Saugus Union School District (SUSD) is a public

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

school district A school district is a special-purpose district that operates local public Primary school, primary or Secondary school, secondary schools or both in various countries. It is not to be confused with an attendance zone, which is within a school dis ...

located in

Santa Clarita Santa Clarita (; Spanish for "Little St. Clare") is a city in northwestern Los Angeles County, California, United States. With a 2020 census population of 228,673, it is the third-most populous city in Los Angeles County, the 17th-most populo ...

Los Angeles County, California Los Angeles County, officially the County of Los Angeles and sometimes abbreviated as LA County, is the List of United States counties and county equivalents, most populous county in the United States, with 9,663,345 residents estimated in 202 ...

. The district serves students in grades TK/K-6 in Saugus, most of

Valencia Valencia ( , ), formally València (), is the capital of the Province of Valencia, province and Autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community of Valencian Community, the same name in Spain. It is located on the banks of the Turia (r ...

, and parts of

Canyon Country Canyon Country is a neighborhood in the eastern part of the city of Santa Clarita, in northwestern Los Angeles County, California, United States. It lies along the Santa Clara River between the Sierra Pelona Mountains and the San Gabriel Moun ...

. There are also pre-school programs on-site at many of the schools. The district includes 15 elementary schools.

History

The Saugus School District was founded on November 12, 1908, formed from sections of the older

Newhall School District The Newhall School District is an elementary school district in the Santa Clarita Valley that serves the Valencia and Newhall communities within the city of Santa Clarita, California, as well as the Stevenson Ranch community in unincorporated ...

and

Castaic Union School District Castaic Union School District is a public school district serving unincorporated Castaic, portions of unincorporated Valencia, and a very small portion of the city of Santa Clarita within Los Angeles County, California, offering elementary and s ...

. Construction of the district's first elementary school was put to bid on October 15, 1909.

Saugus Elementary School

Saugus Elementary School opened the following year in 1910, located on Bouquet Canyon Road between Cinema Drive and Springbook Avenue. The original wooden schoolhouse was demolished in 1936 to make way for a Spanish-style adobe building. Saugus Elementary School closed in 1978 and was redeveloped into the "Santa Clarita Plaza" shopping center. On August 2, 1978, the school's bell was placed in the custodial care of the Santa Clarita Valley Historical Society until its final placement within the belfry of the Newhall Metrolink station in 2000.

District growth

As Saugus grew, so to did the need for additional elementary schools. Santa Clarita Elementary School opened in 1960, located north along Seco Creek. It's the only elementary school in the district whose original classrooms are located within a brick building resembling a roundhouse. The temporary Jerome Snyder Elementary School was built to supplement the two existing schools in 1962 before the completion of Honby Elementary School in 1963. Bouquet Elementary School followed in 1966, which also served as the district headquarters until 1993. Cedarcreek Elementary School and Skyblue Mesa Elementary School also opened in 1966. Rosedell Elementary School opened in 1967. The current district office in Valencia opened in 1993.

Schools

All SUSD schools are within the city of Santa Clarita.

Planned schools

*Entrada Elementary School - planned school in unincorporated

near

Six Flags Magic Mountain Six Flags Magic Mountain, formerly known and colloquially referred to as simply Magic Mountain, is a amusement park located in Valencia, California, northwest of downtown Los Angeles. It opened on May 29, 1971, as a development of the Newha ...

, serving the new FivePoint Valencia community.

Transferred schools

*Honby Elementary School - fourth school in the district's history, opening in 1963. Transferred to

Sulphur Springs School District The Sulphur Springs School District is an elementary school district in Los Angeles County, California. It serves the east side of the Santa Clarita Valley, including most of Canyon Country. As of 2023, the district has 9 elementary schools. ...

and renamed Canyon Springs Community School in 1991. *Valley View Elementary School - opened 1972 and transferred to Sulphur Springs School District and renamed Valley View Community School in 1982.

Closed schools

*Saugus Elementary School - first school in the district's history, opening in 1908 and closing in 1978. The school's bell can now been seen in the bell tower of the Metrolink station in Newhall. *Jerome Snyder Elementary School - temporary school that opened in 1962 and closed in 1966. The school consisted of eleven single-family houses on Bagby Drive, eight of which were used for classroom instruction and three of which were used for administrative purposes. *Seco Canyon Elementary School - temporary school that opened in 1987 and closed in 1990. *Bouquet Canyon Elementary School - modular school that opened in 1989 and closed in spring of 2010. In 2021, the school reopened as Rosedell Elementary School's north campus, accommodating Rosedell's fifth- and sixth-graders.

Student demographics

As of the 2022–23 school year, 9,097 students were enrolled in Saugus District schools. 38.3% of students were

Hispanic or Latino ''Hispanic'' and '' Latino'' are ethnonyms used to refer collectively to the inhabitants of the United States who are of Spanish or Latin American ancestry (). While many use the terms interchangeably, for example, the United States Census Bureau ...

, 34.6% were

non-Hispanic white Non-Hispanic Whites, also referred to as White Anglo Americans or Non-Latino Whites, are White Americans who are classified by the United States census as "White" and not of Hispanic or Latino origin. According to annual estimates from the Unit ...

, 9.6% were

Asian American Asian Americans are Americans with ancestry from the continent of Asia (including naturalized Americans who are immigrants from specific regions in Asia and descendants of those immigrants). Although this term had historically been used fo ...

, 6.7% were Filipino, 6.6% were

multiracial The term multiracial people refers to people who are mixed with two or more races (human categorization), races and the term multi-ethnic people refers to people who are of more than one ethnicity, ethnicities. A variety of terms have been used ...

, 3.1% were

African American African Americans, also known as Black Americans and formerly also called Afro-Americans, are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, American racial and ethnic group that consists of Americans who have total or partial ancestry from an ...

, 0.2% were Indigenous American, and 0.1% were

Pacific Islander Pacific Islanders, Pasifika, Pasefika, Pacificans, or rarely Pacificers are the peoples of the list of islands in the Pacific Ocean, Pacific Islands. As an ethnic group, ethnic/race (human categorization), racial term, it is used to describe th ...

References

External links

* {{Santa Clarita School districts in Los Angeles County, California Education in Santa Clarita, California 1908 establishments in California School districts established in 1908