Parents and their children ascend a vibrant, mural-laden staircase and enter hand-in-hand through a wood-finished doorway that leads them into their brand new elementary school.

Families are ecstatic ever since DeAvila Elementary on Haight Street reopened its doors Aug. 24 and became the latest language-immersion school in San Francisco.

"We feel very fortunate to be here," said Elizabeth Goumas, a Parent-Teacher Association member, during their first meeting Sept. 3. "It's an amazing opportunity."

Goumas, who has a five-year-old son attending DeAvila, said over 1,000 students who applied for immersion schools this past spring were turned down, prompting the need for similar programs in the district.

"We saw an increase of 500 applications for kindergarten spots last spring," said Mitzi Mock, spokeswoman for the San Francisco Unified School District. "This increase in demand was part of the impetus for re-opening the DeAvila site."

Goumas says she waited tirelessly for an acceptance letter from DeAvila addressed to her son. Many other parents went through the same situation because the high number of applicants forced the district to institute a lottery-based acceptance program.

DeAvila is the 21st bilingual institution in the city's school district. There are currently five teachers educating a Cantonese-centered curriculum to about 100 students in kindergarten and first grade, she said.

With three kindergarten and two first grade classes, the school hopes to add a new grade each year, prospectively working its way to becoming a K-8 institution, according to Principal Rosina Tong.

"The kindergarten classrooms are already at capacity," Tong said.

"These programs are very high in demand, and our district has an open student assignment system," Mock said. That means that students from all neighborhoods have the opportunity to access these programs.

The new DeAvila school is a complete revamp from the previous elementary school which, at the time of its closure, was plagued by declining enrollment and poor test scores, according to Mock and Goumas.

First 5, a city-based grant initiative in San Francisco, allocates roughly $9 million annually to support family resource centers, including city schools, according to the city's Children and Family Commission.

Goumas said the Parent Action Program, which helps raise money for future schools, garnered $8,000 in conjunction with city grants to restore DeAvila Elementary.

"We had to have faith and hope that it was going to come to fruition," said Goumas of the limbo period leading up to having DeAvila as a bilingual immersion school.

Tong said she is already hard at work choosing which materials she is going to use for the coming year's curriculum.

"I've got a lot of reading to do," she said, while holding a six-inch thick teacher's manual in front of a cluster of PTA members.

The district is slowly inching its way towards finalizing the Multilingual Master Plan, the goal of which is to prepare all future students to graduate with proficiency in English and at least one other language, according to Mock.