SANTA ANA – The Orange County School of the Arts – the county’s premier school for the performing arts – plans to open a satellite campus in Oceanside next year.
The California School of the Arts-San Diego County will open next August for 800 students in grades 7th through 10th. An additional 200 students will be added every year until the campus reaches 1,200, said Ralph Opacic, executive director of the Santa Ana charter school that attracts students from throughout Southern California.
The new campus will offer more students an opportunity to enroll in specialized programs, which include performing arts, creative writing, culinary arts and digital media.
The expansion will make both campuses eligible for major education grants and raise the visibility of the Santa Ana school.
“It will add greater prestige to the OCSA campus, which is the flagship school,” Opacic said.
There will be no financial impact on the Orange County school, Opacic said. The new school will have its own foundation to raise money in addition to regular state funding based on students’ daily attendance.
The Oceanside school, part of the Oceanside Unified School District, will be housed in what is now a middle school campus. Students of the new school will benefit from a future state-of-the-art theater, which will be built about a mile away with recently voter-approved bond money, Opacic said.
The Orange County school draws nearly 2,000 students in grades 7-12 from more than 100 cities in Southern California. More than 3,000 students auditioned last year for a spot; 400 got in.
“The expansion could be the first of several satellite schools to accomplish OCSA’s mission to serve more gifted and talented students in the Southern California area,” Opacic said.
“What if, 10 years from now, we could be serving 10,000 students in multiple campuses?”
Contact the writer: rkopetman@ocregister.com and twitter@roxanakopetman
