Cesar Chavez Elementary School set to open

“We've been getting calls the past three weeks about enrollment, when is it going to open and can I come here,” said DeAnn Davis, the Oklahoma City School District's executive director of elementary schools and reform.

The excitement for the district's first new elementary school since Martin Luther King Elementary School opened in 2006 is spreading as the final touches are put on the two-story building at Byers Avenue and SE Grand Boulevard.

Cesar Chavez Elementary will open its doors to students on August 1, the first day of the 2011-12 school year.

The attendance boundary for the school will pull about 500 students from the overcrowded Capitol Hill Elementary School and the rest from Bodine Elementary School, Davis said. Total enrollment for the first year will be around 600 students.

Constructed using funding from the $700 million MAPS for Kids sales tax and bond plan that voters approved in 2001, Cesar Chavez is approximately 75,000 square feet and can house about 750 students from prekindergarten through sixth grade in 36 classrooms.

This month the Oklahoma City School Board appointed Laura Morris the principal of the new school.

Morris has been the principal at Capitol Hill Elementary for the past eight years.

“She is experienced with Hispanic families. She knows this community very well,” Davis said. “The families at Capitol Hill really do appreciate what she's done. It makes everyone feel comfortable. They are a little scared. They are a little nervous about the move and when they see someone who they are comfortable with that will make it easier.”