RANCHO SANTA MARGARITA : Group Dedicates 1st Intermediate School

In another milestone for this young community, educators, parents, students and residents gathered Wednesday to dedicate the cornerstone for a new Saddleback Valley Unified School District intermediate school.

Rancho Santa Margarita Intermediate School will be the first for junior high students in the growing community of 20,000, and the fourth in the district.

The 90,000-square-foot school, designed to accommodate the latest in high-tech teaching tools, will open in September for about 750 students from the eastern areas of the district.

“We’re looking forward to seeing children in this place, doing positive things,” board President Bobbee Cline said.

Indeed, many children who will attend the school in the fall attended the ceremony, held in a room that will someday serve as the school’s multimedia center. Refreshments were served in what may someday be a computer lab.

The school, which will also include outdoor classrooms, a gym and little theater, is about 70% completed.

“It’s a great experience to watch these things happen,” said Gary Carlisle, president of the Santa Margarita Civic Assn.

School Principal Walter Otto, Orange County Supervisor Thomas F. Riley and Anthony R. Moiso, president and chief executive officer of the Santa Margarita Co., also made presentations during the ceremony.

School officials started drafting plans for the school about five years ago with the idea of creating learning spaces that would be flexible to changes in technology, Supt. Peter Hartman said.

Funds to build the $11-million school were later secured through a combination of state construction grants and Mello-Roos taxes, which are special assessments paid by homeowners.

“It took all these pieces to make a complete puzzle, to make a complete school,” Hartman said.

Just last week, officials gathered in a lot next to the school to break ground on the site of a future county library, the first for Rancho Santa Margarita.

Like the library, the intermediate school is being built in the community’s Town Center, next to a planned central park.