Doors opening soon at Yerba Buena
New elementary school cost $36 million
By Stephanie Bertholdo bertholdo@theacorn.com

The long-awaited new Yerba Buena Elementary School on Lindero Canyon Road will open April 30, Las Virgenes school officials announced.

Built on the border between Agoura Hills and Westlake Village, the school cost $36 million and will be home to Yerba Buena's 440 students.

"We're very, very excited about the move," said Yerba Buena Principal Brent Noyes. "This is a tremendous opportunity for new beginnings and new traditions, and a real positive statement about communities supporting our schools through local bond measures."

Yerba Buena Elementary currently shares a campus with Lindero Canyon Middle School.

The new elementary school was approved in 2000, but soil contamination, skyrocketing land prices, requirements to place power lines underground- even the discovery of roosting owls- - delayed the project for years.

The school's proximity to environmentally sensitive Medea Creek was one of several reasons why construction took so long. Administrators had to contend with oversight from 27 different agencies, including the Army Corps of Engineers, which has jurisdiction over waterways

As soon as students move to the new campus, the remodel of Lindero Canyon will begin, Noyes said. "We love being with our Lindero neighbors, but it's nice now to have our new home."

"We're very excited; after seven years of planning, dreaming and planning again and dreaming again, the vision our board of education and community had for a new and permanent home for Yerba Buena is coming to a reality," district Deputy Superintendent Donald Zimring said. "This is testimony to what happens when a community comes together in support of their children."

The school will accommodate Yerba Buena's current enrollment of 440 students in kindergarten through fifth grades, but has ample room for 600 students, Zimring said.

Each of the 25 classrooms will share a workroom, and the school will include a stateoftheart library/media center large enough to accommodate three classrooms at once.

The library/media center features a vaulted ceiling with skylights and a bank of windows that frame mountain views.

Also greeting the students when they arrive will be a computer lab with room for 36 computers. A preschool will be located on the school grounds, Zimring said.

A regulation soccer field is included in the school's design, but the fields will not be available for use right away, Zimring said. The city of Westlake Village will rent the fields for use outside school hours and pay for the field's maintenance and irrigation costs.