It was a busy year for local schools, with voters approving two new parcel taxes -- worth nearly $120 million combined -- the opening of a new preschool, and new board members taking their seats.

Parcel taxes

In November, the Portola Valley School District's $49.5 million bond measure passed with nearly 62.5 percent voter support. High-priority projects at Corte Madera School (4-8) include a new two-story classroom building, expected to cost between $38.4 and $42.5 million. There are projects estimated to cost $10.9 million to $12 million that are considered immediate priorities at Ormondale School (K-3).

Voters in the Las Lomitas Elementary School District approved a $70 million bond measure to complete district construction plans for projects begun in 2017 at the district's two schools: Las Lomitas (K-3) in Atherton and La Entrada (4-8) in Menlo Park.

The measure, known as Measure R, won with 67.92 percent of the vote.

Board member, administrator news

Portola Valley School District Superintendent Eric Hartwig announced that he will be leaving his post at the end of the 2018-19 school year at a November board meeting. The district expects the search process to be completed "well before" Hartwig's contract ends, according to school board President Gulliver LaValle.

The Ravenswood City School District had the only school board race in The Almanac's coverage area in November; four other local districts' elections were automatically canceled because the number of candidates equaled the number of open seats.

Two local school boards welcomed new board members in December.

Sherwin Chen and Scott Saywell began their terms as school board trustees for the Menlo Park City School District. Chen, Saywell and incumbent Stacey Jones were the only candidates for the board's three open seats. Incumbents Terry Thygesen and Joan Lambert did not run for re-election.

The Las Lomitas Elementary School District welcomed Dana Nunn and Jon Venverloh as its newest board members. Incumbents Rich Ginn and Christy Heaton did not run for re-election. Incumbent John Earnhardt also began a new term in December.

New Woodside Elementary School District board members -- Jenny Hayden and Peter Baily -- will begin in January. Appointed incumbent Jennifer Zweig will start her first four-year term in January.

Awards

Woodside School eighth-grader Georgia Hutchinson took home top honors, and a $25,000 prize, at Broadcom MASTERS (Math, Applied Science, Technology and Engineering for Rising Stars) national science and engineering competition in Washington, D.C. She won the Samueli Foundation Prize for building a system that allows solar panels to follow the sun for maximum energy production.

Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Menlo Park, awarded Anna Quinlan, a senior at Menlo-Atherton High School, the 2018 18th Congressional District's App Challenge for an insulin pump app she created. Anna's "A Smarter Insulin Pump" application runs on a small computer, called a Raspberry Pi, and helps diabetics maintain normal blood glucose (or sugar) levels. Although similar products are on the market, Anna's app connects to a pump and is lower in cost ($40 versus $6,000 to $10,000 for alternatives), Anna said. Users can control the pump using their phones.

Enrollment

Enrollment dipped for local school districts during the 2018-19 school year. The drop, local experts say, is due to the migration of young families from the area to find more affordable housing. The enrollment breakdown is as follows:

Las Lomitas Elementary School District, which serves portions of Menlo Park and Atherton, is one of the area districts with the most significant dip. Enrollment dropped 5.4 percent from the 2017-18 school year. Enrollment was 1,331 in the 2017-18 school year, dropping to 1,259 this school year.

Menlo Park City School District, also serving portions of Menlo Park and Atherton: down 2.2 percent from the 2016 high of 2,999 students. There are 2,932 students currently enrolled in the district. That's a 1.4 percent drop from last school year. This nearly lines up with a demographer's prediction that the district would be at 2,936 students this fall.

Portola Valley School District: down nearly 5 percent from last school year. There are 574 students enrolled in the district (as of Sept. 6); there were 604 students during the 2017 school year.

Woodside Elementary School District: down less than 1 percent from the 2012 high of 453 students. Enrollment is stable this year, with 410 students enrolled (as of Sept. 12) -- the same number as in the last school year.

Officials in the Sequoia Union High School District expressed concern that a proposed housing development in Menlo Park could cause enrollment to explode at Menlo-Atherton High School, with more students than the campus can accommodate. Facebook's "Willow Village" project would add 1,500 housing units within the district's boundaries. The district's Board of Trustees in November unanimously approved a resolution that sets forth principles on the need to mitigate the impacts of new development on the district's schools.

La Entrada flooding

La Entrada Middle School in Menlo Park opened at the beginning of the school year a new two-story building with 21 classrooms, a project funded by a $60 million facilities bond measure. Just two months later, the school, including nine classrooms in the new building, flooded. Five weeks later, the school flooded again. Both incidents were caused by breaks in the nearby water mains.

Officials are still assessing damages.

New preschool

The Menlo Park City School District in August opened a new preschool, called the Early Learning Center (ELC), at Laurel School Lower Campus in Atherton.

School officials say they want the district to be a model in creating a unique, high-quality early education program for a diverse socio-economic group of children. The district subsidizes tuition for 25 percent of the preschoolers on a sliding scale based on family income. The other 75 percent of students pay market-rate tuition, which covers all the preschool's operating costs.

There are 54 students enrolled during this school year, and the program's director, Jessica Mihaly, hopes to expand enrollment to 72 students during the 2019-20 school year.

Teacher pay

The Menlo Park City School District began developing a philosophy for how to pay its teachers. The district began studying the issue of teacher retention after it found through a survey that 34 percent of teachers and staff who left the district at the end of the 2017-18 school year did so because of long commutes and high cost of living in the area.

The Sequoia Union High School District awarded its teachers a 3.5 percent raise in October. The pay increase was retroactive to July 1, and the contract runs through June 30, 2020.

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