HUNTINGTON BEACH : First New School in 20 Years Needs Name

Like parents anticipating a blessed event, officials and other community members are seeking names for the first new school to open in the Huntington Beach City School District in nearly 20 years.

The $11-million elementary school, to be financed with fees from 4,400 homes in the new Holly-Seacliff development, will be built near Edwards Hill overlooking the Bolsa Chica wetlands and the ocean. The school will be off Garfield Avenue between Golden West and Edwards streets.

Residents and district employees have been invited to submit their recommendations anonymously to district officials. One suggestion was that the school, scheduled to open in September, 1994, be called Surf City Elementary School.

Other suggestions for a moniker for the kindergarten through sixth-grade school included naming it for either former mayors Norma Brandel Gibbs or Donald Shipley, former school Supt. Diana Peters, longtime district supervisor of maintenance and operations Dennis Lloyd, or Donna Stewart, a school nurse for 33 years.

Others have tossed out geography or the local habitat as aspects that should be considered. Those suggestions for names include Edwards Hill, Holly Hills, Seacliff View, Hollycliff by the Sea and Wetlands Elementary.

There was one suggestion to name the school Brian Garland Elementary, in honor of the current board president and principal at Edison High School. Garland immediately rejected that suggestion.

“As long as I am serving on the board, it smacks of politics and I don’t want it to get embroiled in that nonsense,” Garland said. “But to be even suggested is one of the great honors of my career.”

The facility is scheduled to have an initial enrollment of about 200 pupils. It should have its full complement of 600 pupils the following year.

Pacific Coast Homes, which expects the Holly-Seacliff development to generate about 1,100 school-age children, has agreed to pay fees at higher rates than mandated by the state to finance purchase of eight acres of land and construction of the school.