Complex to Provide Temporary Classrooms : Santa Ana School District to Buy Church

In an unusual move, the Santa Ana school board has voted to buy a church complex and use it temporarily for an elementary school beginning this fall.

Within the next three years, the school board said, a new school will be built on 5.75 acres of land now occupied by the Bristol Street Baptist Church, 1818 S. Bristol St. It will be one of six new elementary schools that the Santa Ana Unified School District will build by the early 1990s to handle the district’s burgeoning enrollment.

The board voted 5 to 0 Tuesday night to pay $4.3 million for the Bristol Street Baptist complex, which has four buildings. The school district had been negotiating for the site for several weeks.

The church, which has about 140 members, has not found a new site, “but we’re looking in Irvine,” said the Rev. Eddie Morris, associate pastor. Morris said the congregation is pleased that the old church site is being put to public use.

Temporary School

School district officials said the purchase is particularly fortunate: It will immediately provide buildings for a temporary school while the district is awaiting money from the state to build a new one.

“This was needed to help relieve our overcrowded schools,” said Assistant Supt. Anthony J. Dalessi. “Getting this will provide relief to Jefferson, Adams and Washington (Elementary) schools, and we won’t have to make them year-round schools next year. It will also provide relief for Martin School and possibly Diamond School.”

Dalessi said that school officials, who in recent months had considered converting more schools to year-round operation, “got a lot of input from parents saying they didn’t want this.”

The relief for the other schools could be offset, however, if neighboring Tustin Unified School District takes back a school Santa Ana Unified has been renting for several years. That building, at 1362 Mitchell Ave. in Tustin, is used for Santa Ana’s John Muir Fundamental School. The Tustin district indicated that it may need the building next school year, but the issue is unresolved, Dalessi said.

Students ‘Kind of Smished’

If Santa Ana loses the John Muir School, the Bristol Street Baptist Church buildings can house those students, Dalessi said.

Dalessi told the school board last fall that the district “can house adequately about 35,000.” This year, it has 36,294 students.

“The other 1,300 students are kind of smished into cubbyholes and other places we’d rather not have students,” he said.

The district has been growing by about 1,000 students a year for about a decade. Most of the new students are children of recent immigrants from Mexico and Southeast Asia.

The church buildings will be converted into a maximum of 18 classrooms that will accommodate a maximum of 540 students, Dalessi said.

State law on building safety limits use of converted schools to three years. The district has applied for state funds for a new school and construction should be under way by 1989, Dalessi said.