BREA : New Super School Open for Business

A sprawling new high school, complete with a 3,500-seat football stadium, three gymnasiums, and a performing arts center, has opened in Brea for its first crop of students.

The $36-million Brea-Olinda High School, spread over 50 acres at East Lambert Avenue and Wildcat Way, is furnished with equipment ranging from high-technology computers to frozen yogurt machines.

The campus, with 1,300 students from Brea and part of Fullerton, also has a 242,000-square-foot, two-story building, two baseball diamonds, a softball field and regulation-size swimming pool.

“The parents all think it’s great because they think it looks like a college campus,” district Supt. Edgar Seal said.

“It’s cleaner, and I like the computers,” said 16-year-old Cathy O’Connell, a junior at Brea-Olinda. “But at the old high school, it was easy for underclassmen to sneak out and go to the mall, and now you can’t.”

Brea’s former high school, a 60-year-old campus across from the Brea Mall and two miles from the new school, was closed last spring because of old and inadequate facilities.

The campus is unusual not only because of its state-of-the-art features, but because it was built “with not one penny of state or district funds,” Seal said.

The school is the result of a creative arrangement involving investors, the school district, and a nonprofit organization named Brea HOPE (Help Our People’s Education).

Several years ago, Brea HOPE issued $36 million in tax-exempt bonds to build the new high school. Meanwhile, the school district, which owned 25 acres at Birch Street and State College Boulevard by the old high school, leased that land to Brea HOPE.

HOPE subleased it to Lowe Developing Co., which built the Brea Marketplace and two six-story office buildings on the site. In return, Lowe agreed to make annual payments to HOPE. That money will be used to pay bondholders, said Seal, director of HOPE.

Because the state didn’t pay for the school, builders were not subject to state limitations.

“No California school district can build a school this big,” said Gary Goff, one of two principals of Brea-Olinda High.

“The only difference between Century High School (in Santa Ana) and Brea-Olinda are in additional facilities,” Seal said. “They built on a state program and could only have a certain amount of square footage. We can do what we did because we paid for it.”

Although the new high school has the capability to house computer and cable technology similar to that of many of the state’s colleges, school officials have not yet chosen the equipment because they “don’t feel they know what’s state of the art yet,” Goff said.

“We’re going to live in the school for a year now and grow into it,” Goff said. “The equipment isn’t there yet, but the potential is.”

Two “small-scale” computer labs already are being used for typing and computer courses, and eight individual computers are available for use in some science classes, Goff said.

“If we had computers in every classroom, two-thirds of the computers would go unused,” Goff said. “Teachers don’t know how to use them yet.”

Computer-training programs for teachers have already begun so “they won’t be afraid to implement the resources we have available,” Goff said.

Plans are also under way to install a “sophisticated video and cable system” by the end of this year. The school will be able to receive more educational programs from cable networks, and some broadcasting may originate on campus.

“We’d be able to bring aspects of school life into the home,” Goff said. “We could videotape drama plays, speech competition and sports events.”

“These aren’t just pipe dreams or wishes,” Goff said. “We have the dedication that will cause all of this to happen.”