Vista Verde School is a year-round, K-8

school A school is an educational institution designed to provide learning spaces and learning environments for the teaching of students under the direction of teachers. Most countries have systems of formal education, which is sometimes comp ...

located in the Turtle Ridge neighborhood of

Irvine, California Irvine () is a master-planned city in South Orange County, California, United States, in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. The Irvine Company started developing the area in the 1960s and the city was formally incorporated on December 28, 197 ...

, United States. Vista Verde belongs to the

Irvine Unified School District Irvine Unified School District is a school district in Irvine, California, United States, that serves the city of Irvine. Established on June 6, 1972, IUSD serves approximately 34,000 K-12 students at twenty-six elementary schools, ten middle ...

but is not a neighborhood school; rather, it is open to all Irvine residents with a preference for Turtle Ridge residents, and is one of four year-round schools in the Irvine district.

Academic distinctions

In 1992, Vista Verde was the highest-scoring school in

Orange County, California Orange County is located in the Los Angeles metropolitan area in Southern California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 3,186,989, making it the third-most-populous county in California, the sixth-most-populous in the United States, a ...

in the CAP tests. Vista Verde has been recognized multiple times as a Blue Ribbon School of Excellence. The school was a pioneer in teaching computer literacy; it bought its first computers for student use as early as 1978, and was introducing students to the internet by 1994.

History

Vista Verde opened in 1974 as an elementary school and later became a magnet school. It was originally located in the University Park neighborhood of Irvine. Rosa Drew Lane, a street in Irvine that passes the former campus site in University Park, is named after Rosa Drew, who had been a teacher at Vista Verde for 30 years. The University Park campus closed and the school moved to the Turtle Ridge campus in 2006. In 2012, the old Vista Verde School site and buildings were sold to a home builder for $17 million. The company subsequently demolished the old school in late 2012 to make room for new homes..

Academic distinctions

History

References

Further reading