I hope this passes, but the Ravenswood district should be dismantled and absorbed into neighboring districts. The children and neighborhood suffer at the expense of local agendas between EPA and Menlo Park. In any case, it's absurd to see the disparity in education quality. And, imagine what it would do for housing prices and the local tax base.

David - you are absolutely right, but be aware that there are powerful forces opposing such a move and they will not hesitate to attack those who either oppose them or who question their motives.

Web Link

Here are some facts:


Los Lomita Elementary K-8
Enrollment 1,239
Revenues per Average Daily Attendance $13,337
% minority 29.5


Menlo Park Elementary K-8
Enrollment 2,532
Revenues per Average Daily Attendance $10,441
% minority 32.1


Ravenswood City Elementary K-8
Enrollment 4,385
Revenues per Average Daily Attendance $7,751
% minority 99.0

Maybe it is time for another Tinsley-like lawsuit with consolidation as the requested remedy.

I live in Belle Haven and will not vote for this tax! Ravenswood wastes too much money for me to keep giving them more and more. I feel for the children but let the STATE take it over.

I'm glad that the residents of East Palo Alto and East Menlo Park can afford a 100% parcel tax increase.

Peter, could you provide a source for your data? I believe erroneous data is leading you to a bad conclusion.

The most comprehensive source of information on education revenues and spending in California is on the ed-data.org website, which uses the audited information provided to the California Department of Education. According to that website, for the latest audited year 9009-10), the following revenue amounts were generated per student for these three school districts;

Las Lomitas $14,715
MPCSD $10,441
Ravenswood $12,119

That same year, the following amounts were spent per child (usually based on earlier years' revenue):

Las Lomitas $13,413
MPCSD $11,283
Ravenswood $13,472

Note that, by either income or outgo measures, Ravenswood did significantly better than MPCSD.

What stands out from digging into this actual, detailed information is that both Las Lomitas and MPCSD are funded by local base property taxes, parcel taxes, and the extensive efforts of their Foundations. (Local sources = $13.6/$14.7 for LL; $9.4/10.4 for MPCSD)

Ravenswood received only $7.6/$12.1 locally, along with $2.8K/student from the State and $1.7K from the feds. Part of this is due to the fact that much of the Ravenswood district lies in four local Redevelopment Agencies, which pre-empt the lion's share of underlying local property taxes, leaving it dependent upon the State.

Combining, as David suggests, the three districts would have the effect of replacing the State's $2.8k/child contribution with the "excess" local property taxes in, particularly, Las Lomitas (which has no underlying RDAs). So, in toto, the effect would be to reduce the amount spent per child across all three districts. It is hard to see how that will help any child.

Alternatively, extending the Tinsley program -- that is, busing more children out of Ravenswood to Palo Alto, Menlo Park, Las Lomitas, Woodside, etc. -- is also a lose-lose proposition. Not only are these schools bursting at the seams already, but a major structural problem in Ravenswood is a large number of schools per relative population. Lowering population per school means fewer kids to spread the fixed costs of maintaining and running individual schools over. (LL and MPCSD averaged 625 students per school, Ravenswood 440.)

Finally, I'd like to ask whether, perhaps, educating LL and MPCSD kids might be a little different from educating Ravenswood kids and, therefore, whether the skill sets required of administration, staff and teachers aren't different?

Specifically, about well over half of LL and MPCSD resident families have graduate degrees. With that comes school-ready kids, active parents and high expectations. Half of all Ravenswood familes do not have a *high school* graduate in the family (source: star.cde.ca.gov website) and only a quarter of the children are English fluent (same source).

The only winners from throwing these groups together and saying, "Sort it out," might be private schools (though the existing ones are already oversubscribed). I suppose having the 50% of MPCSD/LL families who highly value education bail out would solve the budget problem, but at the cost of eviscerating the idea of a quality public school education in Menlo Park. New homeowners would have to add $20,000/child of annual private school fees to their family budgets and, given the expense of housing, would probably settle elsewhere. Businesses would also locate elsewhere, given the impossibility of attracting new employees to settle here.

The bottom line is that Ravenswood has become dependent on an increasingly broke state to educate children who are unprepared in terms of language and family experience to thrive at school. It is paying now for the decision to commit large amounts of underlying property tax over to EPA and MP Redevelopment Agencies. If you feel that the rest of Menlo Park (and Atherton?) should step up to funding Ravenswood Schools, rather than the local residents, perhaps you could champion a parcel tax to do so. It might be a first in California! But, before you do that, please double check your facts.

My data source is:

Web Link

Note that I used Revenues per Average Daily Attendance

I would propose the consolidation of these three districts and then a parcel tax election for the entire new district and the establishment of magnet schools thought out the district for students with different talents and interests.

You left out Woodside School District.

Wow, Peter, you are either very generous with your neighbors' money or their children's education. Or bloviating.

The good news is, we're using the same source, the interesting news is that you have selectively chosen not to include state categorical or federal funding which make up a large portion of Ravenswood funding.

However, just looking at your "local" funding, you can see Ravenswood receives $1200 from property taxes and $4,884 per child from the State to back fill its property tax revenues up to $6K/child. This backfill totals $13.1M. Merging the districts would mean that all 6300 children would get only $6K -- a loss of $3900 per Las Lomitas child and $2300 per MPCSD child. This would relieve the state of $10M of costs.

Replacing the $10M would require an additional parcel tax of about $575 for every Menlo Park and Atherton parcel (assuming about 17000 parcels in the three districts). Added to existing parcel taxes, this would mean $885 per Las Lomitas parcel, $1,327 per MPCSD, and $672 per Ravenswood parcel. All just to get back to Square One financially from the merger. (Alternatively, we could level it for all parcels, which would be about $1027 each -- a steal at just an additional $275 for MPCSD taxpayers.)

Thus, you are either assuming that the creation of magnet schools (most of which will have to be east of 101) will make up for $2300-3900 of funding or, paternalistically, that the injection of non-minority parents and school board members will result in the sudden turnaround of Ravenswood.

Sell that to the voters.

[Post removed. This is not likely Peter Carpenter's post.]

For those of you who are deliberately using confusing pseudonyms, please understand that you will only destroy this valuable community forum.

Nice show of citizenship...

[Post removed. Please use a name other than "peter c." Too easy to confuse with Peter Carpenter, a frequent posters who also lives in Atherton's Lindenwood neighborhood.]

Editors, please stop deleting my posts. Do you want me to make up some phony name? You ask us to use our real name, which I am doing.

I am stating that I agree with Facts Please and appreciate his comments.

Pogo,

I am not responsible for my name. You would need to talk to my parents about that. Why all the venom? I was just making a simple comment.

Thank you to the editors for removing the posts of Mr/Ms Pogo. It was surprising to see such language used on a public forum; and such off-topic commentary. To the subject above, Facts Please makes some valid observations. The money Ravenswood receives is much different from that of Menlo Park. Ravenswood could be very resistant losing especially these federal funds. It will be interesting to see what comes of the proposal now on the board for the combination 2 school districts. I have heard that it is possibly moving forward quickly.

I would hope that everyone who is committed to equality in education will look beyond their narrow financial interests and find a way to provide a quality education for all of our children - they are our collective future.