Countdown to 2000: Schools

Greg Risling

The school system that for nearly two decades had experienced burgeoning

growing pains began to prosper in the 1950s with new development.

Not only was the decade a time of change with the addition of a new high

school to alleviate enrollment problems at Newport Harbor High, but

discussions swirled around combining all three school districts to form a

unified district.

School administrators were faced foremost with a shortage of classrooms

and a growing population. The most significant shortage was at the area’s

lone high school, Newport Harbor, where the student body swelled to

capacity with 1,253 students.

Noting the inevitable, school board members agreed in 1953 that a second

high school should be built. After taking nearly three years to find

funding and a site, Costa Mesa High School was approved on Sept. 12,

1956. The high school was built on part of a 70-acre acquisition from the

U.S. Army between Fairview Road and Harbor Boulevard.

School officials were also ecstatic about the area’s new intermediate

school that was financed by a $95,000 bond measurein 1952 and an

allocation of $1.5 million from the state. The result was Rea School,

which opened its doors in April 1953 to nearly 400 seventh- and

eighth-graders.

Meanwhile, in Newport Beach, school district officials were facing

similar problems. In order to address projected growth figures over the

next 15 years, they decided to open an elementary school reserved for

fifth- and sixth-graders called Harbor View, in 1953. Six years later,

another school was built -- Mariners Elementary -- pushing the city’s

total to five schools.

At the close of the decade, school officials were belabored by the

disjointed bureaucracy of running three different school districts.

Funding was always a No. 1 priority for each district and it was evident

that a combined effort by all three would serve the schools best.

Yet in December 1959, there was another bond issue staring administrators

straight in the face. They were asking for $1.8 million to build a new

intermediate school, two elementary schools and the possibility for the

area’s third high school. Officials were also looking at population

figures, which were estimated to bring another 2,000 students to the area

by 1965.

Sources: Costa Mesa Globe-Herald, 1952-1959; “Newport Beach 75:

1906-1981” by James P. Felton, 1981.