The founding school started in 1959 with just a few kindergarten classrooms in a Carmichael home. With enrollment growing, the school moved to a rented church hall, and on to its present site in Fair Oaks a few years later. By the mid-1980s the campus had had grown to accommodate approximately 350 students in grades kindergarten through 12, and included a working farm, library and several rustic buildings, including a former bunkhouse, now the Meristem building, which was lifted from its original foundations in Citrus Heights and moved to the Fair Oaks campus.