This is an overview of where the new building will be placed on Palisades High School campus.
This is an architects’ rendering of the proposed PaliHi new classroom building.
A final design meeting for the proposed replacement of Palisades High School Buildings that were destroyed or damaged by the January 2025 Palisades Fire was presented on February 12 to community members.
LAUSD Director of Community Relations Lorena Madilla served as a moderator. About $266 million will be needed to replace, upgrade and expand the facilities. The money will come from bond funds, and reimbursement will be pursued through insurance and FEMA.
Although Palisades Charter High School is an independent fiscal charter, it is based on Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) facilities. PaliHi has greater flexibility in budgeting and resource allocation and operates independently within LAUSD, but LAUSD owns the property, buildings and is the “landlord.”
During the Palisades Fire, general/specialty classrooms and athletic support buildings burned. Infrastructure, landscape, track and field were impacted and needed to be replaced at the campus located at Temescal Canyon Road and Bowdoin Street.
Actual buildings, rather than portables will be put next to the track.
In order to bring the students back to campus the end of January 2026 (they were in a temporary facility, the Sears Building in Santa Monica), extensive cleaning and testing took place on the remaining campus. Portable classrooms were put on the baseball field to house students, but that meant the field was no longer available to athletes.
At the February meeting, LAUSD’s Director of Facilities Planning and Development spoke and then a final design presentation was given by Jeffrey Zolan (DLR Group Project Manager) and Alenoush Aghajanians (DLR Group Principal Design Leader).
The new classroom building will have 21 general classrooms and six additional classrooms for a variety of purposes, such a special ed and media and filmmaking. The building will have administrative spaces that will include 13 faculty/staff offices.
Palisades Academy, which was located below the Stadium by the Sea, was destroyed in the fire and three general classrooms for the academy will now be built and located on the campus.
The Academy Buildings which burned, will now be put on campus.
After building construction is completed, the baseball field will be rebuilt. Along the current track, two modular buildings, which stored weight/athletic gear and served as rooms for teams, melted and will be replaced with new buildings.
Design for a reconstructed campus started in the second quarter of 2025 and was completed in February 2026. Once there is DSA (Division of the State Architect) approval, which is required for public school construction projects in California, the project will go out for bids.
Construction is projected to start in the first quarter of 2027 and take about 21 months. Students could move to the new buildings and facilities as early as the fourth quarter of 2028.
The new building, with 21+ classrooms will be situated between the old building (left) and the baseball field (right) which will be rebuilt.