Schools Will Uproot Lives in Santa Ana

While enrollments are declining in most Orange County school districts, Santa Ana’s school-age population is surging, fueled by the influx of undocumented residents and Indochinese immigrants.

The boom has come upon Santa Ana Unified School District officials so fast that they have nowhere to put the new pupils. Thirty-eight schools that housed 28,125 students in the 1976-77 school year handle 37,106 today. And according to state, city and district estimates, there will be 59,420 students by 1996-97.

School board members have authorized 12 elementary schools to go on year-round schedules, taking children in three shifts that will require some pupils to spend their summers in classrooms. Many now study in hastily erected classrooms in 209 portable buildings and 51 trailers scattered at 35 schools.

‘Accelerated Growth’

But these measures don’t appear to be enough.

There is “absolutely no way” the boom is going to subside soon, said Anthony Dalessi, associate superintendent of the school district. “We’ve been saying since 1983 that this was a bulge and we’d be over the hump soon. But we haven’t (leveled out), and all the projections point to accelerated growth in the next decade.”

To handle the explosion, the district has undertaken the biggest land acquisition and construction project by an Orange County school district in several decades. Eleven elementary schools and two high schools will be built, Santa Ana High School will be expanded and 17 existing schools will undergo reconstruction.

Two of the elementary school sites are being reviewed, Dalessi said, and locations may be shifted slightly. One site, owned by the Segerstrom family at Alton Avenue and Bear Street, may be traded for adjoining Segerstrom-owned land. The other site, at Wilshire Avenue and Sullivan Street, was held back for a 30-day review by the school board after protests from landowners asking that nearby property be considered. However, Dalessi said the higher cost of the alternative site may be prohibitive.

$150-Million Tab

Because the extent of development in Santa Ana has left little vacant land, the district must take occupied land to build its schools. About 200 pieces of property are to be purchased by mid-1987, including several churches and numerous homes and businesses. In all, Dalessi said, the district will spend about $150 million for the entire project.

Santa Ana Unified is, by far, the fastest growing school district in Orange County, outstripping even Mission Viejo and Capistrano Valley, said Patti Forste, a field representative for the state Office of Local Assistance. Forste’s job is to analyze Southern California school districts’ requests for funding, which are then considered by the state Allocation Board.

“Santa Ana faces a lot of the same problems that L.A. Unified faces,” said Forste, adding that Los Angeles faces growth on a much larger scale. “ . . . They (the Santa Ana district) are a heavily impacted urban area faced with high land values. So they don’t have the room to go in and put an elementary school on 10 acres or a high school on 20 acres.”

The district’s massive project promises to change a lot of lives. Most residents living on the sites for the new schools who were interviewed by The Times weren’t happy about the project, but the majority of them expressed a quiet resignation. If necessary, the school district can acquire the property it needs through eminent-domain proceedings in court, paying the owners the fair market value.

“I don’t think we’d have any trouble proving the need,” Dalessi said.

Among those being affected are a Christian missionary who was eager to sell his church to the district, a couple who will lose their home of 42 years and another couple who found a buyer for their home one week before learning of the district’s plans. City Councilman Miguel Pulido also owns a piece of property that has been slated as a school site.

‘Resigned to It’

Vincent and Isis Monaco have put a lot of time into fixing up their house on 6th Street in Santa Ana, where they’ve lived for 42 years, raised four children and recently celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. To build an elementary school, the district plans to acquire property bounded by 4th, 6th, Garfield and Lacy streets, including a small island just north of 6th where the Santa Ana Presbyterian Church has stood for decades.

“There’s nothing we can do because the district can take us to court and take our home if they want to. We’re resigned to it,” said Vincent Monaco, 72, who retired from his job at Wells Fargo Express Co. in 1975.

The Monacos recently resurfaced the ceilings in their home, widened the driveway and replaced the entire plumbing system with brass pipes. In their backyard they grow avocados, onions, figs and oranges.

“We’ve always liked this house. Next summer we were going to do the outside,” said Isis Monaco, 68. She noted that there were only about 42,000 people in Santa Ana when they bought their house in 1944. “And we like Santa Ana. We’d like to stay in this general area, or maybe Tustin or Orange.”

Friendly Neighborhood

The couple’s two girls and two boys attended Catholic schools, St. Joseph’s parish school and Mater Dei High, and the neighborhood has a friendly, warm feeling, said Vincent Monaco. The school district’s letter of notification arrived while the couple was making plans to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary. Their children helped the Monacos mark the occasion by throwing a party for them at the Acacia restaurant in Garden Grove and driving them there in a limousine.

“We thought we’d live and die here. We never thought we’d have to move,” said Isis Monaco.

Across the street, members of the Presbyterian Church, which has an all-Korean congregation of about 150 people, still hold Sunday services despite the impending sale of their property. The Koreans purchased the church five years ago and conduct Sunday school in houses behind the building, said education director Mike Choi.

Church directors fear that the money they get for the property won’t be enough for them to relocate, although a move would be welcomed, Choi said. He said most of the congregation lives in the Irvine area and cited Santa Ana’s problems with crime. A few of the parishioners have had their cars broken into, once during Sunday services, he said.

“It would be no problem to move from the area. We just don’t know if we can,” he said.

Nearby Church Sought

Kwang Cook, an architect who is head of the church’s “new building search committee,” said he believes that a move to Irvine would be impossible because of high land costs. Ideally, he said, he would like to find a nearby church with declining membership that is looking to sell.

“We’ll be very happy to negotiate and we’ll go anyplace--Garden Grove or Westminster--or we could even take over old school sites in districts with declining enrollment,” Kwang said. “It could be anything. I can be very resourceful. We can convert anything.”

Dalessi noted that the district’s plan provides for relocation assistance of as much as $15,000 for a homeowner and $4,000 for a renter. He said businesses and churches will be provided assistance on a case-by-case basis.

In the case of the Presbyterian Church, it’s possible that a deal could be worked out to actually move the entire building to a new site, Dalessi said.

Dalessi said rumors concerning the project have been one of the biggest problems the district has faced. For example, he said, shortly after the first letters went out informing residents of the acquisition plan, he was confronted with frantic homeowners who had heard that the district would only pay a maximum of $40,000 for each piece of property and the residents would have to be out in 30 days.

Dalessi said he tries to meet with as many people as possible to assure them that there will be two appraisals on each piece of property and they will have at least 90 days and possibly more to move.

“Even that doesn’t resolve some of the anger, and that’s understandable,” he said.

‘Inhuman’ Method

Such anger was evident when the district held a public hearing last month that was attended by about 250 people. Among those in the audience was Robert Duran, who pounded a podium and assailed the school board for what he called its “inhuman” method of notifying his family by letter that their house would soon be taken away.

Dalessi admitted that the task ahead of him isn’t something he relishes. But everyone is going to have to face up to the fact that Santa Ana is becoming a crowded, urbanized city, he said.

On Cedar Street, where another elementary school will be built, Jack Lewis, 37, and Sandra Lewis, 34, had received an offer of $110,000 for their home from a prospective buyer when they received the notification. The district’s plan, Sandra Lewis said, has put their sale “in limbo” and halted their search for a new home in Tustin.

“We sold it for a certain amount, and the main question is: Are we going to get that amount back?” she said. “If they come back with what we expect, there won’t be a problem. If they don’t, they’ll have a fight on their hands.”

Dalessi stressed that the Lewises and others who fall into a special-circumstances category will be accommodated quickly. Both appraisals have already been done on the Lewises’ property, Dalessi said, and an offer will be made soon.

‘Kids Don’t Speak English’

Lewis, who spoke as she watched four children in her licensed day-care program, said she doesn’t want her own children to attend school in Santa Ana.

“I don’t want to sound prejudiced,” she said, “but there are a lot of illegals and a lot of Vietnamese people in the city now. And a lot of those kids don’t speak English. So it really slows down the learning process.”

But not everyone is unhappy. Dalessi said most of the homeowners who call in response to the letters notifying them of the district’s plans ask two questions: When and how much?

Pastor Steve Loopstra of the Christian and Missionary Alliance Church, which has already been purchased by the district, said he found the offer particularly timely. Loopstra said the church had found a potential buyer that would have continued the church’s religious use, when the district came along.

“We would have liked to see the building remain as a church, but we can’t complain. We were looking to sell, and they were looking to buy,” he said. “And this neighborhood’s changed quite a bit from what it was 50 years ago. We don’t have a Spanish-speaking pastor to reach out to the new residents.”

Church Will Be Torn Down

The church was bought for about $650,000 in August and will be torn down. It is one of four parcels of property being cleared to make way for a new continuation high school on Main Street south of St. Gertrude Place. Parishioners now attend services at Santiago Junior High School in Orange, and Loopstra said he hopes that the church will find another home amid new developments in East Orange.

Pulido, who was elected to the council in November, said he and his father have owned property on Richland Avenue, where one of the elementary schools will be built, for about 10 years. Pulido said he doesn’t have any problems with the impending sale but, as a council member, he wants to be sure that all the sites have been carefully selected.

“I really wonder if they’ve looked long and hard at all of these locations,” he said. Pulido argued that some sites may be too close to busy thoroughfares and traffic may pose dangers for children.

The population boom is something that both the school district and the city will have to face together, Pulido said, adding that a growing population without equivalent commercial or industrial development will put a heavy strain on basic municipal services.