LONG WAIT TO END FOR NEW SCHOOL $9.5 MILLION STATE GRANT OK'D FOR SADDLEBACK ELEMENTARY.

Byline: Karen Maeshiro Staff Writer

LAKE LOS ANGELES - The state will pay the entire cost of building $9.5 million Saddleback Elementary School, proposed more than 14 years ago but delayed by studies looking for a rare squirrel.

State officials have granted the 2,150-pupil district financial-hardship status, which means state funds will pay not only for Saddleback but also for a $3.2 million expansion of Challenger Middle School and a $1.9 million refurbishing of portable classrooms at Wilsona Elementary School.

``We'll try to do Saddleback and the Challenger addition at the same time. That way we can save on inspection costs,'' Superintendent Ned McNabb said.

Saddleback, the district's third elementary school, will be a 750-student, K-5 campus on 10 acres the district owns at 150th Street East and Avenue N-12. The school construction is scheduled to start by January 2004 and be completed in about a year, McNabb said.

The district's application for hardship status was approved in the spring.

The Saddleback project was derailed in 1989 in part because of the possible presence of the Mohave ground squirrel, a threatened species. Because of the delay caused by the search for the squirrel on the school property, the district temporarily lost its place on a waiting list for state hardship funding.

District officials said an environmental study has since indicated the site is not a habitat for the rodent.

District officials also want to add 10 classrooms at Challenger Middle School and modernize 16 of the oldest relocatable classrooms at Wilsona Elementary.

Facilities are bursting at the seams after an enrollment jump last year to 2,150 students, a 16 percent increase that matched the district's previous high rate, set in the early 1990s.

The increase has been fueled by a real estate boom in which older homeowners with grown children are selling their houses to families with young children and vacant housing has also filled up - often with more young families.

District officials were unable to come up with any matching funds for the needed school construction.

Assessed valuation of real estate in the district could support a school bond measure of about $4 million, meeting a state threshold - $5 million or less - for hardship status, officials said.

In addition, district taxpayers already make payments of about $400,000 a year on long-term debt incurred for temporary schools before Vista San Gabriel Elementary School was built.

The payments take 3 percent of the district's operating budget, officials said.

Karen Maeshiro, [phone]

karen.maeshiro(at)dailynews.com