Quick Studies

For five months, 9-year-old Marcie Ozuna has watched the rapid assembly of green- and red-trimmed portable classrooms going up in her Santa Ana neighborhood.

On Wednesday, Marcie and about 300 other students started their first day of school at Lydia Romero-Cruz Elementary School--in a structure made up mainly of portable units. The school is the second in the Santa Ana Unified School District to be made up almost entirely of portables.

The inexpensive, quickly assembled structures are needed to ease the squeeze at a school district suffering one of the severest classroom shortages in Orange County. It also helps put the neighborhood back in neighborhood schools.

Instead of taking a 15-minute bus ride, Marcie and her friends can walk to school.

“The classrooms are so very neat. The carpet is clean. It’s all very cool,” the fifth-grader said, smiling as she eyed the playground with its orange and green monkey bars.

Santa Ana and Capistrano Unified School District are among the county’s fastest-growing districts. Both will ask voters this fall to approve bond measures. Santa Ana is seeking $145 million and Capistrano is hoping to get $65 million--money that can be leveraged for much more in state funding. Under a statewide bond issue passed last year, schools seeking upgrades could get the state to fund 80% of the cost.

For two years, many children in Marcie’s neighborhood near Bristol Street and Santa Ana Boulevard were reaching school age, and more families with young children were moving in. Enrollment in elementary grades jumped 26% from 881 two years ago to 1,186 this year.

But a small child-care center was the closest the area had to educational facilities. Students were bused to Muir Fundamental School, where they attended classes for the past year in 12 portable units.

So district officials bought the day care center, built 13 portable units around it and created an elementary school. It was put up in much less time and about half the typical cost of a school, said Mike Vail, the district’s assistant superintendent of facilities.

The portable campus cost $3.55 million and was built in about five months, Vail said. A permanent building would have cost about $6.5 million and taken two years to build, he said.

“This was a chance to have a new school at a cost the district could afford,” Vail said.

Portable structures last only about 20 years, but that might not pose a problem.

“The normal pattern of school demographics is a roller coaster. It goes up and down,” he said. “The demographics here might stay steady or decline. In 20 years’ time, it’ll be for a new school board to decide what to do with it.”

Romero-Cruz Elementary, a year-round school for grades three through five, is the 17th school to be built in the district in 10 years. It is named for Lydia Romero-Cruz, a popular teacher who died in 1996.

Architects wanted the school to look as normal as possible, Vail said, despite the fact that 13 of the 14 classrooms are portables.

Instead of elevated rooms equipped with ramps, the rooms are on ground level. No air conditioning units stick out the side--they’re all on the roof, hidden behind boards.

Some parents said the portables might not be ideal, but they meet the needs now.

“I think it would be better to have permanent construction, but we didn’t have that much time to finish,” said Bernardo Ozuna, 51, Marcie’s father. “It was a good compromise.”

Many students seemed so excited Wednesday morning about the new school they didn’t seem to notice the yellow tape barring them from the playground and other areas where work needs to be completed.

“It’s all so new,” said Daisy Macedo, 10, waiting outside before class started. “It’s exciting. I’m happy. It’s not complete yet--all the tape, the wooden boards--it’s not finished, and that makes it more exciting.”

At a break, teachers knelt to chalk handball squares on the asphalt. Some students eyed the cordoned-off monkey bars, others mused about the potential tetherball courts and basketball courts that are to be installed in the next few weeks.

“It seems weird that we have a little blacktop and no grass,” said Erick Lincares, 9, a fourth-grader. “But maybe I’ll like it when it’s all built.”

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Portable Solution

Santa Ana’s new Lydia Romero-Cruz Elementary School, consisting mostly of portable units, will take students from four other city schools.