WILDFIRE FALLOUT: Mira Costa High School welcomes 125 new students
by Mark McDermott
Pacific Palisades was still in flames when the calls started coming. Within days, some of the town’s young residents began arriving on Manhattan Beach Unified School District campuses. As the fires finally died out, more kept arriving, especially to Mira Costa High School, where on one day alone last week 56 new students arrived. Costa students could not help but see the almost otherworldly expressions on the faces of their suddenly new classmates, looks that said, “Where are we? How are we going to do this?”
From the very first day the fire-affected kids began arriving, MCHS Principal Jennifer Huynh found another group of kids waiting for her even before the school day had commenced. They were members of the Link Crew, the students who at the beginning of the year give freshman and other new students campus tours, and they wanted to help.
“They said, ‘Well, we’d love to provide tours to these incoming students to just help them feel welcome to the campus,’” Huynh said. “I’d say that first day, I was greeted at the office with maybe like 20 to 25 Link Crew leaders ready to take individual tours. It was awesome. Every day, actually, we had Link Crew leaders in the morning because of the way that their schedules align, and then in the afternoons, we have our ASB students who step in to help with providing tours as well.”
Link Crew leaders also began creating signs all around the campus, not only to help the new students better navigate, but to let them know this was their home school now. “Welcome to Costa! You belong here!” one such sign read.
“They are trying hard just to try to help these kids find a sense of normalcy again,” Huynh said.
So far, 175 new students have enrolled within the Manhattan Beach Unified School District overall and 125 at Mira Costa specifically. MBUSD announced an “Open Enrollment” program days after the fires began that streamlines the process and makes it easier for fire-affected families to get their kids in local schools as quickly as possible. More students are arriving daily, especially to Mira Costa.
“I don’t think that we really anticipated the amount of students who came down to Mira Costa,” said Huynh. “We all knew that the Pacific Palisades specifically is very similar to Manhattan Beach — just the small beach town, tight-knit community type of feel. But proximity wise, obviously it’s very far. We saw the first group of people come down one or two days after the initial fire had started. We saw a varied group of people. There were the ones that had lost their home entirely, and had scrambled to find something as quick as possible in Manhattan Beach — they either had friends or family down here, one family told me that they got into a hotel that was nearby. And then we’ve had families who didn’t necessarily lose their homes, but they were permitting into the Palisades Charter High School.”
Palisades Charter is a famous high school, a picturesque campus where several movies and television shows have been filmed, including “Grease,” “Freaky Friday,” and “Teen Wolf.” The student population was 2,959 prior to the fire, when 40 percent of the campus was destroyed. The school quickly offered online learning but many families had no desire to go that route.
“I think the families recall what happened during the pandemic with online learning,” Huynh said. “And we had a big slew of 11th graders at first who came in, because many families and students were concerned about what this would do for college application time. And so the initial first wave of people were from 11th grade, and then lately, we’ve had more ninth and 10th graders coming in.”
It has become a campus-wide effort to accommodate the new students as seamlessly as possible. District administration has enabled MCHS to open some new class sections to partly ameliorate the increased class sizes the new enrollments have caused, but everybody — teachers, counselors, and the rest of staff — is working more to help fit the new students. Huynh describes just the logistics of the effort as “a layered challenge” due to the state’s chronic underfunding of MBUSD necessitating budget cuts this year, including teacher layoffs that had already slightly increased MCHS class sizes.
“Now we’ve got almost 5% more of our population that has increased in the last three weeks,” she said. “That’s a physical challenge on the staff. And although it is a challenge, it has certainly been met with lots of patience, flexibility, kindness and compassion, which is wonderful. All of the teachers and counselors have reached out to me and said, ‘What can I do? Just tell me.’ So although it has been mentally exhausting in general to just try to do the best that we can with the resources that we have, it’s also been really empowering and enlightening to see everyone come together. Because the collective goal is to try to bring these students back to something normal.”
Teacher Andy Caine told the school board last week that the effort has been more than worthwhile.
“It’s been a lot,” he said. “Our classrooms are full, but the students are responding with open arms and open hearts. I witnessed time after time [students] going out of their way to comfort and assure and interact with the students who have come here from Palisades, in particular, walking them to places that they don’t know of on campus, just generally offering a smile and friendship. I’ve tried to stay in very daily communication with the Palisades students who are in my class. One of them even told me today that he was having fun.”
When new enrollment started happening, Link Crew students were alerted by the organization’s teacher leader, Maddie Hutchinson, that the new students would need guides. The crew communicates via group text, and every time Hutchinson sent out a request for guides, students responded immediately.

Students have posted signs throughout the Mira Costa campus welcoming the news students. Photo courtesy MBUSD
“She would post the message saying that she needed help, and within five minutes, she was like, ‘Alright, I’ve got enough people,’” said Yash Jha, an MCHS junior who is a Link Crew leader. “That’s just how many people wanted to help out in any way that they could, and even beyond the tours — within minutes.”
Mira Costa students had seen the flames across the bay. A lot of connections already existed between the communities, both upscale little beach towns who took special pride in their schools’ academic excellence. Students couldn’t help imagining what it would be like if their hometown had disappeared almost overnight. But if the initial impulse to help was an exercise in empathy, Link Crew leaders quickly realized they had something to learn from the Palisades students.
Senior Donne Ward Jr. recalled giving an individual tour to a girl whose upbeat demeanor took him by surprise.
“She was a sophomore,” Ward Jr. said. “She’s outgoing, but she’s very emotional, and she was telling me about her story, but she was also being super bright. And I was like, ‘You’re talking about these sad things, but you’re being so cheerful,’ so I just asked her, ‘What’s keeping you going? What is making you so bright, even though you’re going through these hard times?’ Because I told her, I don’t know what I would do personally if I was ever in an event like this.”
Her response really stuck with him. “Don’t cry over spilled milk,” she said. “Just clean it up, and try again.”
“It was such a simple saying,” Ward Jr. said. “But it really is that simple: if something happens, even if it’s a catastrophe or it’s a problem, you can always start again, because you still have the glass. She told me, ‘Even if you have a problem and you lose something, you still have yourself, and you can still rebuild from what you have.’ Because at the end of the day, it’s what you are as a person — you are the one that’s building your environment, so your environment can always pertain to what you like, because you’re still yourself. And that was something that was really profound to me.”
Senior Cailyn Allen said her mother works in the Costa front office so she began hearing stories of the displaced families when they began contacting the school. But she learned deeper lessons when she began giving the kids tours.
“Something that really impacted me, which kind of connects to the overall, almost theme of this entire situation, is that you really have all you need — like the material items are not nearly as important as your life or your family,” Allen said. “And all of these people were surrounded by the love and support of their family and community, and now Costa. And they expressed how grateful they were that everyone was okay, at least in their family: ‘We have all we need, and as unfortunate as it is, all of this stuff that was lost is just extra stuff.’ So if we focus internally on what really brings us joy and what is important to living a happy, healthy and successful life, that’s all we need to do in order to be happy, honestly.”
Of course, some lingering sadness also exists among the new students and families. But Jha said that even through their sense of loss, he’s observed a sense of determination in the new students.
“When I’m in the office waiting for a few families to come in and do their tours, I see the students and the parents, and it’s a little bit disheartening for me at first, because it’s almost as if these people are in some kind of daze, and I don’t blame them at all,” Jha said. “They just went through a tragedy. Essentially, their whole life was upended — their home, their school, their social lives. And I see these parents who might just be staring at their phones, but not really looking at it. Or I see these kids who are looking at the campus map and just kind of confused. And then when I start to sort of bring them on the tour, when I start to talk to them a little bit, I begin to see everything else, you know, everything that Donne and Cailyn were talking about — the the perseverance of these people, the the fact that despite having this tragedy, and despite being dazed and almost detached from it…That even despite all that, these people are here, and they’re trying, and they’re doing everything they can to get their life to the point that it was before.”
Some of the new students are athletes, many who worried that their seasons would essentially be over, due to the seeming impossibility of joining another school mid-year. But CIF relaxed its transfer and eligibility requirements, Mira Costa coaches and players worked to bring the new student-athletes into the fold, and booster clubs have rushed in to provide the kids with uniforms and equipment.
“Everyone’s just come together and really taken on this initiative together,” Huynh said. “As challenging as it is with all the other things that everyone has going on, personally and professionally, it has felt really nice to be able to help.”
The new students have already been able to experience one Costa rite of passage — so-called Rival Week, when Mustang teams took on Redondo Union in basketball. The new students are blending in so quickly that they feel like old friends already to some students.

A Mira Costa Link Crew leader gives a campus tour. Photo courtesy MBUSD
Ward Jr. said Link Crew leaders are pretty outgoing by nature, and he’s seen some of them take the initiative to not only show kids around campus but around town.
“They went out with some of the kids after school just show them around the neighborhood, and just show them like different places that Costa kids would normally go to so they don’t feel like they’re just stranded, so they actually feel a part of the community, and not just people who have just transferred to the school and nobody really knows them,” he said. “We’ve welcomed them with open arms. And even people that aren’t in Link have welcomed them as well. I know a lot of my friends who have Palisades or Pasadena kids in their classes — I swear they’ve known each other all of their life with the way that they’ve talked to each other. It’s just great how easy it is for them to make a connection.”
Huynh has likewise been amazed at how quickly connections have formed.
“I’ve noticed, every day, I recognize the students who were enrolling and who looked very nervous, very scared…and then within like, two or three days, I look outside during lunch, and they’re already with a bunch of friends from the students who were already here, showing them around,” she said. “They are fitting right in. It’s starting to get to a point where now I can’t even recognize who was here before…They’ve definitely started to blend right in, and in the most good and positive way.”
Longtime MCHS students are also seeing their own campus with fresh eyes as they watch the new students begin to experience Costa life.
“Something I emphasized a lot during my tours, and I know it’s kind of like a cliche thing to say, but Costa is what you make it,” Jha said. “We have a whole host of things. We have everything from forensic science to marine biology to surfboard making. I’ve met students from all sorts of disciplines, I’ve also done about 10 to 15 tours, and it’s just become surprising to me how I’m able to mention something that these students might like. I had a student who was a dancer, and I was like, ‘Yeah, we have an amazing dance team, an amazing color guard team and an amazing cheerleading team.’ ‘Oh, you like engineering? Oh, you want to be an EMT? That’s cool. We have the SCROC, the Southern California Regional Occupational Center that we have a partnership with. It’s a 15 minute drive. Go learn what you want to do there.’ ‘Oh, you’re a musician? We have a Grammy Award winning music program.’
“It’s been kind of cool to sort of remind myself of all the opportunities and all of the things that our campus has that a lot of schools, quite frankly, don’t. And that’s something that a lot of the Palisades kids were mentioning — the first thing that came out of their mouths was like, ‘Wow, this school is ginormous.’ Because Costa is a pretty big school. But speaking to them about the different things that we have on campus, whether that be clubs or sports or courses or anything else, it has re-enlightened me to the amount of stuff that we have on campus.”
Huynh said the experience of the last few weeks has shown that Mira Costa possesses something even beyond its many academic, artistic, and athletic marvels.
“I don’t think that oftentimes Mira Costa may necessarily be known for anything outside of its high level of rigor and competition, academically and athletically,” said Huynh, who is in her first year as MCHS principal. “And I think it’s nice if people also know that Costa is known for its compassion and kindness and the thoughtfulness of its students. Because this…I was a vice principal here a few years ago, and I’ve never witnessed anything like this before, just this wonderful level of compassion that comes from our kids and our staff. It’s been enormous, and really wonderful to witness.” ER