Facing the politically fraught prospect of redrawing school attendance boundaries, Palo Alto school officials this week laid the groundwork for community participation in choosing a site for a new elementary school, likely to open by the fall of 2017.
Two possible locations — Garland, at 780 N. California Ave., or Greendell, at 4120 Middlefield Road — have been named by school staff and ratified by the Board of Education.
A yet-to-be appointed advisory committee of school district staff, parents, PTA and traffic safety representatives will meet publicly between January and April, charged with identifying the pros and cons of each campus.
By May, Superintendent Kevin Skelly will recommend one of the sites to the Board of Education, according to a timeline approved Tuesday, Nov. 13, by the board.
The school district’s Chief Technology Officer Ann Dunkin and Director of Elementary Education Kathleen Meagher will lead the advisory committee.
The board directed the two to “hold an open application process for committee members.”
Palo Alto’s enrollment has been on an upward trajectory for more than two decades after falling to a post-Baby Boom nadir of 7,500 in 1989.
Today, with headcount at 12,396, Palo Alto has 12 elementary schools, three middle schools and two high schools.
At its historic high of 15,000 in 1968, Palo Alto had 22 elementary schools, three middle schools and three high schools.
The past decade has seen an annual 2 percent growth, even during the recession, which appeared to surprise school officials.
For more than two years officials have agonized over when new campuses would be needed, employing two separate demographers as well as trying to project trends through regression modeling.
This week Dunkin told the board that adding classroom space to existing sites under the 2008 “Strong Schools” bond measure will accommodate elementary needs through the 2016-17 school year.
Skelly is scouting for a location for a fourth middle school, which officials have said will be needed in the next five years. He said he hopes to find an alternative to school-owned property at Cubberley Community Center in south Palo Alto because that location, near to both JLS and Terman, would severely disrupt existing middle school attendance boundaries.
Capacity at Gunn and Palo Alto high schools is being expanded under “Strong Schools” construction to accommodate 2,300 students apiece, which officials have said will suffice until sometime after 2020.
Just tear down most of the buildings in a span of 5 years, build a new middle school and high school. Design like how older schools are built, not saying build ugly and cheap. Nice, modern, roomy, and safe.
Open a new middle school at the Cubberly Site, but open it as an alternative campus – CONNECTIONS!!!!!! There is a LONG waiting list for families who would like to enroll in this program (currently only offered at JLS) and it would pull families from all three other middle schools, and requires no need to redraw middle school boundaries.
That is a brilliant idea, one that would probably never occur to the school board because it is so practical. You should bring it up at one of their meetings, because it really solves a lot of problems.
There was a group several years ago that tried hard to redraw boundaries known as the AAAG. It was a very large group that had lots of meetings and in the end the only thing the group could agree on was a recommendation for the board to call the lease on Garland but not even able to agree what Garland should be used for. The lease was not called at this time but was a couple of years later. At this stage plans for a huge elementary school were drawn up but in the end, nothing happened because there was a slight downward turn in enrollment.
Now the discussion is more urgent. I suggest that if possible former members of this group be contacted to see if they are willing to continue on with the previous discussion. We had so many hours spent learning all that was necessary to look at that it would be pointless getting new people up to code when there are still many of us who remember the necessary criteria we had in the past.
But the biggest issue is to look at where the students of the new school will live. The obvious site will then be near where they live without having to cross extremely busy streets. Ideally, we do not need elementary age students crossing Oregon Expressway and even crossing Middlefield is not idea. However, if the new residential building is being done in the south of Palo Alto, and the schools with the biggest enrollment overflows are Fairmeadow and Palo Verde, then the obvious place is Greendell.
For that reason, as a previous AAAG member who has spent many, many hours over many months at meetings looking into this, then I think Greendell is the site to reopen as an elementary school first.
@Ducatgirl,
The idea of opening Cubberly as a choice campus is an old idea, and a worthy one. Skelly came into the district not understanding the choice programs and already with the plan of expanding Gunn and Paly campuses to avoid redrawing high school boundaries. We needed to improve them, but the expansion has been very expensive and the administration never really communicated with the community the consequences and costs of going to larger and larger high schools to justify spending the money that way rather than just rebuilding Cubberly.
What happens to preschool family if Greendell is opened as an elementary school?
@Garrett,
I agree with you. I’m upset to see that we are spending so much money to shoehorn in some bells and whistles around old buildings that really aren’t that healthy or safe anymore. We had a $400 million bond. If you look at what the state of California says per square foot of construction should cost — if we pay attention to the kinds of things that increase costs without added benefit — we could have put up 10-12 brand new SCHOOLS for that, including a high school. That’s frankly what I was voting for.
Reasons to choose Greendell:
– South Palo Alto is where all the new residences are
– A large parking lot, and the preschool can be relocated anywhere since parents drive preschoolers anyway (perhaps at Garland, and start later than Jordan).
Reasons not to choose Garland:
– Traffic will back up on Louis Rd. (it already does now, up to 8 cars)
– Traffic will back up on North CA (those on Middlefield turn down N. CA to drive back to South PA; it already backs up now)
– The chaotic traffic will be dangerous for Jordan students who bike and walk to school
– No South PA students will be biking or walking to Garland due to OrEx so everyone will be driving.
– 3/4 of the students will be from South PA but Garland is located in North PA.
– There is only one circle to drop off at Garland in the front and not much street parking.