Communities Do Well in School : Poll: Residents are happy with their kids’ education. But public support and involvement are no accident.

Arroyo Vista Elementary School’s production of “Jack and the Giant” isn’t until May, but Principal Richard Campbell already predicts sold-out shows.

He speaks from experience.

Last year the children staged “Alice in Wonderland,” and every one of the multipurpose room’s 200-plus chairs was filled. Three shows running.

“It wasn’t just parents,” Campbell said. “We had a lot of people from the community, too, who don’t have kids in the school. People are interested in what the kids are capable of doing.”

Principal Walter Otto watched similar capacity crowds applaud evening and matinee performances of “Peter Pan” in Rancho Santa Margarita Intermediate School’s 300-seat auditorium.

“This is, by definition, a community school,” Otto said.

The two schools exemplify the position neighborhood schools occupy in the new South County foothill communities of Rancho Santa Margarita, Coto de Caza, Dove Canyon, Portola Hills, Foothill Ranch and Robinson Ranch.

Young families have chosen to put down roots here largely because the area promised to provide their children with high-quality educations at high-tech facilities in safe surroundings.

Although some of their children have endured long bus rides and overcrowded classrooms during the area’s growing pains, most of the settlers speak enthusiastically about the schools as places where teachers are motivated and students are eager to learn.

In turn, faculty members talk about the interest, participation and cooperation they receive from parents.

“The thing that’s really neat about this community is that everybody wants the schools to succeed and do really well,” said Arroyo Vista Elementary’s Campbell. “You get a real strong feeling of support from everybody. I don’t have to go begging for anything.”

Two-thirds (67%) of the communities’ residents say they are very satisfied with their public schools, compared to 41% of those countywide, according to The Times Orange County Poll.

Such support is often easier to find in affluent communities such as these, where parents tend to be more highly educated, school officials said. But putting schools as focal points in the communities was also done by design.

“In the absence of local government in those communities, the schools were seen as the center of community involvement,” said Mary Lou Smith, facilities planner for the Saddleback Valley Unified School District, which is responsible for building and running roughly half the schools in the new growth area.

A prime example of that interaction between schools and the community, Smith said, is Rancho Santa Margarita Intermediate School. Its 22-acre campus for seventh- and eighth-graders is next to the area’s new regional park, and its auditorium, gymnasium, running track, tennis courts, play fields and other facilities are available for public use during non-school hours.

“That school, all along, has been planned as the central part of Rancho Santa Margarita,” Smith said.

Despite the planning, having schools available for the influx of families has challenged the two school districts that provide educational facilities and services for the area.

Since the late 1980s, the Saddleback district and the Capistrano Unified School District have opened four elementary schools, an intermediate school and a high school. They have plans to open three more elementary schools, a middle school and a high school over the next five years.

The districts say they have been able to keep pace with the rapid development caused by changes in state law that they sought in the mid-’80s. Those changes required developers to pay higher fees or to establish areas called Mello-Roos districts, in which homeowners are assessed special taxes to pay for schools. The local funds raised are then matched by the state.

“When we compare our stories to other districts that have had to sue developers to get the level of support they needed . . . I would say, overall, we have had an outstanding relationship with developers,” Smith said.

But the schools haven’t always been ready for families to move in, partly because the state requires school districts to fill existing classrooms before building new ones. Consequently, some of the earliest families to buy homes have seen their children bused up to 45 minutes to schools miles away.

In other areas, portable buildings had to be brought in when permanent classrooms overflowed from a surge of new students.

For some parents these temporary fixes have been frustrating.

“To me, they’re not planning for the growth well because we’re bursting at the seams,” said a mother whose two sons are in kindergarten and fourth grade at Arroyo Vista Elementary.

Indeed, the school has 870 pupils, about 150 more than capacity, requiring temporary buildings to house them. Next year it will be worse, with up to 1,000 children expected. But principal Campbell said the pressure should be eased in two years, when the Capistrano district builds another elementary school a few miles away.

Campbell and Otto, both veteran school administrators, say a major difference they’ve seen in the new communities from other places they’ve worked is the involvement of developers with the schools. Both said they have regular meetings with representatives of the Fieldstone Co. or Rancho Santa Margarita Co. to discuss activities or plans for further integrating the schools into their communities.

The Fieldstone Co., for example, has responded by forming “partnerships” with Arroyo Vista Elementary in the Capistrano district and Cielo Vista Elementary in the Saddleback district. The company makes annual donations to the schools, sponsors jog-a-thons and visiting artists, and its mascot, “Freddy Fieldstone,” appears at school activities.

Such efforts appear to be working for parents such as Shelley and Paul Wallace, who moved to the area from Lake Forest three years ago in search of a family-oriented neighborhood and a brand-new house. The Wallaces’ children, Breane, 12, and Jeff, 9, attend Rancho Santa Margarita Intermediate and Trabuco Mesa Elementary schools.

Shelley Wallace, who is co-president of the school’s Student-Teacher-Parent Organization, said the state-of-the-art intermediate school has changed her daughter from an uninspired to a motivated student.

“These kids are just so fortunate to have what they have,” Shelley said.