Where Every Student Gets a Sea

Third-grader Kaitlin Cosenza and her friend Madison Jabara are standing outside during recess, ticking off the reasons they like attending Newport Beach Elementary School.

“All my friends are here,” Kaitlin says. The two 8-year-olds mention the teachers, the cafeteria.

Kaitlin’s dad, Cory, a title insurance salesman who volunteers at the school once a week, can’t stand it anymore. He spreads his arms wide as if to embrace the panorama -- their playground -- and almost shouts: “And being on the beach?”

“Oh, yeah,” Kaitlin says.

That ho-hum attitude is prevalent among students at this 100-year-old school. Their one-story building is right on the beach, but to them it’s just ... school.

Someday, maybe when they are adults -- parents, even -- they will remember and boast about the classrooms that looked out on the surf, the sound of breaking waves, the golden sunlight shimmering on the calm waters.

The teachers and staff at the school, however, know that their workplace is heaven on earth.

Just ask Principal Denise Knutsen, an Iowa native. She was recruited to Southern California when there was a critical shortage of teachers in the 1980s.

Knutsen remembers the recruiters dangling the enticement that she would be “close to the beach.” Her teaching assignment was in Lancaster, in the Antelope Valley, where, she said, “there’s a lot of sand but not a lot of beach.”

Eventually, after becoming a principal in the district, Knutsen decided that if she was going to live in Southern California, she wanted to be near the Pacific.

So when she heard that the Newport-Mesa Unified School District was looking to fill five principal spots, Knutsen went for it. The policy, however, is not to tell candidates which school they’ll work at if hired.

Knutsen made it past about half a dozen interviews. Finally, for the last interview, Knutsen recalls, she was driven to the campus to meet with teachers and parents. On the way, she was casually told that the school is close to the beach.

“Yeah, right,” Knutsen remembers thinking, the promise of nearby beach in Lancaster still a sore point.

But when they pulled up to the block-long building surrounded by pastel-colored beach homes on Balboa Avenue, Knutsen couldn’t believe her eyes:

A school on the beach.

But if that was all Newport Elementary had to offer, it wouldn’t be much of a school, Knutsen said.

What sets Newport Elementary apart is the overwhelming parent participation and support. The parents do things for the school that the state and federal governments long ago stopped doing. And then some.

It’s one of the few schools with a working cafeteria, which is where Jeanne Goochey bakes cookies and cinnamon buns and cooks all sorts of dishes that are served hot and fresh.

And it is one of the few elementary schools in the state that has a full-time librarian. Her salary is paid by the parents.

The big windows in Stephanie Taylor’s library face the beach. It used to be a classroom, but it caused too many disputes between teachers, who bickered constantly to hold onto the prime real estate. The administrators decided to make it the school library, ending the arguments.

Taylor keeps a tide calendar in her small office off the main library room, so she knows when the high tides come.

“I can see the waves break, the [strand] floods. This is real weather,” Taylor said.

And she tries to get the students to marvel at the power and beauty of the ocean in a storm.

But day to day, she is happy just to glance out the big windows now and then at a view that takes her breath away.

“When [the students] go home,” she said, “I turn off all the computers, open all the windows and listen to the waves breaking.”

The kids also routinely see whales and dolphins offshore, providing a living marine lab that they discuss in class.

The one thing not in the school’s curriculum is surfing, Knutsen said.

The only real drawback, everyone seems to agree, is that there’s no parking lot. But don’t think it’s that much of a hardship. The city provides stickers to faculty and staff so they don’t have to constantly run out and feed the parking meters on Balboa Avenue.