School at El Toro Base to Reopen in Fall

The former elementary school at El Toro air base will reopen in the fall as a campus for older students with severe disciplinary problems.

El Toro Marine Elementary School, a campus in the Irvine Unified School District, opened in 1962 as a school for the children of Marines and closed in June 1999 because of the base closure.

The district has now decided to reopen it as Irvine Community Day School. So-called day schools are part of a relatively new educational trend quickly spreading across Orange County districts. The Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District has one, as does the Santa Ana Unified School District. The Huntington Beach Union High School district is considering such a program.

Previously, students with serious behavior or attendance issues were sent to the county for instruction. But a 1995 state law provides funding for districts to open their own alternative schools.

Raquel Bruno, principal of Santa Ana’s day school, said the programs are popular because the local districts are better able to monitor kids’ progress and provide encouragement.

The day schools also mean more money for the districts, which collect state funds for each student they educate. Because state law requires day school programs to maintain small classes and a longer, six-hour instructional day, districts are given supplemental money to compensate.

Paul Mills, Irvine’s director of alternative education, said the state money was not part of the district’s decision to open a community day school. However, a district report on the issue states that “establishing an Irvine [day school] program will have a very positive fiscal impact.”

Mills said the district decided to go with the program because it want to keep better tabs on the students.

“It would give our district the opportunity to serve kids that are struggling,” he said. “[With a day school], we have that ability to communicate real directly with how they’re doing and what they’re doing, and it makes the transition [back to conventional campuses] more effective than we think it is right now.”

Students and parents in Santa Ana’s district told principal Bruno they appreciate that care.

“They said they were happy to get a second chance,” Bruno said. She added that parents especially appreciate the fact that the schools are closer to home than county facilities.

Irvine’s day school will house students in seventh through 10th grades its first year, installing new desks and all new supplies. There will be about 35 students, two teachers, a counselor and two other staffers. Mills says the district hopes to expand to include older students, but that the younger kids “seem to have the greatest needs for working through specific behaviors.”

The community day school program will operate in conjunction with Irvine’s continuation school program, which enrolls students in grades nine through 12.

Mills said the schools serve different purposes: day school focuses more on correcting behavior and getting kids back to conventional campuses, and the goal of continuation schools is to help struggling students graduate.

Mills said he realizes 35 students will not fill the old El Toro campus.

There is a preschool in a remote part of the campus, he says, but most of the old school will remain empty for now.