ANAVERDE HILLS STUDENTS IN LIMBO PALMDALE: LOSS OF SCHOOL LEASE LEAVES DISTRICT LOOKING FOR SPARE CLASSROOMS, SPACE AT NEARBY SITES.

Byline: Karen Maeshiro

Staff Writer

PALMDALE -- Faced with the possible loss of its leased site for Anaverde Hills School, Westside Union School District is looking at other ways to house the school's 270 students.

One idea is to set up a separate school of portable classrooms at Leona Valley School, which is the only campus in the 11-school district that has room to add more buildings.

"Our site with the greatest amount of acreage is Leona Valley," Superintendent Regina Rossall said. "All of our other schools are between 800 to 1,100 students. Trying to accommodate those kids at schools other than Leona Valley, it would be very crowded."

Leona Valley is a small campus with 156 students in grades kindergarten through eight.

Anaverde Hills opened in 2005 at a leased Palmdale School District campus near the Antelope Valley Mall to serve students who live in the Anaverde master-plan community in southwest Palmdale.

The Palmdale School District notified Westside that the leased site might not be available in the 2008-09 school year, prompting a look at other options.

The lease arrangement was supposed to have been temporary while a permanent Anaverde Hills school was built. But construction has not yet begun on the school that the developer, Empire Land, agreed to build.

The school's construction became ensnarled in a dispute between the developer and Palmdale city officials, who have refused building permits for about 400 homes in Anaverde's 1,400-home first phase because they say the developer has failed to comply with certain city building requirements.

About 900 homes have already been built, and construction started on an additional 100 in the development where 5,200 homes were ultimately planned, city officials said.

Officials with Empire Land did not respond to requests for comment.

Westside officials had originally hoped a school would be ready when the first homes were occupied in May 2005.

After more than three years of negotiations, an agreement was reached in November 2005 between school and Anaverde officials calling for construction on Anaverde's own school to start in 2006, with an opening set for this year.

Under Westside's agreement with Empire Land, the developer also agreed to pay for half of the cost of busing students, the school site lease and for architectural design fees.

But so far no payments have been received, Rossall said.

The total amount owed by the developer to Westside is more than $1 million, she added.

Anaverde Hills started out as a K-8 school, but this school year, its seventh- and eighth-graders were moved to Hillview Middle School because of low enrollment in those grades.

karen.maeshiro(at)dailynews.com

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