Publication Date: Wednesday Oct 20, 1999

ELECTION '99: Hopes pinned on Stanford to solve school crowding

Finding a solution to the problem of overcrowded middle schools will be one of the Palo Alto school board's most challenging tasks in the coming year.

Board members will have a relatively easy answer if Stanford University agrees to set aside about 25 acres for such a school. Otherwise, the board faces a difficult choice among options ranging from reclaiming former school sites and giving up valuable lease income to developing creative educational programs that might make the middle schools feel smaller.

This issue is foremost on the minds of the six candidates running for the three vacant spots on the Palo Alto school board.

The ideal solution, all of the candidates contend, would be for Stanford to lease or sell some land to the district for a middle school campus. As of yet, Stanford's draft community plan does not include space for a school, even as the district's middle schools grow by leaps and bounds.

If the Stanford option falls through, the newly elected school board likely will engage in negotiations with the city to reacquire the Terman and Cubberley sites, which were sold and leased, respectively, by the district in the 1980s.

Some candidates feel the best alternative would be to get one of the sites back from the city.

"If the district faces no other alternatives, I feel that the board will have a strong enough argument for buying back Terman," candidate Katherine Rudolph said.

Other candidates are willing to look at other ways the district could work with existing resources.

One idea, floated by candidate Gail Price, is an "adopt-a-school" program. A company or an organization would help design and create a third middle school. Pointing to an example in Sunnyvale, where Price works as a planner, she said Advanced Micro Devices donated $1 million to a middle school to help create a community center with a gym, medical clinic and recreation center. The difficulty in Palo Alto, Price acknowledges, is the lack of an apparent site for such a school.

If no site is found, Price suggests running a split-shift, year-round school or creating "schools-within-schools," where students would be placed in smaller, contained programs housed on the same campus. Such alternatives would be a departure for Palo Alto schools and would require extensive school and community discussions, Price said.

Incumbent John Tuomy opposes year-round or school-within-a-school strategies.

"In most cases, these (ideas) have been only marginally successful and would provide no relief to the physical overcrowding on our campuses," he said.

He also strongly opposes moving sixth-graders back to the elementary schools, another idea under consideration. While Tuomy said it is a decision that works for the district's facilities, he believes it would adversely affect the educational program.

Tuomy looks to the Terman and Cubberley sites for answers. He acknowledged, however, that the city would have to be persuaded either to sell Terman back to the district or to cut short its Cubberley lease, an agreement that city officials can extend until 2013.

Moving sixth-grade students to elementary schools is still on candidate Shelby Valentine's list of possible solutions. She says many sixth-grade teachers believe the grade level should be switched back from middle school and that the idea, while not at the top of her list, is worth considering.

Otherwise, Valentine, like Tuomy, wants the district to consider different ways it can use its existing properties.

"They could be more quickly reclaimed or reconfigured (than building a new school) to house the district's current students and programs," Valentine said.

Barbara Spreng says she would not rule out any options, including moving sixth-grade back to elementary school or creating a year-round school. She does think some classes could be held in larger, lecture-style formats to reduce the size of other classes and the demand for space on campus.

"When I am satisfied that all possible solutions have been evaluated, I will support the model that best meets our students' needs and our community's interest in maintaining educational excellence," Spreng said.

Until a permanent solution is found, Mandy Lowell says the district should explore ways to improve students' experience of middle school. She recommends scheduling staggered lunch times, so the campus does not seem as crowded, and offering a variety of activities, such as bands, sports, clubs and technology groups.

The district will have to be creative and flexible, Lowell said, if no land is forthcoming from Stanford and Cubberley and Terman are not available. She proposed establishing a smaller middle school that emphasizes a special program, such as Spanish immersion, direct instruction or a nontraditional type of instruction. Under this strategy, the district could use one of its larger elementary school sites--such as Nixon or Escondido--for the school.

"If we cannot work out a deal for land, I hope that we will be able to work out some sort of financial arrangement, in which Stanford provides some funding to assist in developing a third middle school," Lowell said.

Rudolph pins her hopes on the district being able to reclaim the Terman site from the city, if no deal with Stanford can be made.

"My hope is that we can work with the representatives from Stanford, Terman and Cubberley to find the solutions that are least likely to disrupt the educational process," Rudolph said.

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