2 School Districts Draw Line Through a New Community

A ragged boundary between two school districts snakes through the new community of Rancho Santa Margarita, splitting streets and even houses without rational design.

On one side of the line is the Saddleback Valley Unified School District; on the other, the Capistrano Unified District.

For two years, officials of both districts have been discussing solutions to the problem of which school district would claim an anticipated 8,000 students in the affluent new community now under construction on the old O’Neill Ranch in south Orange County.

Had the two school districts battled for the new students, Rancho Santa Margarita would have become literally a divided city.

Public Hearings Set

That prospect has all but disappeared, however. The two districts have reached a tentative agreement that will smooth out the boundary line, putting the first phase of Rancho Santa Margarita entirely in Saddleback Valley Unified, and Capistrano Unified will give up about 500 acres of its territory.

The remainder of the development will be in Capistrano Unified territory.

A public hearing on the proposal will be held at 7 p.m. Thursday at Saddleback Valley Unified’s board meeting room in Mission Viejo. Capistrano Unified will hold its public hearing on the same day at 8 p.m. at its headquarters in San Juan Capistrano.

The Orange County Committee on School District Organization, which consists of 11 people elected to represent all 28 school districts and four community college districts in the county, will meet Thursday night, immediately after the public hearings.

No Known Opposition

The committee is expected to approve the plan, which would then become final.

Dan Kelly, associate director of governmental relations for the Santa Margarita Co., said he knows of no opposition to the agreement.

“We’re very happy about the cooperation between our school districts,” Kelly said.

Fred Koch, assistant superintendent of the Orange County Department of Education, said not all school boundary matters are so easily negotiated. “They often get heated--very heated. That’s why we like to get them when they’re like this one, still in the uninhabited stage.”

Capistrano Unified Superintendent Jerome R. Thornsley said his district didn’t balk at losing some of its territory because “our major concern is the safety of the children who will be living there.”

Eventually, he said, “Capistrano Unified will get most of the growth, because about 90% of the rest of the Rancho Santa Margarita development is in our school district. Over the next 100 years, there will be 20 to 30 new schools needed.”

The developer, the Santa Margarita Co., estimates development of the entire 38,000-acre ranch (formerly called Rancho Mission Viejo) will take about 100 years.

First-phase development, however, is under way. The new community of Rancho Santa Margarita is expected to be completed within 15 years. A new school in the area, education officials agreed, must be built within the next two years.

“We have working drawings for a new elementary school to be open by the fall of 1988,” said Ski Harrison, an assistant superintendent in Saddleback Valley Unified. The new community, he said, will bring at least 8,000 students.

Built-in Solution

Saddleback Valley Unified is an overcrowded school district, and its trustees during the past year have deplored lack of state money for new buildings and additions. But Rancho Santa Margarita comes with a built-in solution to the school building problem.

The community is the first in Orange County in a special tax assessment district that provides its own roads, schools and other improvements. The Orange County Board of Supervisors approved the new taxing district July 9. Assessments on new homes, to pay the tax, will range from $315 to $775 per household.

The new elementary school to be built at Rancho Santa Margarita will cost about $7 million, Harrison said. It will accommodate about 600 students.

A temporary school with portable classrooms will be used until the new school is built, Harrison said.

No new public high school is immediately planned for the new community, but Orange County’s first new Catholic high school in 21 years is being built in the Rancho Santa Margarita area. The Catholic Diocese of Orange had a ground-breaking ceremony April 18 for its new Santa Margarita Catholic High School, which will be constructed on a 40-acre site just off Santa Margarita Parkway.

The new $20-million parochial school is scheduled to open in the fall of 1987.