Santa Margarita Elementary Unveils Remodeled Campus for Parents

The newly renovated aboard Camp Pendleton will host a “moving on” ceremony for outgoing fifth-graders at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, followed by a sneak peak of the campus for parents at 6:30 p.m.

Renovations have taken about a year to complete, but the school is finally ready to once again open its doors to students in August.

“I’m very excited about it,” said Barbara Alfaro, whose three children are in kindergarten, second and third grade. “The school needed to be redone, period. It will service the students and staff much better. It’s going to make picking up and dropping off much nicer.”

 The old design didn’t lend itself to picking up and dropping of children, Alfaro said. There was a portion of the parking lot, affectionately known as “Pine Island,” where students would wait to be picked up. Some students would cross the street to be picked up, which was dangerous, Alfaro said.

“The new design is different because it’s a pull-in, so the kids don’t have to cross the street,” Alfaro said. “There’s a larger parking lot. Parents can pull directly up to the curb. It’s a faster drive through, so to speak.”

Angela Brennan was also excited to start sending her first-grader to the new campus.

“I’m being selfish because there are no more buses,” said Brennan. “I live at Wire Mountain 2 all the way at the top of the hill. The buses start at 7:30 in the morning when you’re trying to get to work and drop off your kid. So I get to work late every day, but my daughter was happy because she got to ride the buses. I think the new school will be really nice. My daughter asks me every day ‘When is the school done? When is the school done?’ ”

The elementary school was never originally designed for parents to pick up and drop off their children, said Pat Kurtz, Santa Margarita’s principal.

“The original school was designed to be a walking school,” said Kurtz. “So there was no physical set up for a drive-through or for drop off.”

The old design forced the buses and parents in their cars to share a very small area in order to pick up and drop off children. All vehicles had to exit onto Carnes Road in a way that essentially created a gridlock because it was such a small area.

“And I had to drive through traffic every afternoon,” said Kurtz. “Now the area has been opened up.”

Carnes Road only has a single lane, and it’s the only road leading to the neighborhood above the school. Passing other vehicles is next to impossible, which raised concerns about emergency vehicles being able to access the homes in that area.

"It’s probably five times as much area now," said Kurtz. "So there’s plenty of room for cars and for buses."