180 Days of Learning : HUNTINGTON BEACH CITY

What’s old is new again this year as the district, hoping to reduce class sizes, is reopening a school site it closed 16 years ago.

To reopen John R. Peterson Elementary, the district is refurbishing two schools on the same site that closed in 1981--an elementary and a special-education facility. Ironically, those two were created by dividing one school that was built about 1963 near Beach Boulevard and Indianapolis Avenue, said Duane Dishno, district superintendent.

“It’s being rehabilitated literally from the ground up,” he said. The district is spending $2 million on new plumbing, wiring, playing fields, irrigation and other improvements.

“It will absolutely be as good as anything we have in this district,” he said.

“It looks like a disaster right now,” Dishno said in July. “But we hope it will be ready for the first day of school,” when about 650 students will fill its 30 classrooms.

But the need for new schools won’t end with Peterson. Dishno said that by year’s end, the district hopes to begin building a school to serve residents of the burgeoning Holly-Seacliff development and to have it open in 1999.

Peterson’s opening has changed boundaries for all campuses in the district. It will draw most of its students from William E. Kettler, S.A. Moffett and Agnes L. Smith elementary schools.

The district is also linking all but one or two of its nine schools to the Internet.

“We’re looking at it as enabling kids, giving them the power to access all the information resources available out there,” Dishno said. “It’s more than just using the computer as a typewriter.”