fall for construction money for new elementary schools.

In addition, Stone said, the district will be seeking $18 million in state money to rehabilitate 11 existing schools.

He said the new high school, which remains unnamed, will relieve overcrowding at Santa Ana High and Saddleback High.

While the school board has not yet purchased the agreed-upon site, negotiations with the owner, Santa Fe Land Improvement Co., are proceeding smoothly, Stone said. The school board chose the location after the Santa Ana city government disagreed with the board’s first choice. That site, also on South Grand Avenue and also owned by Santa Fe Land Improvement Co., adjoins acreage proposed for a new McDonnell Douglas Corp. facility. City officials argued that the school would not be compatible with the industrial use.