District Ready to Build School After Settling Price Fight : Las Virgenes: Work will begin Monday on the elementary, which is needed to ease crowded classes.

After settling a lengthy dispute with a developer over the price of land for a school site, the Las Virgenes Unified School District will begin construction of a direly needed elementary school to serve the burgeoning student population.

Groundbreaking on the nine-acre parcel at the intersection of Parkway Calabasas and Paseo Primario is scheduled for Monday.

District officials hope to open the school by September, 1992.

The new campus--which will accommodate up to 590 students--is desperately needed to alleviate the overcrowding at the district’s seven other elementary schools, district officials said.

The school site was purchased last month from The Lusk Co. for $2 million after a protracted dispute over the sale price--a disagreement that angered residents who bought homes in the Lusk development.

At a January rally, more than 100 people threatened to sue Lusk for fraud and misrepresentation on grounds that the company reneged on its promise to new residents that their homes would be near a school.

The residents charged that the developer delayed the school district’s acquisition of the land.

“We are very, very pleased,” Assistant Supt. Don Zimring said. “But we are saddened that it took so long. . . . From our vantage point, the process was prolonged beyond a reasonable amount of time.”

He said the district had wanted to open the school this September.

Five years ago, during Lusk’s negotiations with Los Angeles County and the school district for approval to build 870 homes, the developer agreed to sell an adjacent parcel to the district at fair market value.

When the time came to discuss the sale price, Lusk officials valued the land at $6 million.

School district officials argued that the estimate was inflated, based on the presumption that the company could build luxury homes on the land if it was not used for a school.

District officials said it was unlikely that Lusk could have received permission to build homes on the school parcel, which had always been zoned for a school.

The district offered $2 million. The developer refused and negotiations came to a standstill.

In December, 1989, the district initiated condemnation proceedings to try to obtain the land.

Last month, the parties agreed on a purchase price of $2 million.

In addition, the district agreed to reduce the developer fees that Lusk would have to pay the school district, which will save the company $850,000 to $1 million, Zimring said.

Zimring said district officials were able to persuade the developer to accept the lower price because “we could demonstrate that the site was always designated as a school site and that the value must be set for it as a school site, not a site where they could build 25 homes.”

Construction of the new school will cost about $4.5 million, which will be paid for out of the district’s building fund, Zimring said.

District officials, facing the prospect of major cutbacks in their operating budgets for next year, said they do not anticipate hiring additional teachers for the new school.

Instead, they said, they will simply transfer teachers from the other elementary campuses to the new school.