Exclusive Enclave Eagerly Awaits Debut of School

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

September may be back-to-school season elsewhere, but Coto de Caza never had its own 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 the San Diego Freeway, is a milestone. The school instantly becomes the most important public institution in a place without a city hall or a true community center.

Yet pause a moment before passing out cigars. (The campus is smoke-free anyway.) Listen to Principal Dick Campbell, as proud of this birth as anybody: “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 spans the area from San Clemente to the unincorporated hills north 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 district, whose estimated enrollment for the new term is 40,000, has launched a dozen new schools--one more over the same period than the Los Angeles Unified School District, which has 17 times as many students. Also opening Monday in Capistrano Unified is Las Flores School, serving initially intermediate and later adding elementary students from another new subdivision down the road from Wagon Wheel.

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

The school already has six portable classrooms and two classes shoe-horned into space meant for the library.

But tomorrow’s growth is a challenge for another time. Now, parents and teachers will ooh and aah over a campus that is raising community spirit and mobilizing volunteers.

“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 first PTA chapter. “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. Cut grass flew through the air as lawn mowers and edge trimmers drowned out the din of home construction across the street. Parents--mostly moms--drove up in sport utility vehicles to check out the campus with their children and peer through windows.

Inside, the 32 teachers 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 were rejuvenated and have poured days and weeks of extra time 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.

In closets and cabinets were the new jump ropes, Hula-Hoops and scooters. There were puzzles and puppets, tambourines and Tinker Toys, and some items Edmonds called “math manipulatives.”

“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 Macintosh computers 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 video 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--with room left over for a soccer field and eight outdoor basketball hoops. The campus opens onto vistas of the chaparral hills of Cleveland National Forest and Gen. Thomas F. Riley Wilderness Park.

The school also looks onto 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.

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, Campbell was named principal--his second school-opening assignment within five years--and began to procure equipment and hire staff before construction concluded 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).

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.”