Learning in Luxury’s Lap

In a neighborhood of million-dollar homes, your standard gray asphalt school roof just wouldn’t do, so the Irvine Co. pressed the district to give Newport Coast Elementary School a tile roof--like those found in Tuscany, or on the surrounding Tuscan-village-style homes.

That’s the least of the unique features of the first elementary school built in 25 years in the Newport-Mesa Unified School District. The price tag was $17.3 million, more than half of it for the 11-acre ocean-view parcel in one of the most exclusive still-developing coastal areas in Southern California.

The “school of the future,” as district officials call it, has automatic-flush toilets, ceilings that are designed to “catch” outside light, solar-powered water heaters and interactive chalkboards. It’s expected to be one of the most energy-efficient schools in the state.

But some education leaders say the conflicts surrounding the building of Newport Coast, which opens today to 311 students in kindergarten through sixth grade, portend similar tensions elsewhere in south Orange County.

First, there was a hullabaloo over whether it was fair that some district children had to attend class in crumbling buildings while Newport Coast kids would learn about the solar system in a building that, on the outside at least, resembles the palace where Galileo first plotted the heavens.

The district proposed a $110-million school bond measure to repair old schools and bring the rest of the campuses to the same standard of technology and infrastructure.

The idea, Newport-Mesa school board President Dana Black said, was “if we were to plop you down and put you blindfolded in a classroom, you wouldn’t know where you’d plopped.”

Within limits, of course. Teachers shouldn’t hold their breath waiting for clay roof tiles or automatic toilets. And not all schools can have ocean views.

“As hard as we try, students at some schools will still not be able to play on the beach,” Black said.

The bond measure, however, angered some residents of the Irvine Co.’s Newport Coast development who said it would be unfair for them to have to pay for school bonds because they already were shouldering hefty Mello-Roos taxes to pay for the shiny new school, streets and other municipal needs.

But because the children from Newport Coast eventually will attend Corona del Mar High School, district officials said it was only fair that they help pay off the bonds.

Some residents of the new development campaigned against the bond measure, but to the relief of many living elsewhere in Newport Beach and neighboring Costa Mesa, it passed overwhelmingly.

The conflict over unequal school facilities is “a constant dynamic that’s not going to go away,” said James Fleming, superintendent of the fast-growing Capistrano Unified School District. “There’s no easy way to address it.”

The reason is that the schools built in the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s, during Orange County’s first great wave of suburbanization, are deteriorating. Meanwhile, as ridgelines around the county are bulldozed for new homes, parents whose children attend the older schools often resent those who sit in new classrooms across town, saying their children deserve beautiful new facilities too.

In Capistrano Unified, 18 of the 46 schools have been built since 1992--with Mello-Roos funds. The others are older, and most are targeted for improvements under the district’s $65-million bond measure, which passed in 1999. But residents living in eight Mello-Roos areas were exempted from paying for the bonds because they already faced their own tax burden, Fleming said.

Still, resentment over the inequalities persist, so much so that Fleming said district officials cut back on holding staff meetings at Aliso Niguel High School because teachers at schools that are not as well-equipped were becoming depressed at all the technological gizmos those classrooms offered.

“If you’re a teacher at Aliso, you can walk into your classroom, pick up a remote control and you’ve got a tsunami or a line graph showing the number of earthquakes over the years,” Fleming said.

Such technological upgrades are in or coming to the rest of the schools.

But Fleming said, “I don’t think you can completely erase the inequity. . . . If you’ve got a brand-new facility, they’ve got all kinds of accommodations.”

Newport-Mesa officials say they also are working hard to bring all schools up to the same level. But that commitment to equity doesn’t stop them from gushing with excitement over their new elementary school.

“It’s amazing what the difference in schools can be from one area to another,” said Newport Coast Principal Monique Vanzeebroeck, pointing out lofty ceilings, a beautifully appointed teachers lounge and laptop computers in every room.

Vanzeebroeck, who came from a year-round school in Lancaster, now will be using only 15 of the 25 classrooms because enrollment is expected to grow to 700 students over the next few years. For now, extra rooms are being used to teach music and science and for a parent center.

At $7.6 million, the buildings, designed by Perkins & Will, were almost a bargain for an elementary school. But the $9.7-million cost of the land is among the most expensive in the state, said Duwayne Brooks, the state’s director of school facilities. A new elementary school for 600 students should cost about $12.5 million, with the land being about 25% of the total, he said.

Thanks to Newport Coast Elementary’s design, at least the electric bill should be cheap, even at a time of soaring power bills and rolling blackouts. The school is expected to use 43% less energy than without the conservation measures--a savings of as much as $15,000 a year.

*

Though the terra cotta roof tiles are purely decorative--to blend into the Newport Coast housing development--the Tuscan theme seems fitting: Officials hope the school will spark a renaissance in school building across California.

Drawing on research that says natural light enhances learning, the school is designed to draw sunlight through the windows, bounce it up onto a concave ceiling and shine it down onto little heads bent over textbooks. The campus also is situated so that students and teachers have sweeping ocean views--and breezes that cool the rooms naturally.

Built with design input from architects at Southern California Edison and helped along with a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy, the school will be a showcase to encourage other districts to follow its energy-efficient example.

Not everything at Newport Coast is finished. The school was supposed to open last fall, but construction delays meant children and their teachers had to start the year at nearby Lincoln Elementary School.

Now, teachers and parents are so anxious to get to their new school, they don’t care that the walkways between buildings have not yet been covered, or that brown patches of dirt around campus are crying out for landscaping.

*

Inside, however, things are ready. In the bathrooms, water comes on automatically when little hands are placed beneath faucets. Toilets, equipped with motion sensors, flush themselves. Students will get a grace period to get used to things before there is a crackdown on bathroom high jinks, teacher Lainie McGann said.

And in one classroom, instead of a traditional chalkboard or the newer white marker boards, there is a state-of-the-art, digitally interactive board.

With help from infrared sensors embedded in standard markers, students can write on the “smartboard,” and it automatically will copy the writing to the teacher’s laptop. Teachers hope money can be found to put such boards in each classroom.

Vanzeebroeck pointed to another luxury few other schools can boast: a cadre of parents ready and willing to open their pocketbooks for extras.

Parents already have organized a parent-teacher association and a foundation, which together raised $100,000 to pay for music teachers and extra computers. To complement the extensive landscaping already planned, parents are going to buy exotic palm trees and flowering plants.

The campus has some unusual grass. When the turf was trucked in from Northern California, landscapers noticed it looked a bit brown. So they dyed it a lush dark green, Vanzeebroeck said. Once it grows, it will be fine, she said.

“I almost started to cry when I walked in,” said PTA President Denise Molnar, who will have two children attending the school. “It’s so beautiful.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Newport Coast Opens

The district’s first new school in 25 years is scheduled to open today. The $17.3-million K-6 school boasts energy-efficient technology such as solar-powered water heaters.