Olive Elementary Looking Smart for Reopening

Perched on an Orange hillside is the reopened Olive Elementary School, boasting renovated facilities and repaved walkways on a 121-year-old site.

Current and former students, faculty, administrators and parents will visit the school for the rededication ceremony at 10:30 a.m. Friday.

A brief history of the site will be presented with campus tours and a barbecue after the rededication.

“It’s a very historical and wonderful thing for Orange Unified School District,” said Principal Linda Salata. “It has charm, mountain views. It’s got 100-year-old trees. It’s a very special place.”

After being closed in 1987 and leased to a private Christian school for 10 years, Olive was reopened because of enrollment increases and overcrowding at Fletcher Elementary School.

As of this month, 30,734 students are enrolled in the Orange Unified School District’s 42 schools, compared with last year’s 29,950. Olive, which has a capacity of about 440 students, has 410 this year.

Beginning in February, the school received plumbing and electrical improvements and new air conditioning, landscaping and fields. Thirty-two computers with Internet access were also installed. The total renovation cost was about $3 million.

Second-grade teacher Susan Cornett taught at Fletcher for 15 years before moving to Olive.

“We were terribly overcrowded,” Cornett said. “Having a small number of students on campus is a definite advantage.”

Karen Shepstone, a mother of two students at Olive, said she was thrilled her second- and sixth-grade daughters were able to attend the school.

“The parents are very impressed with what the board did for us,” said Shepstone, who was a member of the Save Olive School Assn. “It’s such a unique site because of the tri-levels and scenery on a clear day.”

Another feature is the gym, which was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1993. Although it is now being used as a temporary day-care center, school officials are planning to renovate the gym for student use once they acquire funding.

A large bell that was dedicated to the school in 1965 is on display near the entrance.

Salata said she was pleased with the smooth opening of the new school and anticipates that next year enrollment growth may make portables necessary.

Marissa Espino can be reached at (714) 966-5879.