My compliments to both MP and Stanford for coming to a rapid solution which both parties obviously agree is equitable. Also, big kudos to whomever the individuals were on both sides of the negotiation. Can we find out who they were? They deserve a big public thank you--especially the team representing MP's interests.

Tha Almanac gets it wrong again. The vote was 4-0 with one council member not voting due to a conflict of interest.

So Rich Cline wants to decrease the amount spent on each Menlo Park City school child's education by $2000 because he thinks Menlo kids "should be in the same schools?"

Because all that would happen if you merged MPCSD and Ravenswood is that the State would take $5M of MPCSD's 'excess' local property tax and hand it to Ravenswood ... then take $5M of its own funding of Ravenswood and go home chuckling to Sacramento.

Menlo Park City school funding would drop from $11,000 a child (about the national average) to $9,000; while Ravenswood (which gets over half its funding from special state and federal budget programs) would remain at $13,000 (yes, more is spent on Ravenswood kids than MPCSD kids) ... unless Ravenswood lost some of its special funding, too, because of the merger. Go do the math from the excellent ed-data.org website if you doubt this.

Meanwhile, who does Mayor Cline think will end up running the new district? Ravenswood kids outnumber MP kids. My guess is that MP parents will either pull out en masse ... or Oak Knoll, Hillview, and Encinal will become 'magnet' schools. I suppose that's one way of reducing enrollment (moving the Tinsley kids back to EPA).

And why does Mayor Cline never mention Las Lomitas? Why does it fall to MPCSD to "fix" Ravenswood ... why does he assume that a district that knows how to educate a middle-class white population somehow has magic know-how in dealing with poverty, itinerant families, and language learners? Classic paternalistic thinking ... disguised as caring.

Thanks for catching that, Hank. It was a unanimous vote, with Kelly Fergusson recusing herself.