After decades of delays, Jonas Salk Elementary School in Mira Mesa opened its doors to students for the first time Tuesday as the San Diego Unified School District began its new academic year.
The $24 million school is named after Dr. Jonas Salk, who invented the polio vaccine and later founded the Salk Institute in La Jolla.
Dr. Peter Salk said his father "loved children — his whole life was oriented around health, and to have a place that will be inspiring to children, allow them to have the potential that they have within drawn out," is a fitting tribute.
He said it's "not a question of stuffing their minds full, it's a question of allowing them to be the fullest people that they can."
Plans for the 7.6-acre school were first developed in the 1980s as other campuses in Mira Mesa grew beyond capacity, but construction was held up for decades by environmental concerns.
The main issue was vernal pools — seasonal pools that are habitats for the endangered San Diego fairy shrimp and other fragile creatures — on the Flanders Drive site, and how to compensate for the loss of the pools.
The board and San Diego City Council entered into an agreement in 2013 that paved the way for construction. The deal in part called for the district to restore and enhance the Carroll Canyon Vernal Pool Preserve and to monitor vernal pools at McAuliffe Community Park to ensure the fairy shrimps' conservation.
"I met a neighbor the other day who bought their house thinking that they were going to send their kindergartner here. Their kindergartener is now grown up and moved out, gotten married and has a family. The grandchildren are going to be lucky to come to this school. So we did take a while to get the school built but it's certainly one of our hallmarks," San Diego Unified Superintendent Cindy Marten said.
The 24-classroom school can accommodate around 700 kindergarten through fifth-grade students.
Around 110,000 students started the new school year throughout the district Tuesday, not including charter schools, according to the San Diego Unified School District.
Also beginning classes were 27,000 adult students in the San Diego Community College District's continuing education program. Certificate programs are offered in automotive technology, child development, culinary arts, professional bakeshop skills, nursing assistant training and plumbing — online or at six campuses around the city.
