LETTERS LETTERS (March 02, 2005)

No Child rules unfair to local schools

Editor:

The useful article last week on the federal No Child Left Behind program and our Sequoia high school District raises critical issues for parents and taxpayers.

The No Child program has laudable goals for raising student achievement. But it dictates bureaucratic and costly solutions that often are educationally worthless.

At Menlo-Atherton High School, the threatening "Program Improvement" status was triggered by a handful of students, some of whom were no longer attending school and "failed to appear for testing." Student achievement scores for M-A have improved overall, even beyond what was required, but the school is being punished for a technicality announced after earlier agreements.

The No Child stipulations are so complex and intimidating that schools hire consultants to guide them through the process.

Menlo-Atherton is also responsible for raising the performance of students who enter ninth grade with scores as low as the fourth-grade level. The school embraces these students, many of whom come from districts with among the lowest literacy rates in California. That's the true meaning of "no child left behind."

Many schools, insulated from the poor and disadvantaged by district boundaries, don't even have to try. So be it. But why put Sequoia high schools on the block for doing their best under circumstances they don't control and with ever-dwindling resources?

This outrageous irrationality is the tip of an iceberg that administrators and teachers can't discuss publicly with candor. But let there be no doubt: rather than helping to solve real educational problems, NCLB rules are compounding them and threatening our schools.

Colorado and other states are standing up to NCLB's devastating impacts. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings has signaled that she is ready to rethink NCLB's approach and its inadequacies.

Now is the time for parents and taxpayers to protest loudly to elected state officials and say: Stop the NCLB steamroller today. Allow schools to negotiate rational approaches to educational and financial challenges.

John Kadvany, College Avenue, Menlo Park

Unwelcome recall threat on zoning plan

Editor:

No, not "recreation and relaxation," but "referendum and recall."

At a recent Menlo Park City Council meeting, resident Chuck Bernstein threatened to run a referendum and recall on the council's attempt to encourage single-story home redevelopment. There is no downside to this proposal, which allows single-story redevelopment to bypass review by the Planning Commission.

This is a plan that both our current council majority (Duboc, Jellins, and Winkler) and the opposing Steve Schmidt council agreed on and the staff supports. This plan would save residents thousands of dollars and months of delay on their single-story remodeling projects. According to city staff members, in the last two years there have been 12 single-story projects submitted and none of them had neighborhood objections. This plan would encourage single-story redevelopment that has low to no impact on neighbor privacy and sunlight access.

A referendum against a sensible housing ordinance (Ord. 926) was used by Kelly Fergusson to launch her campaign for City Council. Now Ms. Fergusson's supporter, Chuck Bernstein, is using the same tactic to disrupt our city government again. These people continue to mislead the public into thinking that the majority council is doing something terrible to us when, in truth, the majority has been trying to make our lives easier and improve our quality of life.

Continued threats of recall and misleading referendums by the so-called "residentialists" subvert the election process and work against the needs of the residents. Beware of recall and referendum petitions that come your way.

Mary Gilles, Hermosa Way, Menlo Park

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