Publication Date: Wednesday, April 13, 2005
Our Town: Leaving Palo Alto
Our Town: Leaving Palo Alto
(April 13, 2005) by Don Kazak
Many people move to Palo Alto because of the schools. Not too many people move away for the same reason.
Elizabeth Green, her husband, Steve, and their 5-year-old daughter, Sarah, will move to Petaluma this summer for a simple reason: The Greens decided that they didn't their daughter educated in Palo Alto schools because they are too achievement-oriented and too competitive.
This wasn't a spur-of-the moment decision, but one brewing for a long time.
And it's not a decision that Green, 46, came to without first-hand experience. She grew up in Palo Alto, attending Walter Hays and Crescent Park elementary schools, Wilbur (now JLS) and Jordan middle schools, and Palo Alto High School.
She said she didn't like school much.
Her two older daughters from her first marriage also attended Palo Alto schools, with the youngest about to graduate from Paly. That graduation, and the looming school years of her 5-year-old, are the bookends of her decision.
"The older kids did fine," she said, but they also didn't like their school experience..
Green said she stayed in Palo Alto because of a joint-custody arrangement for her two oldest daughters, the youngest of whom is now college-bound next fall.
"I never expected to be here this long," she said. "I was never interested in raising my children here. I march to a different drummer."
Her decision clearly encompasses more than the schools. "This isn't where I want to raise my 5-year-old," she said.
"I would like her to have a more enlivening experience," Green added. "And less about, 'What grades are you getting?' 'What college are you going to?'"
The current discussion about student stress "resonates with me," she said.
Green is calm and matter-of-fact about her criticisms. One wouldn't expect someone called "the baby whisperer" to raise her voice much.
She is the executive director of Blossom Birth Services, a Palo Alto group that provides classes to parents of newborns. Holly Thompson, a Menlo Park mother of 4-month-old Conrad (really blue eyes), called Green the baby whisperer, after the book and film about "The Horse Whisperer."
"These women could not express enough gratitude" to Green in their farewell cards, Thompson said.
"There's no manual that comes with these babies," Green said. "A lot of people don't have family close by, and (having a baby) can be very isolating."
Green and her husband are also weary of moving within Palo Alto. They have lived in four rental houses in the last five years. "The rents are as high as mortgages," she said. "It's very hard to raise kids in an affluent area when you're not part of that."
Green hopes to do the same kind of work in Petaluma with parents of new babies that's she's been doing in Palo Alto. Her husband, a broker for natural foods, can as easily do that work from Petaluma as he can from Palo Alto.
They picked Petaluma after a considerable search that included places in Oregon, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado. Green had once lived in Sebastopol, near Petaluma.
"There's a sense there of almost how Palo Alto used to be," she said. "It's more laid-back, with less of a rush to excel. I have a sense in Petaluma that it is less that way, with families not so caught up in achievement, who spend more time together just hanging out."
But the schools there are an unknown to her.
"I want her to have a better experience," she said of her daughter. "But I have nothing to compare it to. This may be heaven."
Green said she has always encouraged her children to find balance in their lives. "It seems to be a much better skill than to be drawn to an Ivy League school, unless they are academically drawn, which is great, but not all are.
"This is what we want and I know that's why I'm leaving. There are wonderful people in Palo Alto, and I met so many of them at Blossom."
When she was a student at Paly, she was part of "Apple Pie High," the then-alternative school within Paly.
That different drummer is still keeping the beat.
Weekly Senior Staff Writer Don Kazak can be e-mailed at dkazak@paweekly.com.
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