SANTA CLARITA SPROUTS SCHOOLS; SAUGUS UNION MATCHING GROWTH WITH CONSTRUCTION.

Byline: Mary Schubert Daily News Staff Writer

Whether by chance or design, the Saugus school district's feat of opening one school and breaking ground on another all in the same week seems to illustrate a knack for keeping pace with constant growth.

In the past decade, enrollment across the Saugus Union School District has risen by 3,400 children. In that span, five schools have opened and a sixth is under construction.

With more than 8,500 students, Saugus is the largest elementary district in the Santa Clarita Valley. That number keeps increasing every year, in part because a large amount of residential construction is in progress within the district's 94 square miles.

No single strategy is behind the pace at which Saugus builds schools. Local bond money funded two recent sites, a property tax paid for another, and one school was constructed entirely with portable buildings.

North Park Elementary, which will be the district's 13th school when it opens in August 1999, will sit on land set aside by the developer building the surrounding neighborhoods, and also will be paid for by that same company.

``We went through a period of growth in the mid-1960s to the early 1970s. At that time, the district was basically dependent on state dollars, and the schools were always following the housing development,'' said Art Clark, assistant superintendent of business services.

District enrollment flattened and dipped after the 1971 Sylmar Earthquake, only to start climbing in the mid-1980s, reaching 5,135 during the 1988-89 school year.

Since the 1980s, a new working philosophy has taken hold. ``The board has taken the position that they want to be proactive and have schools in place . . . as quickly as possible'' after a new housing tract goes in, Clark said.

The district even set up a temporary school for three years on land loaned by The Newhall Land and Farming Company. Seco Canyon Elementary operated in portable buildings erected near Copper Hill Drive and Seco Canyon Road while Charles Helmers Elementary was under construction, Clark said.

``When Helmers opened, we just shut that (temporary) school down, and the property went back to Newhall Land,'' he said.

Saugus district voters decided to tax themselves in June 1993 with their approval of Measure S, a $10.2 million bond that paid for construction of the two newest schools, Plum Canyon and Mountainview.

A different financing approach was employed for Bouquet Canyon Elementary. The school district issued certificates of participation, a type of bond that is paid back not by taxing local property owners but by taking money out of the district's annual operating budget, Clark said.

To build Helmers, the district and the developer of the surrounding neighborhood used Mello-Roos as their funding method. A tax imposed on selected property owners, Mello-Roos is a collective debt that each resident of an area agrees to when he buys a house.

Meanwhile, the district has entered a new era with the construction of North Park Elementary, the first school to be built under a recent agreement with Newhall Land. As each phase of homes is completed and families move in, the district keeps track of how many students from those homes have enrolled in its schools.

Once a designated number of students has been reached, district officials can ask Newhall Land to begin building the next school, Clark said. Three other schools will be added to the Saugus district under this arrangement with Newhall Land.

One will be built near the planned Lago de Valencia project, near Newhall Ranch Road and Hillsborough Parkway. Another will be on vacant land west of McBean Parkway and north of Decoro Drive, a school tentatively called West Creek. The last school is planned for a site east of Bouquet Canyon Road, beyond the eastern terminus of Newhall Ranch Road, Clark said.

In each case, Newhall Land will put up the land and finance the construction for the school with the hope that it can recoup some of that money later if the school district can obtain some funding from the state government.

Another developer, proposing to build up to 1,800 homes in a project called Tesoro del Valle, forged a similar agreement with the Saugus district, Clark said. Land for an elementary school was set aside in that project as well.

ROLL CALL

School Opening year Current enrollment

Plum Canyon 1998 512

Mountainview 1996 762

Charles Helmers 1990 1,010

James Foster  1989 738

Bouquet Canyon 1989 500

Highlands 1970 765

Emblem 1969 800

Rio Vista  1968 903

Rosedell 1967 720

Cedarcreek 1966 645

Skyblue Mesa 1966 613

Santa Clarita  1958 624

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BOX: ROLL CALL (See text)