BONSALL - Bonsall Elementary students won't move into their new $23 million school until they return to classes in August, nearly five months later than the March opening administrators announced last month.

The new facility is being built on an adjacent track field of the existing campus at 31505 Old River Road.

Bonsall Union School District administrators said the new classrooms are still expected to be ready in March, but they decided to push back the move-in date until after the old buildings have been demolished and a field is built where the school building sits today.

"You're always anxious to get in the new building, but there was a consensus among teachers that it would be a lot easier on them and the kids if we waited until the new school is absolutely ready," Trustee Sylvia Tucker said Tuesday.

Tucker said teachers worried that moving students late in the school year could lower statewide test scores.

Also, students would have "limited" play space because the new playground won't be finished until sometime next summer, she said.

When construction began in 2006, the hi-tech building was expected to replace the existing 54,000-square-foot elementary school by summer.

But last month, construction was going so smoothly that the district decided to move into the 85,000-square-foot new building over the weeklong spring break, which begins March 21, Bonsall Superintendent Felix said in December.

On that schedule, students would have settled into the updated classrooms when they returned to school on March 31.

With the delay, however, students aren't expected to move into the new facility until the start of the 2008-09 school year Aug. 25, administrators said.

In 2005, voters approved a $17 million bond to tear down the roughly 70-year-old elementary school and rebuild it in a different spot on the same campus. District and state funds covered the remaining costs of the $23 million school, which will serve approximately 1,000 K-5 students, according to Assistant Superintendent Wayne Jones.

Although trustees were aware of the tests when they set the March move-in date, they deferred this month to teachers who didn't want to shuffle students into the new campus before the state-mandated Standardized Assessment and Reporting tests, known as the STAR tests, Tucker said.

The Bonsall district is scheduled to give the tests over a two-week period between May 5 and 16 - about two months after the nixed March 21 move.

Although the tests don't figure into students' grades, they are important to administrators because state and federal education officials use them to rate individual schools across the state and compare them to one another.

"The results (of the tests) could be skewed because of this disruption," Felix said.

Budget constraints definitely played into the delay also, officials said.

Felix said several pieces of equipment, such as kitchen appliances and telephones, will be re-used in the new building. Because it would take about one month to move the equipment, the district would have to pay at least $50,000 in temporary equipment rental costs in the meantime.

"Moving in the fall would eliminate this expense," he said.

With 45 classrooms, the rebuilt Bonsall Elementary campus will be patterned closely after the technology-laden Bonsall West Elementary School in Oceanside, which was opened in 2005.

Among other upgrades, the improved campus will feature increased security systems, such as an automated gating system. Moreover, all buildings will be equipped for computers and other technology.

In response to parent complaints about traffic congestion in the parking lot, the new school will also have 150 additional parking spaces, Felix said.

Contact staff writer Darryn Bennett at (760) 740-5420 or dmbennett@nctimes.com.