Dear Mr. Ranella and Honored Members of the Board of Education,

   I have a number of concerns regarding the proposed realignment of neighborhood districts for attendance at the elementary schools in Menlo Park. I regret that, due to a business trip, I will not be able to attend your meeting on January 9, when this topic is on the agenda. I respectfully ask that this message be entered into the public record of the meeting in my absence to address you personally.

   The proposal to realign the student population with the various elementary schools leaves me with a large number of questions and concerns. In this message, I will not elaborate on issues such as how the current enrollment crisis has been exacerbated by a long- range planning failure when the elementary school on Middle Avenue was permanently closed, how construction is about to begin on a number of District schools with projects that cannot accommodate current enrollment, why Las Lomitas Elementary School is not considered as part of this plan, and other issues. I have a lot of questions on these topics with respect to planning, but I am choosing to focus this letter on two important issues: Process, and Safety.

Process: I live in one of the affected areas, yet I became aware of this planning activity only through word of mouth from another parent of an Oak Knoll School student (oddly, not affected by this plan.) I have read Mr. Ranella's letter (forwarded to me) which discusses "[t] he results of a phone survey of all current families residing in these attendance areas." However, during the recent holiday, I conducted my own very limited research, by asking parents I encountered on the streets between Middle Avenue and Menlo Avenue if they were aware of the upcoming action. To my surprise, I did not find that any of the parents were even aware of this action! As a scientist myself, I must question the validity of the statement regarding the breadth of the phone survey. I did personally participate in the phone survey, but I have not identified other parents in my neighborhood who also did. It is possible that you may rely on responses to publication of news from the November 26th, 2007 meeting on this topic. However, unless you initiated a paper mailing to all households affected, I cannot believe that there is adequate awareness of the issue in at least one of the affected neighborhoods. The fact that I quite easily bumped into parents who live in the neighborhood and didn’t know make me more concerned. I urge you to take this into consideration prior to making any final decisions about the realignment. Any silence you perceive may well be ignorance of the issure, not tacit approval.

Safety: My primary concern in writing to you regards the safety of the children of Menlo Park. Specifically, I am concerned about children west of El Camino Real, North of Middle Avenue, and east of University Avenue who now enroll in Oak Knoll Elementary school but who may be realigned to Encinal Elementary. This realignment is inappropriate for several reasons. First, due to the layout of the streets in Menlo Park, it will force children and parents to drive to school every day for a minimum of six years. It seems terribly ironic that at the same time that Menlo Park is attempting to identify itself as a “Green City”, students who can now walk or bicycle safely to school are being required to instead ride as passengers in cars twice a day to get to and from school. That amounts to a minimum of two round trips by car every day for six years, for every student in the affected area. Families with more than one child of different ages will be driving back and forth for more than six years.

But the most profound concern is that the proposed plan changes a situation where students can safely walk or bicycle to school to one that requires them to cross El Camino Real -- a six-lane thoroughfare in the affected area -- at rush hour, followed by at-grade crossings of a commuter rail line. We have already seen adults killed on both El Camino Real and the Caltrain rail line in recent years. It is completely irresponsible to mandate that children in grade 5 and under must cross a six-lane thoroughfare and at-grade crossing of a commuter rail line to get to their elementary school. All other issues aside (and there are quite a number of them that I have not detailed), there can be no justification of the insertion of such a significant safety hazard to the children of our city. I would suggest that voting to continue with the relignment as planned, at least for the area I described, would be an admission of a complete disregard for the safety of the very children for whom the Board of Education is responsible.

I am not writing this to protect my own interests. My child is in the fourth grade at Oak Knoll Elementary and will be grandfathered in under the current plan. I am concerned for the other children and families in my neighborhood. I am hopeful that you are as well.

I would be very interested in speaking with some or all of you should you have any questions about my concerns.

Sincerely,

David Alfano
650 Kenwood Drive
Menlo Park, CA 94025 Received on Sun Jan 6 23:56:56 2008