Wednesday marks the first day of the 2025-2026 school year for Palisades Charter High School, which was destroyed in the Palisades Fire in January. A new campus was erected at the old Sears store in Santa Monica, where students finished last semester and begin this semester.
Pali High’s start comes a week ahead of Santa Monica High School’s first day on Aug. 21. The rest of the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District also starts on that date.
Speaking to KTLA 5’s Omar Lewis before the bell rang on Wednesday, Pali High Principal Dr. Pam Magee expressed gratitude to student, families and community members for their patience with the unprecedented process of turning an old department store into a high school in quick fashion – and sticking with it for as long as they have.
“I think our message is: Thank you so much for staying together as a community,” Dr. Magee said. “We are all a part of keeping our community together after everyone was kind of thrown to the wind by the fires in January.”
Dr. Magee said that progress on rebuilding the original campus is “going nicely” and that it should be reopened by January, just a year after the devastating and deadly wildfire.
“We’ll be here at [the old Sears store] through the first semester, which takes us all the way until December,” she explained. “In January of 2026, everything seems to be full steam ahead for us to be back on the Palisades campus. We’ll have temporary housing for buildings destroyed by the fire – while construction is taking place we will keep them occupied – and then we’ll have these beautiful new buildings in a couple of years.”
In the meantime, the students are still appreciative of the new facilities.
“Honestly, it feels more comfortable…like we’ve adapted to it now,” said Oliver Ghiassi. “We kind of got all of the kinks from last semester out of the way, so it feels like going back to regular school.”
Community members – whether they attend Pali High, Samohi, other schools or just live in the area – are advised to prepare for extra traffic in Santa Monica on weekday mornings. Some students are already heeding that advice on the first day of class.
“The traffic situation is: get here early, and try to leave on time,” Ghiassi said.
Resources for students, parents and community members from the City of Santa Monica can be found here.
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