Schedule for Canyon Rim School on Board Agenda

The new Canyon Rim Elementary School will open this summer for students through fourth grade if, as expected, the Orange Unified School District approves a final schedule for the project tonight.

District planners will recommend that the new school eventually add a fifth grade and operate on a year-round basis. Under that plan, students would attend sessions for 45 days and then take 15-day breaks.

Bill Flory, director of planning, said that final construction and landscape design of the new building will not be complete until September or October.

Students assigned to Canyon Rim will begin their year at Crescent Primary School and Crescent Intermediate School until the building is ready. Fifth-graders would start attending the new school in the 1998-99 school year.

In the meantime, district officials will consider a plan to send sixth-graders to middle schools to ease an enrollment boom in the lower elementary grades over the coming years.

Estimates show that the 27,000-student district could grow by as much as 1,000 students annually for the next five years, officials said.

A new elementary school called Running Springs, also in the Anaheim Hills area, is scheduled to open for the 1999-2000 school year.

The school board will meet at 7:30 tonight at district headquarters, 1401 N. Handy St. Information: (714) 997-6221.