This totally makes sense. These are my neighbors and I fully support this.

In 1983, the County School Board and local voters approved the transfer of the homes located in The Willows into the Menlo Park City School District. However, the petition did not include a tiny strip of homes on O’Connor because at the time the petition was drafted, this small strip of homes on one side of O’Connor were unincorporated in the city.

Just three weeks after the petition (to add the Willows to MPCSD) was submitted, this small strip of homes were added to Menlo Park. However, the MPCSD petition was never amended to add in these homes.

No one intended to leave any Menlo Park / The Willows homes out of the transfer, it was simply a omission due to bad timing of government processes.

In the fall of 1984, all of the children of The Willows, except for this small strip of homes, began attending Menlo Park schools.

The children and parents of these few homes are put in an awkward position of being an island where the kids cannot go to school with their lifelong friends and neighbors, and parents are unable to carpool with their neighbors not only to school but to after-school activities (EPA residents have different sports leagues and activities than MP – so no opportunity to carpool).

Let’s keep our neighborhoods intact. Please do the right thing and fix what fell through the cracks so many years ago.

To the MPCSD Board:

The County Board and local voters approved the transfer for The Willows into the MPCSD. There was no intent to exclude any Menlo Park homes from this transfer. However, when the transfer happened, a few Menlo Park homes in The Willows were forgotten.

98.5% of The Willows residents attend MP schools. Please let the remaining 1.5% of the residents join their neighbors.

Has Mayor Carlton stated an opinion on this issue?

I agree 100% with the petition. It's time to put the relatively small number of students living on the northside of O'Conner into the schools that their neighborhood friends, who live across the street attend. Let's not put bureaucracy ahead of the needs of these children!

I fully support this petition of adding 31 homes to the MPCSD school district. It will be so good to have the kids from other side of OConnor St join the MPCSD schools.

Why not purchase Willow School from the Ravenswood District and make that part of the district - how great to have a neighborhood school in the neighborhood!

When buying a home it's important to know what school district it's in. In fact, it's one of the most important factors for families with children. This O'Connor street situation goes back more than 30 years now. Anyone who purchased a home on the RCSD side of O'Connor street either knew what they were buying or didn't do their homework.

How about this for a solution - If you purchased your home prior to the administrative oversight that kept your home out of the MPCSD your children attend MPCSD Schools. If you purchased after this event in 1984 your children attend RCSD schools.

Seems reasonable to me.

re: Posted by I didn't know that

Interesting comment to this, while silly it is interesting that I believe hearing from the Petitioners on this forum (must admit I have not heard any of their presentations) that many of the homeowners on this strip are homes purchased prior to 1983. While I know this comment must have been made in jest the other thought is we are so concerned about 31 homes affecting our schools that we have not done anything to prevent the two 200 unit apartment complexes that are being built out in downtown MP that will no doubt bring much more students than these homes can bring not to mention traffic. These homes are a 1-time occurrence of the school district change affecting home prices. In fact, once they sell for their 40% gain (per MPCSD) than the new homeowners will pay more for their homes than their neighbors across the street so how is that fair. Home prices rise and fall and if you are lucky you Buy Low and Sell High, but to think they are doing it for these reasons (appears to be the main argument on these discussions) than I disagree.

Did they know they were buying in RCSD when they bought? Sure. Did they have a plan in place buy in this market, than petition to increase their property values, than cash out for quick $$$? Likely not. I bought my house single, got married later, had kids, now have grand-kids. But when I first bought the house I bought it for the neighborhood and location as I was not thinking about kids.

> the other thought is we are
> so concerned about 31 homes
> affecting our schools that we
> have not done anything to
> prevent the two 200 unit
> apartment complexes that are
> being built out in downtown
> MP that will no doubt bring
> much more students than these
> homes can bring not to
> mention traffic.

MPCSD has no say in construction, but it does have a say in boundary changes. Your comparison is apples & oranges.

MPCSD IS concerned about the two 200 unit apartments, but it doesn't have the power to do anything about that. If it did have that power, those apartments wouldn't be built...or at the very least they wouldn't be built unless the construction included adding another school, and fat chance any builder would do that; town infrastructure is not their concern, that's the job of the town planning and building departments, and it's pretty clear they don't factor in school capacity as part of the approval process.

But MPCSD and RCSD do have a say on where district boundaries reside. Both school districts see nothing but downside, from their perspectives, to this proposed boundary change.

In my opinion, any group attempting to add to the potential capacity of MPCSD (via through construction or boundary changes) should have to pay a large fee, with the funds going towards purchasing a school for MPCSD.

By the way, I believe the Flood Park (elementary) school campus is still empty (this school sits in the Flood Park area on the "West" side of 101). Last I heard, Ravenswood still has no need for it and wasn't able to get someone to lease it.

The solutions are out there, they just need creative people in places of influence to make it happen. But the capacity crunch, and the finances that come with it, has to be solved first.

Here is a link to the lease offer for the Flood Park school campus:

Web Link