New Santa Ana Schools Sought; Crowding Cited

Santa Ana’s schools are “extremely overcrowded,” and new classrooms are needed immediately, the district’s administrative staff told the school board on Tuesday night.

Anthony Dalessi, an assistant superintendent of the Santa Ana Unified School District, told a special meeting of the school board that the district is growing by about 1,000 students every year, and the “greatest need right now is at the elementary level.”

Needed Immediately

The staff said new schools and expansion of existing ones are needed immediately. But no specific recommendations were made Tuesday night. The board was told that the staff would present several recommendations at the regular meeting next Tuesday night.

However, two board members briefly mentioned one controversial remedy for stemming student growth: a housing moratorium in Santa Ana. That suggestion, when discussed by the board last year, produced outcries from the Santa Ana City Council and numerous builders and developers.

Joan Wilkinson, school board president, said city officials had assured her that most of the residential development currently allowed in Santa Ana is for adults only. But she and board member James Ward said they see more and more school-age children appearing in schools as development and redevelopment take place in the city.

“We still haven’t gotten the attention of the city,” Ward said.

Dalessi told the board that the 1985-86 enrollment in Santa Ana Unified is 36,294.

“We can house adequately about 35,000,” he said.

“The other 1,300 students are kind of smished into cubbyholes and other places that we’d rather not have students,” he added. Some classes now are held in school libraries, he said, which affects other students studying there.

Current projections show the school district will have a population of 45,686 by 1995. He said that by 1986-87, the school district will be short of classroom space for 3,868 students.

Most of the district’s growth has come from immigrants from Mexico and Southeast Asia. The enrollment last year showed that 69.7% were Latino; 15% were non-Latino whites; 11% were Asian or Pacific Islanders; 4.2% were black and 0.1% were American Indians.

The trustees began debating about what to do after an advisory group presented a report last November urging that at least one new high school and up to five new elementary schools be built in the district. The trustees subsequently authorized construction of a new high school, which will be the district’s fifth when completed and opened in September, 1988.