Seven Arrows Elementary School, which found a new home in Santa Monica after last year’s Pacific Palisades wildfire, is now locked in a high-stakes race against the clock.
Barely a year after setting up shop at 2800 28th Street, the beloved independent school is being forced to relocate yet again — this time to escape a developer’s wrecking ball.
School administrators received word earlier this summer that the current “Clover Campus” would be leveled to make way for 390 new apartments. They quickly found a new spot right around the corner at 3420 Ocean Park Blvd. But move-in can’t take place until after final inspections on August 24 — just seven days before classes are set to begin.
“It was a huge surprise for us,” Victoria Lerner, the school’s director of enrollment management and communications, tells The Sun. “From our perspective, we had three years.”
Luckily, Seven Arrows has gotten very good at pivoting.
During the COVID-19 shutdown in 2020, the school partnered with Sandy Days summer camp and moved classroom operations to Will Rogers State Beach for nearly three months.
And when fire ravaged their campus and community in January 2025, school leaders immediately sprung into action. “That afternoon we were already looking at properties,” Lerner admits. “We knew we were going to have to move.”
First came the Boys & Girls Club in Santa Monica, where Seven Arrows temporarily reassembled its school community before splitting the group and sending half of their students to the Boys & Girls Club in Venice.
The whole group was back together for the opening of the Clover Campus in April 2025.
“I was driving back and forth figuring out how to do this,” founder and Head of School Margarita Pagliai remembers. “So many people were displaced and feeling a sense of loss. The children were very upset. They lost their houses, but they wanted their school. They cried more about the school.”
About 50 percent of enrolled families lost homes in the fire, Pagliai says. Many others simply relocated. Enrollment quickly dropped from about 180 students to just 113, before slowly climbing back. The school now expects 154 students for the upcoming year.
The Clover Campus
At Clover, the school converted about 20,000 square feet of unused office space into classrooms and created an outdoor yard. Lerner says staff put “everything” into the temporary campus, even though they were only permitted to sign a three year lease.
“We always had an inkling that there was a plan (to redevelop),” Lerner says. “But the new space is going to be even better.”
The Ocean Park campus will have a similar footprint, plus a second floor and new outdoor play areas. Much of the conversion is being funded by landlord BXP Properties.
Still, getting a new campus ready in one week is a logistical feat.
Pagliai says professional movers—not teachers or families—will do the heavy lifting. The goal is for classrooms to be installed by August 25, leaving teachers free to attend professional development, revise curriculum and prepare their new rooms.
“My teachers are my talent, and talent is delicate,” Pagliai tells The Sun. “I want everybody grounded, calm, and mindful.”
Delaying the first day of school was never a consideration. After COVID, the fire and repeated displacement, Pagliai believes students need the routine and reassurance that comes from opening on time.
“Kids need to be in school,” she says. “The best thing we can bring them in a chaotic world is a sense of security that comes from structure, order, beauty and boundaries.”
Santa Monica is home
Pagliai and the school’s Board now see Santa Monica as Seven Arrows’ long-term base, rather than a temporary post-fire stop.
They estimate it could take roughly 10 years for Pacific Palisades to return to pre-fire conditions, amid a rebuilding boom that has turned parts of the community into an on-going construction zone.
“We need to have a permanent location in Santa Monica for 10 years,” Pagliai says. “Santa Monica is our home.”
Pagliai credits the City of Santa Monica with helping the school navigate its Conditional Use Permit, inspections and the accelerated process of building a post-fire campus.
“The kindness, connection and real authenticity of Santa Monica is unbelievable,” she says.
A Foothold in the Palisades
Seven Arrows will remain tied to the Palisades through Aldersgate, a historic building it owns that managed to survive the fire. Built in the 1920s as the “We Boys” Clubhouse/Lodge, the site was where the founders of Pacific Palisades gathered to lay out the town.
The school is converting Aldersgate into a science center and plans to shuttle Santa Monica students there for programming. Other schools may also use the facility through Seven Arrows’ partnerships and environmental projects.
A second Palisades campus could someday be possible. But after a wildfire, the Boys & Girls Club, Clover Campus and now Ocean Park, the school’s immediate priority is clear.
“Right now, you cannot take a community and move it away again,” Pagliai says. “Enough moving—we’re done moving.”
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