2 Schools: New and Very Different

At one school, you can see the Pacific Ocean from the library. Its trustees include Jack Peltason, former University of California president, and Walter Gerken, chairman of a mutual fund group with more than $250 million in assets.

The other school was built in a Santa Ana shopping center. If you crane your neck out from the chain-link fence of the second-floor hallway, you can see Ralphs supermarket.

As more than 450,000 Orange County students return to class from summer vacation, these two brand-new schools present a study in contrasts--and similarities.

The private Sage Hill School in Newport Beach was built with $30 million of private money, including a $15-million anonymous donation. Adding an arts center, math-science center, aquatics center and tennis court will cost an additional $20 million.

The Gonzalo and Felicitas Mendez Fundamental Intermediate School in Santa Ana is the county’s first “space saver” school, a campus that goes up as well as out.

As part of California’s now-defunct program to create campuses in urban areas without taking land from homes and businesses, it cost $40 million in public funds and seven years of fighting bureaucratic hurdles and neighborhood opposition to build it. It sits on 12 acres in a bustling shopping mall at Bristol and 17th streets. On Tuesday, the first day at Mendez School, a few customers in the Bristol Market Place looked curiously across from the Home Base store at children dressed in blue and white uniforms. Inside, Principal Lucinda Clear and excited teachers greeted the students.

Social studies teacher Sean Decker told his sixth-period class: “I have not been this excited about a day since I went to Disneyland for the first time when I was 5 years old.”

More than 1,000 children in fifth through eighth grades will attend the school, about 90% of them Latino.

That’s fitting, said Clear, because the school was named after the couple who won the lawsuit ending segregation of Latino students in California in 1947. Among the students attending the school is their granddaughter, eighth-grader Vanessa Mendez.

Children and parents from throughout the Santa Ana Unified School District chose the fundamental school because it stresses reading, writing and mathematics as well as discipline.

Admission was on a first-come, first-served basis, and already there is a waiting list. Students who fail to do their homework and don’t follow the school’s strict rules will be sent back to their neighborhood schools, said Clear, former principal at Carr Intermediate School in Santa Ana.

But in addition to the promise of a rigorous education, many students said they are delighted to be attending something as unusual as a new three-story school full of bright, polished desks, gleaming computers and sunny patios.

“It’s all new, and it’s really big. Almost none of the other schools have three floors,” said seventh-grader Rocio Zamudo, who thinks attending a fundamental school will help her become a pediatrician.

Sage Hill’s first group of 120 ninth- and 10th-graders begins school Thursday. During the next four or five years, the school hopes to grow to 600 students from grades nine through 12. Tuition is $14,000 a year.

Mennette San-Lee, director of admissions and financial aid, said that’s a bargain compared to places like Crossroads School in Santa Monica, which costs $16,000 to $18,000.

Perched on a hilltop on MacArthur Boulevard off the San Joaquin Hills toll road, Sage Hill bespeaks wealth. Clint Wilkins--head of school, not principal--headed a number of other private schools, including Sidwell Friends in Washington, D.C., where Chelsea Clinton earned her high school degree.

Peter Ueberroth, formerly Olympics czar and commissioner of Major League Baseball, was an advisor and donor; his daughter is on the board of trustees. Other board members include Dori Caillouette, daughter of developer Donald Koll. Former Anaheim Angel and currently Cleveland Indians pitcher Chuck Finley is on the athletic advisory council.

But those involved with the school say they are not trying to create an elite school for rich kids. Caillouette, mother of four, said she wanted the smaller, more focused classes possible at a private school.

Part of the mission is to create a diverse school population. Wilkins said about 30% of the students signed up for this year are minorities, and 15% to 20% of all students will receive financial aid.

“Starting a brand new school with these kind of resources at this time in history is very, very exciting,” he said.

The curriculum aims to offer a balance between traditional and creative disciplines. Another important component will be volunteer service.

That will include literacy tutoring and environmental projects such as cleaning and watching over a nearby gully.

“You see the youth today and they don’t seem to care. . . . Coolness becomes the focus of their life, rather than being educated,” said Caillouette.