CASTAIC MOVING SCHOOLS : HILLCREST CAMPUS TO HOUSE MIDDLE, ELEMENTARY PUPILS.

Byline: Mary Schubert Daily News Staff Writer

With school out for the summer, work crews have been busy this week preparing the middle and elementary schools for a move to their new site on Hillcrest Parkway, where classes will begin this fall.

Jim Estes, director of business and personnel for the Castaic Union School District, said work crews began removing portable classrooms from the elementary and middle school campuses after school ended June 13.

``We're tearing relocatables as I look out my window,'' Estes said this week from his office on the Ridge Route Road campuses. Nineteen portable classrooms will be set up at later this summer on the grounds of the school currently being built, he said.

``The new site will be four to five miles southwest of our current location, on the west side of Interstate 5,'' Estes said. ``We'll be relocating about 1,200 students and about 100 staff members.''

The new middle school will be a one-story campus with more than 30 classrooms, while the future elementary school will have about 22 classrooms, Estes said. A groundbreaking ceremony for the elementary school is planned for July, he said.

The existing schools date to 1926; the school district was founded in 1889, Estes noted. District and school board officials expect to award a demolition contract by September, he said.

Meanwhile, community members can help the schools move to their new quarters. A moving party, sponsored by the Castaic Lions Club, will begin at 8 a.m. July 27 and helping hands are needed, Estes said.

``We're going to be moving school furniture, books, file cabinets, desks and chairs. Then the Lions Club is going to sponsor a barbecue on the middle school site,'' he said.

Earlier this year, the school district received a $7.2 million grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to help pay for the demolition and rebuilding of Castaic Elementary School and the district office. Bonds totalling $20 million will be used to rebuild Castaic Middle School, which serves about 550 students in grades six through eight.

The FEMA grant, meanwhile, will allow the district to temporarily house about 650 students in kindergarten through fifth grade in portable classrooms on a new middle school campus, which opens on Aug. 28.

The school district will turn over its 19-acre site, which lies in a flood plain 1.7 miles south of the Castaic Dam, to the Newhall County Water District. The school property sits above two active wells, which the water district can use to supply their customers in Castaic. FEMA and district officials fear the dam - which holds water for the Santa Clarita Valley and much of metropolitan Los Angeles - could rupture, destroying both schools and endangering the students. Built in 1972, the dam holds 323,700 acre-feet of water in a 29-mile lake that covers 2,200 acres.

The district won the funding from FEMA's Hazard Mitigation Grant Program, in which the government offers monetary assistance to public agencies to retrofit or relocate structures facing serious hazards.

Plans call for the new elementary school to open in August 1997.