Roadway Plans Take Harsh Toll on San Juan Montessori School : Traffic: Enrollment suffers from threat of closure to make way for the San Joaquin Hills Transportation Corridor.

SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO —  When Qudsia Roston opened her Montessori school here 22 years ago, she planned to never leave.

But now, Roston, her students, and the resident horse, rabbit and bird may be forced to move.

The school on Rancho Viejo Road that for so long has been trafficked by children must make way for cars--actually, a toll road called the San Joaquin Hills Transportation Corridor.

At least part, and possibly all, of the Roston Montessori School is expected to be closed by June so the roadway can be raised 25 feet for the toll road’s construction. Expected to cost $793 million, the six-lane thoroughfare will be as wide as 14 lanes where it links Corona del Mar Freeway to Interstate 5.

The school is one of 10 properties on Rancho Viejo Road that the transportation corridor agency seeks to buy under its powers of eminent domain, according to agency spokeswoman Lisa Telles.

Roston, 58, a feisty woman who was born in India, sadly awaits the fate of the school that has been such a big part of her life’s work.

“It’s like being dead and people talking about you,” she said. “It’s very hard to plan. I’m in a real predicament.”

It has become a time for reflections and memories.

Roston came to the United States when she was 22, after getting a master’s degree in education through a scholarship to Boston College. First she worked as a teacher, and later opened the Montessori school.

Walking around the school, she lamented the likelihood of having to leave. “It’s like cutting off an arm,” she said. “I never really thought it would happen.”

She has always taken pride in the Montessori system, which stresses not just the three R’s, but also the belief that students are limited only by their environment, and when surrounded by learning tools and activities, think they are playing when they are actually learning, she said.

The school became so popular that Roston has since opened three others in Orange County. In 1990 and 1991, she had to turn away 100 children from the San Juan Capistrano schoolhouse.

The next year, she spent $264,000 to build an extra room behind the main school for 60 or 70 more students.

But when local people heard that the school was in the toll road’s path, enrollment plummeted and key staff people left to start their own schools, Roston said.

Now enrollment at the school here is down to 60 from a norm of 160-200 children, she said, and the newer building on a grassy hill is locked and empty.

As luck would have it, as soon as that annex was finished, she learned that the toll road was planned. “If I knew I was going to be wiped out, I would not have built,” she said.

Roston is not the only property owner upset by the tollway project, which transportation officials say is much needed to help relieve traffic brought by growth in South Orange County.

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For the past year, Save Our San Juan, a 100-person grass-roots community group, has fought the plan, claiming it will destroy the tranquillity of rural neighborhoods. Many members spoke out against it at a City Council meeting last week and others have protested that the toll road will destroy the habitat of wildlife living there.

The agency is eyeing Roston’s and other properties on Rancho Viejo Road, but officials don’t know when purchase agreements will be completed. Most of the property along the route for the 15-mile toll road has been set aside for construction, but few of the parcels are privately owned or have businesses on them, like Roston’s school, Telles said.

Roston said she was given maps three years ago from county officials that showed her school was not going to be affected. “Apparently in the last several years they changed their plans and kept me in the dark,” she said.

However, Telles said, project designs were not complete then.

“We knew where the road was going to go, but we didn’t know how far back we had to go,” Telles said. “But now the project is more refined and we know what the impacts will be.”

Transportation officials say they want to be fair to property owners caught in the way of progress.

“Our goal is for us to be able to build our project, but also so that the school can work something out so they can continue their tradition,” said Telles. “We will work to try to make a deal that’s fair for both sides. Our job is not to ruin businesses, it’s to help a traffic problem that’s regional.”

She added her agency will help businesses relocate.

Roston hopes she might be able to hang on by shifting the school’s operations to the new building and adding portable classrooms. But she does not know whether parking, a sewage system or access from the street can be arranged, or if construction from the highway will detract from education.

“I want children to know we will still provide service,” she said. “I don’t want people to say Roston’s dead and buried.”