Students streamed back through the gates at 15777 Bowdoin St. on Friday, Aug. 21, greeted by honking cars and smiling faces, Circling the News reported. It was the first fall semester at Palisades Charter High School's Temescal Canyon campus since the Palisades Fire forced the school's closure in January 2025.

The milestone caps a 19-month odyssey that took students from online learning to a converted former Sears building on Fourth Street in downtown Santa Monica before a partial return to campus in January 2026.

The Jan. 7, 2025, fire, which was human-caused, burned more than 23,000 acres, destroyed approximately 6,800 structures and killed 12 people. It left about 30% of Pali High completely destroyed, according to Principal Pamela Magee. Thirty classrooms were leveled. The remaining 70% suffered smoke and debris damage that required extensive environmental remediation.

"We lost a lot of buildings," Magee told KTLA in January when students first returned for the spring semester. "Approximately 30% of our campus was completely destroyed."

Independent health experts from the LA Health Fire Study Consortium cleared the site as safe for students and staff, FOX 11 reported. Students now attend classes in surviving buildings alongside roughly 30 portable classrooms installed on the baseball field at a cost of about $30 million.

The toll was steep.

About one in six students left Pali High during the period away, according to the Los Angeles Times, either because other schools offered a more traditional experience or because dislocated families couldn't manage the commute to the temporary Santa Monica site. The school covered the $11 million cost of that facility almost entirely through its own insurance policies. As an independent charter school, Pali High is run by a private nonprofit even though it remains a government-funded public school.

The full reconstruction is estimated at $266.6 million and isn't expected to wrap until the third quarter of 2029. It will include a new classroom building and a restored baseball field. LAUSD's board has approved a combined $604 million investment across three fire-damaged campuses: Pali High, Marquez Charter Elementary and Palisades Charter Elementary.

"Urgency matters, because we aren't just rebuilding campuses for the next 100 years; we are serving children who only have a few years left in elementary school or high school," LAUSD board member Nick Melvoin said at a Jan. 6, 2026, news conference announcing the rebuilding timeline.

Friday's reopening came six days after Palisades Village, the neighborhood's luxury shopping hub, resumed operations following its own 19-month, $100-million-plus restoration. The Palisades Charter High School Board of Trustees meets next on Tuesday, Aug. 25, at 5 p.m.