Rich: I'm sure you must be aware that Ray Mueller has been working on a Joint Powers Agreement to get more funding for facility improvements to Ravenswood Schools. This is the most doable idea out there, and it would help all of Ravenswood, not just the part that is in Menlo Park. Speaking of Menlo Park, why not include all the school districts of Menlo Park in any discussion changing school district boundaries? About 1/3 of Menlo Park is in LLESD (plus 1/3 of Atherton and some of Woodside and Portola Valley), another 1/3 of Menlo Park is in MPCSD (plus 1/3 of Atherton) and the remaining 1/3 of Menlo Park is in Ravenswood (plus all of East Palo Alto).

Moving Belle Haven kids to MPCSD would be great for those kids, but leaving a "rump" Ravenswood district would be a disaster for East Palo Alto kids. Menlo Park's past annexation of lands around, but not including, EPA is shameful enough as it is- don't exacerbate that.

How about merging Ravenswood, MPCSD, and Las Lomitas instead? They all feed into Menlo-Atherton HS already, and that kind of consolidation can generate savings from not paying 3 superintendents and much more. Let's build a positive "community character" for once.

Thank you, Rich, for taking time to understand our community in Belle Haven. I am sure you will catch grief from numerous community members who only see this issue as for or against Ravenswood. This blatant inequitable access to high quality education as been an issue for years. We residents saw the Tinsley litigation that forced all districts to allow kids to attend schools of their choosing in Menlo Park, EPA and Palo Alto. That was decades ago, but the program has done little to elevate our communities. In fact, I think those kids would be better served going to school locally with their friends and near home, provided those local schools could provide the education their families so desire. We have been told for years that Ravenswood would improve and that we need to support that process. We did and we are tired of the broken promises. We know the teachers and staff at Belle Haven School are wonderful and I assume the same at Willow Oaks. But without the full community effect of a single school district, we don't have shared learnings, resources and the integrated approach to advanced education. We can go it alone in a separate district either. For those of you who keep insisting that Las Lamitas also join the Menlo School District, my question to you is where is the inequity that matches the urgency of our community? That district performs higher than any, to say no to our kids in Belle Haven because Las Lomitas is not included is showing your lack of understanding of the challenge. And Ray's efforts are appreciated, but they do not conflict with Rich's exceptional vision for a unified district of kids. I hope this is the start of a serious engagement with the school leaders, county and the state and all of the residents in Menlo Park and East Palo Alto. This is not about leaving Ravenswood, it is about bringing equal access to education to all of our kids in the city.

Please take a moment to consider this notion and help. As Rich says, we can do better.

Consolidation into a single but still vey local school district is not the solution.

It is time for a unified school district that includes Sequoia Union High School District and ALL of the elementary schools that feed into SUHSD.

There is enough political influence in all of the included school districts to get the State legislators to solve any funding issues that result from such a consolidation of elementary school districts.

Every child deserves the same quality of education and the quality of that education should not be determined by property values.

You have my vote, Belle Haven is deplorable and unsafe, many code violations that wouldn't be allowed at someone's house. It's a fire hazard along with many other hazards, As a matter of fact the fire dept. should inspect it.

Suggest our ccc take a tour after reading the report.

"get the State legislators to solve any funding issues that result from such a consolidation of elementary school districts."

Well, that's the rub...one of them anyways.

Per-student funding goes DOWN for all students in MPCSD...especially Belle Haven students... if Belle Haven was transferred to MPCSD unless the state agrees to keep State Aid funding levels the same.

The State will be strongly dis-inclined to do that because MPCSD is a revenue-limit district, and the state provides relatively little State aid for revenue-limit districts. Belle Haven currently enjoys more funding (by virtue of State Aid and other funding sources) per student than MPCSD does, and loses that in a transfer.

If the state maintains their funding in a transfer, then the case for transferring becomes compelling. But without it, the teachers union would need to agree to a massive pay cut to make the transfer financially viable. Good luck with that.

I'm a supporter of some consolidation of districts...the current boundaries are nonsensical. But if the financing isn't worked out in advance, it would be financially stupid to transfer, for both MPCSD and Belle Haven.

Well rml, that's a lot of big words for this old country boy to understand but it sounds like you don't want Belle Haven in MPCSD, I'm quite sure FB would be willin to pitch in. Have you driven by their new buildings on Bayshore?

As to the boundaries Belle Haven School last I checked was in Menlo Park. Wouldn't that fit in the boundary.

@RML: per pupil spending has little to no correlation to student achievement. Household income/parental education, on the other hand, strongly correlate to student achievement. A merger combined with redrawing school boundaries would provide an opportunity to better distribute what appear to me as a casual observer to be disproportionate parent volunteer hours between the MPCSD/LLESD schools and Ravenswood schools.

I'm wondering if dissolving the small districts and creating a new unified district would also provide an opportunity to correct the out-of-control pay scale MPCSD is suffering under. CUSD outperforms our districts at <65% the cost per pupil. The CUSD pay scale has only a single cell at far right bottom (basically PhD and 27 years) over $100k whereas a teacher in MPCSD, a short 15 minute drive away, breaks that threshold with the same education 13 years earlier, with MPCSD's average salary now over $100k.

Web Link
Web Link

The simple reality is that if you add 5-students performing significantly below grade level to a class with most students at or above grade level, the 5-new students may show minimal improvement in academic achievement. But the other students show declines as teachers divert resources to the underperforming students. This is not a matter of fairness but reality. Just ask the teachers in Palo Alto. The Palo Alto Tinsley experiment showed that motivated, prepared students from EPA thrived in PA schools. But these students were already performing at or above grade level in their own EPA schools. On the other hand, underperforming students from EPA became very frustrated trying to cope with faster paced learning and caused significant issues for teachers that did impact the education for the other PA students. The best solution is to create academic classroom groupings to allow Ravenswood students to learn at their own pace. That, of course, is politically in-correct and will never happen.

"it sounds like you don't want Belle Haven in MPCSD"

I SUPPORT transferring the Belle Haven neighborhood to MPCSD...provided the additional state funding that Belle Haven residents currently enjoy comes with them (and the facilities, too).

If the state funding follows, I support the transfer.

If the state funding does not follow, I do NOT support the transfer.


To be blunt, I am anticipating minimal effort from Rich Cline, the Belle Haven residents that support a transfer, and other transfer proponents. You need to actively campaign to your state assemblyman, state senator and other representatives in the area to fight for keeping State funding for Belle Haven neighborhood students as-is as part of a transfer. It's easy to demand change, it's hard work to make sure that change happens in a way that actually benefits the people you're trying to help.

I hope I'm wrong: I hope Mr. Cline and the Belle Haven neighborhood residents are reaching out to State Senator Hill and State Assemblyman Berman to campaign for the preservation of Belle Haven funding as part of a transfer into a revenue-limited district (MPCSD). If you WANT this transfer, that is one of the many things you'll need to do.

But I won't hold my breath.

@Merge,
Per pupil spending does matter - you only need to look at recent studies that don't come from the Heritage foundation.
Web Link
But you also identify that parental factors make a huge difference. If you push down into CUSDs success, you'll find that their greatest success factor is the heavy predominance of Asian students. Whites, ELL, and Latino students seem not to benefit from CUSD instruction as much. For example, MPCSD students on the whole, perform better than the CUSD white subgroup in CAASPP Math testing.
Web Link
Not trying to make an ethnic statement here, but point out that your claim that CUSD has some magical formula for efficiency is ridiculous.

",,,, MPCSD's average salary now over $100k."

To @ Merge Districts

This is also true for LLESD.

On the flip side, I recently met at teacher who has been teaching in Ravenswood for over 20 years and was finally earning 85 K. Good for her for staying the course and giving those students a seasoned teacher with a lot of experience but the Belle Haven teachers have the same cost of living challenges as other Menlo Park teachers so really, how can they do it?

What's the impact on the education of the Belle Haven students if they can't?

What are we all going to do about it?

There is a teacher shortage and schools like Belle Haven, in OUR town, are hardest hit in times such as this. How will we bring strong teachers (or any teachers for that matter) to ALL of our Menlo Park Schools instead of just some of our Menlo Park schools?

Please share and post ideas.

@Stats: The link you reference fully supports the lack of correlation between per pupil spending and achievement. The article states "It's not about the dollars," says Stan Saylor, chairman of the education committee in Pennsylvania's House of Representatives. "It's where that local school district spent those dollars over the last many years."

The report referenced therein furthermore shows a _negative_ correlation in CA and zero to negative correlation in most other states between per pupil spending and SAT scores. See page 9 of the report below.

Web Link

The (unsupported) statements that follow only really state that it matters _how_ the money is spent, not how much is spent.

WRT performance, let's go ahead and look at the white cohort you separated for comparison between MPCSD and CUSD. In terms of ROI, achievements for that cohort are roughly as follows (MPCSD district data was difficult to locate, but I found 2014-2015 campus data for comparison to CUSD 2015-2016 data, close enough as the results are not going to shift by the >50% difference in ROI):

Math ELA Approx. Cost Math/Cost($1k) ELA/Cost($1k)
CUSD 78% 79% $9.5k 8.2 8.3
Laurel 77% 78% $15.5k 5.0 5.0
Oak Knoll 91% 89% $15.5k 5.9 5.7

The point is not that CUSD has a magic formula, but that the additional spending in MPCSD is not reflected in achievement and we are definitely getting far lower ROI.

If the fundamental reason for the district merger is money, then why not just direct more money to Ravenswood?

A district merger is an over complicated way to address this problem.

There are many ways to send more money into Ravenswood. The state could spend more per pupil. State tax collections are doing very well.

Menlo Park city council could direct yearly grants to Ravenswood district specifically for Menlo Park schools. That's something they could do today with much more ease than a district merger.

@Merge,
Not going to waste my time on your claims based on the Cato Institute click-bait, or on your elect clips from the article I posted. People can read that in it's entirety and make a call.

I am going to point out that you should probably use Hillview as the proxy for MPCSD, plus year to year comparisons are of little matter - the school investment shows up in the results. That would put MPCSD at 86% proficient for the white subgroup, with CUSD at 78%. That's a full 8 percentage points or 36% closer to 100% proficiency...

Here's where to find Hillview CAASPP stats in case it's too hard for you:
Web Link

Schools are only part of the answer. Students must receive motivation from home and instill in them a culture that success in school is a desireable outcome. Unfortunately too many have peer pressure to hang out with their buddies instead of doing their homework.
If you can solve this issue you will have a real game changer.

Lol. You call the data in your own reference click bait. Taking your selective Hillview data since you didn't like the outcome of your prior selection, MPCSD ROI = 86/15.5 = 5.54 vs 78/9.5 = 8.2. So again, you make my point via a 48% better ROI provided by CUSD.

Get real with the 36% closer calculation. That would be like saying a group performing at 100% is 100% better than a group performing at 99%.

another opinion has it right. As the former executive director of an education nonprofit in East Palo Alto, the main problem I observed is that the parents don't care. A former Ravenswood superintendent said to me "we give the kids breakfast and lunch, and keep them here until 6 pm -- and the parents don't think they should offer any support."

You could merge the districts. You could take every single Ravenswood student and put them in Tinsley so they are educated in better districts. And guess what? Until/unless the culture changes, which means the families acknowledge the importance of education, performance indicators will remain in the cellar.

The parents don't have to be educated, or rich. But they have to let their kids know that education matters. They don't. And that's why even the Tinsley record is pretty abysmal.

But go ahead and merge the districts. It's the PC thing to do, right? I predict the emergence of new private schools. Parents here care too much about their kids' education to risk the decline noted by Former PA Teacher.

@@Stats,
No, you just show your ignorance when it comes to statistics by comparing the movement of a population distribution with a finite endpoint (100%), to a linear ratio in salaries. Not gonna waste any more time since you're wedded to such an obviously flawed ROI approach.

And there you have it. Lacking supporting data for your argument, pull the "ignorant" card. And for a third time, ignorant is defined by using your own data and/or methodology. To be clear, your latest argument was as follows:

(86-78)/(100-78) = 0.36

I merely pointed out that when A =100 and B = 99, this same calculation gives (100-99)/(100-99) = 1.0 illustrating the uselessness of that "statistic."

At the risk of being attacked by the PC Police, There are several issues that we all know but are afraid to say,

Go to Great Schools.com and look at the school rankings for Ravenswood v Palo Alto v Menlo Park schools, Distances of less than 1 mile in some cases. The rankings are so obvious mostly 10 v 1 everyone else v Ravenswood.

So why is that.

1, Parent involvement, yes #1, Lot's of excuses, Don't speak english, have too many jobs not enough time,
I don't buy it, take away the xboxes, cell phones and social media time, said to be approx. 8 hours a day plus, Put them on a computer/ tutor program. There are dozens for free on the internet. So don't say you can't afford it.
2, Teachers/Administrators and facilities in that order
There are many more reasons such as peer pressure. Hold your kids accountable. Don't let them feel they are less than. Know who they're hanging out with who is on their social media accounts,
In every school you will find exceptions. Kids that are high acheivers, You have to ask your self why is that.
When I was a kid in the 60's from a poor mid west town, wearing hand me downs, we were forced to do home work, study and graduate. 7 kids, sometimes the lights weren't on and the car didn't start, sometimes you had to fight your way to school and your way home. So don't tell me from where.

A lot of "poor families around here don't know from poor. How many 3rd graders do you know that don't have a cell phone?

There are more resources here, now than we would have dreamed for. Get informed, work together as a community.

Give me a break, Instill some discipline and rewards with it.

Cuss me all you want but it needs to be said,



You can't fix the problem if you won't admit it exists.