Look at the front entrance to Saddle View Elementary School, just outside the gate of the Arden community. Or at the desks and chairs on the second floor. Or at the playground equipment for the students who will be learning there.
You can’t see them, but the fingerprints of Principal Dwan Moore Ross are on all of it, and much more.
“It was a rare opportunity,” Ross said this week. “I was able to work very closely with the architects and builders. I was given a clean slate to create.”
What Ross created is a $41.7 million, 95,990-square-foot facility to eventually house 971 students. When the doors opened on Monday, Aug. 11, a total of 631 students arrived to an enthusiastic welcome from 44 teachers, school staff and administrators.
Also on hand to greet, meet and encourage students and faculty were Palm Beach County School District Superintendent Michael Burke and District 6 School Board Member Marcia Andrews, who represents most of the county west of State Road 7.
“It was marvelous,” said Andrews, who also is the board’s vice chair. “Everyone is so excited to be at the school.”
Saddle View is the first new elementary school built in the western communities in more than a decade. Students from Arden previously were being bused or driven five miles east to Wellington’s Binks Forest Elementary School, which was built in 1999 with a capacity for 1,206 students. In April, the enrollment at Binks was 1,278 and expected to top 1,400 in the near future without relief.
Saddle View was rushed to completion two years ahead of schedule to relieve the pressure on Binks and add a convenient, welcoming space that echoes Arden’s “agrihood” concept.
“I wanted it to be a huge reflection of the community itself,” Ross said. “I really feel we replicated the Arden community ethos… The classrooms are so beautiful and inviting.”
Arden is a master-planned community of 2,300 homes spanning 1,200 acres off Southern Blvd. near 20-Mile Bend. It was built around a central agri-amenity concept. More than 80 percent of the homes are built and sold.
When complete, Arden likely will have a population of 7,000 to 9,000. It is scheduled to include 175 acres of lakes — including a mile-long central lake — alongside roughly 500 acres of parks, playgrounds and open green space.
“I feel so blessed, so honored to be part of this community,” said Ross, who praised the school’s Parent Teacher Organization (PTO) for their help providing meals to teachers as they hustled to get classrooms ready in a short five-day turnaround before meet-the-teacher day. “It was an incredible effort on everyone’s part.”
Saddle View showcases forward-thinking design on a campus that includes solar panels for power and education; hydroponic classrooms; a butterfly garden; science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) eSports clubs; an esports curriculum; and specialized services for students with autism. There’s also a voluntary pre-kindergarten program.
Scholastically, the school features the Ron Clark Academy house system. In Clark’s system, each “house” has unique properties, such as its own color, symbols, history and more. Over time, each house takes on its own values and personality, driven by the culture of the students and staff within it. Through fun competitions, communication and intrapersonal skills are developed.
Those academic, technological and sustainability touches make Saddle View more than a basic neighborhood staple, said Andrews, who is retiring in 2026 after 16 years on the school board and some 50 years in education. It also delivers a vision of what modern schooling can look like in a growth corridor. “This is a legacy school,” she said.
