RIO NORTE TO OPEN WITH TWO GRADES EFFORT TO AID SCHOOL DISTRICT'S OVERCROWDING.

Byline: Daily News

SANTA CLARITA - Rio Norte Junior High, scheduled to open in August and relieve campus overcrowding around the valley, will surpass its capacity two years later, according to attendance figures compiled by the Hart school district.

With four existing junior highs well beyond their capacities, Rio Norte in North Valencia will open in the next school year to seventh- and eighth- graders, the board of the William S. Hart Union High School District decided Wednesday night.

In the past, new schools have opened with just one grade, but classrooms are so packed the board decided to take students entering their first year of junior high and to transfer some eighth-graders now attending La Mesa and Arroyo Seco junior highs. Parents of current seventh-graders who live in the new Rio Norte attendance area will be allowed to choose by March whether their children transfer to the new campus. If they stay at their current junior highs for eighth grade, however, no school buses will be available.

Rio Norte will accommodate 1,200 and will open with about 945 students. But it sits in a fast-growing area at Copper Hill Road and McBean Parkway and attendance is expected to jump to 1,076 next year, and 1,215 the following year. It is estimated that by 2008, the planned attendance zone will have more than 1,500 junior high-age students.

Overflow will be managed by adding portable classrooms and by the opening in 2005 of Rancho Pico Junior High in the Valencia Westridge area.

Children from Bridgeport, Helmers, North Park and Mountainview elementary schools as well as new elementary schools planned in the immediate area would attend Rio Norte, according to a recommendation by committee advising the school on adjusting attendance areas.