The California High School program was primarily developed in a 3 day live-work retreat at Asilomar by a team consisting of Superintendant, Teaching Staff, Parents, and Architect Dave Byrens. The program thus developed was then transformed into a building design that responded to the agreed community educational needs objectives.

The High School was designed for 1,700 students, to include 32 academic classrooms, band and choir classrooms, 7 science labs, gymnasium, auditorium, instructional materials center, industrial arts classrooms and workshops, and 3 homemaking labs.

The form of the school evolved from the need to relate all aspects of the high school as close as possible to the normal flow of school traffic, to encourage all students to be aware of the variety of instructional experiences being offered.

There was a good deal of open, common space which could be arranged in many ways to accommodate student movement and interaction.