Lake Forest will no longer pursue the creation of an elementary school in the new Meadows Residential Community — and may opt for additional housing instead.

Alongside a residential track, the initial Meadows project proposed a new elementary school to be built in the middle of the neighborhood. The preliminary plans said the school would accommodate up to 1,000 students from kindergarten to sixth grade across multiple buildings with outside sports courts, fields and parking lots.

But during its Sept. 5 meeting, the City Council decided against creating a new school in the area after Saddleback Valley Unified School District denied its proposal.

“Because the district denied the proposal, there would be no logical reason to move forward with this school site,” said Councilmember Robert Pequeño.

Without funding support from Saddleback Valley Unified, Lake Forest could make the elementary school a private institution, but of that, Councilmember Benjamin Yu said “it’s a barrier we do not want to face.”

The Meadows school was first approved in January 2020 during a City Council meeting that green-lit the plans for the construction of the entire neighborhood. Although the school was ratified by the city, it still needed approval from Saddleback Valley Unified.

But in March — only a couple of months after the residential community was completed — Saddleback Valley Unified denied the school’s proposal.

District trustees, according to a City Council staff report, were concerned about projected enrollment numbers and said the school would not “accommodate the area properly.” Other nearby schools in the district are well below enrollment capacity, the staff report said, and enrollment is expected to continue to decline, and the cost of building a new school in Lake Forest would be both “prohibitive and unjustifiable.”

The district has an enrollment of 24,356 students, an almost 20% decrease since 2013 when the district’s enrollment was around 30,250 students.

At a town hall meeting on Aug. 28, community members questioned Lake Forest officials on why it allowed the elementary school to be included in the Meadow’s planning before it got the official OK from Saddleback Valley Unified.

“There was no promises for the school to be built,” said City Attorney Matthew Richardson.

Lake Forest, he said, “has no authority when it comes to school sites and how they are created.”

In lieu of a new elementary school in Meadows, Saddleback Valley Unified officials recommended sending neighborhood kids to Lake Forest Elementary and Serrano Intermediate School.

Lake Forest Elementary has a current enrollment of 1,046 students, a 16% decrease from 2019 when enrollment was around 1,200, according to Saddleback Valley Unified’s public data through the California Department of Education. Serrano Intermediate has 1,012 students enrolled this year, down from about 1,200 in 2019 as well.

But some families expressed concerns about the distance between Lake Forest Elementary and Meadows (about a 15-minute drive) and the potential for the school to be overcrowded with the addition of the Meadows community.

“The school was one of the primary reasons why many people purchased property at the Meadows,” said Lake Forest resident Randy Johnson. “Now, they’ve been assigned to local public schools that they feel do not offer the quality of education they want for their children, and several mentioned they must take on additional employment to afford private schools.”

Plans regarding the future of the school site will be discussed at an upcoming Lake Forest City Council meeting, said senior planner Marie Luna, and the city could plan more housing for that site. No specific date was given for when the project will be discussed again.

The roughly 126-acre subdivision project includes five single-family neighborhoods with 541 single-family residences as well as a senior affordable housing project. The luxury neighborhood includes over 20 acres of parks, open space and a habitat restoration area.

The previous site was occupied by Nakase Nursery, one of the county’s remaining wholesale nursery outlets. It was in operation since the 1990s but was then bought out by developer Toll Brothers. Lake Forest received $25 million in development fees as well as $2.5 million to improve traffic in the area.

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