180 Days of Learning : MAGNOLIA

A school that has been closed for 18 years will reopen this fall as district officials wrestle with an enrollment boom and the statewide push to reduce class size to 20 in primary grades.

Juliette Low Elementary School was shut in 1979 because of low enrollment, and the campus was leased to the Los Angeles Rams as a training facility. Restoring the school, which the Rams vacated in 1995 to move to St. Louis, has been slow and costly because the football team had completely changed the interiors.

“They had built offices, training rooms, locker rooms. On the outside, it still looked like a school, but on the inside none of it looked like a school,” Supt. Paul S. Mercier said.

Crews have been working since December to build walls, hang chalkboards and bring the building up to earthquake standards.

By the fall, 14 classrooms will be complete and 350 students will be enrolled, officials said. During its first year, Low Elementary will have only kindergarten through fifth-grade students. A sixth-grade class will be added for the second year.

Meanwhile, across the district, students will be donning uniforms for the first time this fall. Two campuses experimented with the concept two years ago, and uniforms were so popular that all the district’s schools decided to adopt them this fall.

Mercier said principals and teachers felt that requiring uniforms promotes a scholarly atmosphere.

“It really creates a more serious attitude about being in school,” he said. “And it looks great.”