A First Class Welcome for a School Filled to the Brim

By NICK ANDERSON

Sept. 8, 1997 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

COTO DE CAZA —

Just before 8 a.m. today, a bell will ring on a hilltop in South County. Children will part reluctantly from parents, teachers will call roll for the first time, and a school will be born.

September has always been back-to-school season elsewhere. But Coto de Caza never had a public school until now. So the opening of Wagon Wheel Elementary, just outside the south gate of this country-club enclave in the arid canyons east of Interstate 5, is a milestone. The school will instantly become the most important public institution in a place without a city hall or an official community center.

Those who shepherded its birth have cause to celebrate. The principal who outfitted it with snazzy computers. The teachers who decorated the classrooms during their summer break. The parents who pushed to hasten construction.

But before passing out cigars (the campus is smoke-free anyway), listen to Principal Dick Campbell: “This is a gorgeous school, but we’ll have our problems. Because we are filled--filled to the brim.”

The same can be said of the entire Capistrano Unified School District, which runs from San Clemente to the unincorporated hills east of Mission Viejo. Few districts in California can match Capistrano Unified’s annual 7% growth rate, and none with more than 20,000 students has grown faster in the 1990s, state records show.

Since September 1992, the 40,000-student district has launched a dozen new schools--one more than the Los Angeles Unified School District in the same time, even though that district has 17 times as many students.

Also opening today in Capistrano Unified is Las Flores School, which will serve intermediate students and later add elementary students from another new subdivision down the road from Wagon Wheel on Oso Parkway.

Like many new campuses in suburban California, Wagon Wheel will be overflowing from the moment lessons begin. Designed for 722 students, it is expected to open with about 850.

The new school already has six portable classrooms and two classes shoehorned into space intended for the library. The stage in the multipurpose room, where music classes are to be held, is next in line.

But expansion is a challenge for another time. Today, parents and teachers will ooh and aah over a campus that already is raising community spirit and mobilizing volunteers.

In previous years, many Coto de Caza children had to apply to a neighboring school district as transfer students. Others were bused to the nearest Capistrano Unified school in Rancho Santa Margarita.

“As long as people have lived here, their kids have been shifted to other schools,” said Susan Mills, a mother of three who is organizing Wagon Wheel’s PTA. “People say all the time, ‘Wouldn’t it just be heaven if Coto had a school?’ Everybody’s really thrilled.”

Last week, the school bustled and preened for the arrival of its first students. Grass flew through the air as lawn mowers and edge trimmers drowned out the din of home construction across the street. Moms drove up in sport utility vehicles to check out the campus with their children and peer through classroom windows.

Inside, the 32 teachers--all women--put the final touches on their classrooms. They stapled posters on the walls, divvied up the new crayons, scissors and glue, took brush-up lessons in high-speed photocopying and arranged seating charts. Students through third grade will share desks in pairs. Fourth- and fifth-grade students will get their own.

Veteran teachers said they have poured days and weeks into preparations. Linda Edmonds, a teacher in her 20th year who sought a transfer from a school in Rancho Santa Margarita, showed off the new kindergarten yard next to her room.

She had led a group of teachers who mapped out hopscotch patterns on the blacktop and a looping tricycle course with stages marked by a painted alphabet from A to Z. “Like a little Autopia,” Edmonds said, with a nod to Disneyland.

In closets and cabinets were the new jump ropes, Hula-Hoops and scooters. There were puzzles and puppets, tambourines and tinkertoys, and some items Edmonds called “math manipulatives”--plastic bears and kangaroos used for adding and subtracting. There was even a new parachute, ready to unfurl in a P.E. session.

“It just doesn’t get any better than this,” Edmonds said. “No teachers are luckier than we are. It’s ideal.”

Others shared her enthusiasm. Elise Pieper, one of seven first-year teachers, marveled at the three late-model Macintoshes and 20 modem ports in her room. An astronomy specialist in a school that plans to emphasize science, Pieper said she will use the computers and a large-screen monitor to lead lessons with live-action scenes from NASA sites on the World Wide Web.

“This school is so new and so fashionable, I felt like I was being introduced to a million-dollar home,” Pieper said.

To be precise, it is an $11-million home. The state paid half the cost, developers advanced $4 million--under a deal the school district extracted from home builders--and Coto de Caza taxpayers paid $1.5 million. The modern one-story school was built on 12 1/2 acres, dotted with California live oaks and dwarf rosemary, with room left over for a soccer field and eight basketball courts. The campus boasts vistas of the chaparral of Cleveland National Forest and Gen. Thomas F. Riley Wilderness Park.

Also in view are three-, four- and five-bedroom houses under construction in Wagon Wheel Canyon. More are expected in another phase of Coto de Caza, an exclusive private community with a population in 1995 of about 4,200. Soon, people like Susan Mills will snap up those homes with the expectation of sending their children to a top-notch public school next door, enrollment will rise, and the cycle of crowding and school-development pressure will begin anew.

Wagon Wheel Elementary was in the works in the early 1990s, when the area was accessible only by dirt roads. But the real push to build the school came in 1995, district officials and parents said.

A growing number of newly arrived homeowners, tired of sending their children elsewhere, lobbied for a school of their own. Developers agreed to pitch in millions of dollars to accelerate construction at a time when state funds were scarce. They bet that the prestige of a new school would boost sales.

Groundbreaking was in March 1996. Eight months later, 54-year-old Campbell was named principal--his second school-opening assignment within five years--and began to procure equipment and hire staff before construction ended in July. An advance team of seven veteran teachers helped develop the school mission, interview prospective teachers, plan purchases and write a student-parent handbook.

One afternoon last week, Campbell gathered his new faculty for a two-hour pep talk and ground-rules session. He covered everything from the height and placement of crank-model pencil sharpeners in classrooms (he couldn’t afford electric models for everyone) to an imminent shortage of duplicating paper (he asked teachers to conserve by making students do more writing themselves) to the necessary demeanor for Day One (he advised firm yet smiling authority).

Campbell and Assistant Principal Shawn Lohman also urged teachers to let parents know that the kids would do just fine and to shut the classroom doors quickly as a gentle reminder to please let them do their job.

There were a few final words on the school’s mission. The goal, Campbell said, is to ground students in basic academic skills and emphasize science and technology. Many principals might say the same. But Campbell said Wagon Wheel Elementary, home of the Mustangs, should strive for more.

“The school really needs to be the center of the community, a place where families can meet and interact with one another,” he said. “Where else are people going to go on the weekends? I think that’s a noble goal, especially in a place like this. We can do that.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Stuffed Schools

Explosive growth has left the Capistrano Unified School District crowded and trying to cope with 34% more students since school year 1992-93. How district enrollment has increased:

1997-98: 40,195*

* Projected

New Lineup

Schools opened in the district since 1992:

1992

Foxborough Elementary (K-5)

Arroyo Vista Elementary (K-5)

1993

Aliso Viejo Middle School (6-8)

Aliso Niguel High School (9-12)

1994

Wood Canyon Elementary (K-5)