Palo Alto School Board Nixes New School
By Hubert Huang
PALO ALTO, Feb. 16-With the time approaching 1 a.m. and after nearly five hours of deliberation, the Palo Alto school board unanimously rejected the idea of opening a new school to accommodate increased enrollment and instead created an exception for three elementary schools that allows them to violate the policy that prevents elementary schools in the district from exceeding 450 students, a move that projects to save the district $1.2 million per year.
The new policy would cap enrollment at the three excepted schools -- Escondido, Duveneck and Walter Hays -- at 520 students. In addition, the minimum size for all elementary schools in the district would be raised from 300 to 340 students. The increased school size comes with the condition that all elementary school classes remain at or below 22 students.
In order to accommodate the additional students, portable classrooms would be brought on to school sites as needed. The estimated cost of installing each portable classroom ranges from $100,000-$125,000, according to Associate Superintendent Gerald Matranga.
The $1.2 million savings reflects a $650,000 increase in utilities and maintenance services for operating an additional school and a loss of $550,000 in revenue that the district currently receives by renting the property.
However, Matranga stressed that the greatest benefit for increasing school sizes would be the flexibility the district retains for future decisions and that opening a new school should be considered a last resort because of the difficulties involved with backtracking from such a choice.
"There's some joy about opening a new school, but I can tell you from experience the distress is 1000 times greater for closing a school," Matranga said. He added that enrollment in general tended to be cyclical and although it has steadily increased in Palo Alto, there was no guarantee it wouldn't level out, or even decline in the future.
Under current projections, the change in policy means the schools could accommodate the district's expected growth through the 2009-10 school year.
The increased enrollment has caused three of the city's 12 elementary schools to convert from three to four classes per grade level. And several other schools have been forced to create "bubble classes" -- classes which only exist for a single grade level -- which sometimes need to be transferred to a new school at the end of each school year.
Despite the unanimous vote though, several school board members expressed their concern that the focus on school size, while important, overshadowed more pressing concerns.
School board member Gail Price felt that the addition of new portable classrooms could have the negative effect of encroachment on students' play space, especially at the smaller campuses.
Instead of only considering the maximum school size, school board members Camille Townsend and Dana Tom suggested an adjustment in 'choice program' offerings to correct the imbalance of student populations at the various elementary schools. For example, expanding the successful Spanish Immersion or implementing a new Mandarin Immersion program at one of the school's less populated campuses like Barron Park and Juana Briones -- both of which have populations under 300 students -- could be a way to funnel students away from the more crowded campuses..
"Our solutions to the problem look at things in a very mechanical way," Townsend said. "The great programs [we have] that aren't offered in other parts of the state, why aren't we looking at expanding them"?
In addition, several board members expressed concern that the larger schools placed undue strain on the principals of the larger schools and created an impersonal learning environment for the kids.
"We need to have a line between staffing and kids," said school board member Barb Mitchell. "I think we have 10-gallon ambitions and we have to staff at 10-gallon levels, not at two-gallon levels."
Ultimately though, the board decided the danger of this discussion turning into the "never-ending agenda item" outweighed their specific disagreements on how best to address the district's overcrowding. As a compromise, the board agreed to instruct the attendance area review committee to consider these factors in drawing their plan.
"The bottom line is after five years no one even remembers [these arguments] because our schools are outstanding," Lowell said.
The board's decision means the first step in what looks to be an extended and arduous process of redrawing the attendance boundaries has been completed, and the task for drawing the initial proposal for attendance boundaries will now be sent to a 46-member Attendance Area Review Committee made up of parents and administrators. The committee will use the board's guidelines when they begin work in April. The boundary redraw has tentatively been scheduled for implementation for the 2007-08 school year.
The committee will also make recommendations for the points at which elementary school enrollment will trigger the opening of a 13 th and 14 th elementary school in the district.
Despite the committee's attempt to include representatives for all its constituents in its ranks though, any plan the committee submits is likely to upset some of the parents who have children in the district.
"I expect some parents to be unhappy," said Tom.
Though the board recognizes the challenge the new committee faces in resolving an issue that parents in the district are notoriously sensitive about, they are confident the committee will be able to successfully complete their task.
"Palo Alto is a diverse community and there's always difficulty coming to a consensus," school board President Mandy Lowell said. But these committees "have a history of coming to a consensus on difficult issues."
Contact Hubert Huang at hhboy77@stanford.edu
