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Student enrollment is climbing dramatically in the Menlo Park City School District, and if the trend keeps up, the only solution may be to open an additional elementary school.
The district is in the midst of an ambitious building campaign to increase classrooms and facilities on its three elementary school campuses, with a major rebuilding of Hillview Middle School set to start next year. But it might not be enough.
Superintendent Ken Ranella said current projections show 2,150 elementary students enrolled in the district by 2014 — up from 1,758 today. That number of students divided among two grade K-5 schools and one K-3 school, is just too big, he told the school board at its Sept. 9 meeting.
In the past 10 years, district enrollment has gone up by nearly 600 students, he said.
“We’ve grown a school, quite frankly,” he said.
District officials are currently studying the possibility of reopening a school at the district-owned O’Connor site.
The O’Connor campus in Menlo Park’s Willows neighborhood is currently leased out to the German-American International School. If the district wants to reclaim it when the lease expires in 2011, it must inform the private school of its plans by January, according to the lease agreement.
Without an additional campus, two of the district’s elementary schools could grow to around 800 students.
“Oak Knoll and Encinal will be two of the largest elementary schools in the Bay Area,” said Mr. Ranella, adding that 400 to 500 students is a more typical school size in California.
Hillview Middle School, which is expecting an increase to 900 students in the next few years, could easily top 1,000 students by 2016. However, 900 to 1,200 students is a pretty typical size range for a middle school, Mr. Ranella said.
“I think the staff and principals do an excellent job of making large schools seem intimate and small,” Mr. Ranella told The Almanac. “(But) there’s a tipping point.”
Board member Jeff Child is already thinking about where to find the money to open the O’Connor campus. Besides the overhead involved in hiring staff and administrators, the campus would likely need some refurbishing.
At the meeting, Mr. Child suggested saving money by looking for extras that could be cut out of the Hillview project, and adding them back later if the district can afford it.
“Are we making a mistake by not thinking about these things?” he said.
Also at the meeting, the board discussed some tweaks to the design of Hillview. District officials, thinking ahead to surging enrollment, are making sure that conference rooms or other spaces can be easily converted into extra classrooms if needed.
Mr. Ranella is currently conducting a study of issues surrounding re-opening the O’Connor campus, with three former school board members acting in an advisory capacity. The board will have to review and act on any recommendations before the end of the calendar year.
Since the voters let in the Willows into the District in the 1980s, this was only to be expected. Makes sense to open up O’Connor School which the Menlo Park School District got from Ravenswood as part of the deal to let the Willows area in the District.
school district should make a deal with the city to reclaim the old Fremont School site on Middle. Rosener house could be moved to Allied Arts, which is begging for tenants.
Soccer fields and playground are in place.
A K-3 campus could be erected in short order.
The School District gave the site to the city, but we’re all in this together, so let’s not let fiefdom bureaucrats dither on a much needed relief for overcrowded Oak Knoll.
the school district made a poor choice in allowing the TERC bldg. @ Encinal, the largest of district campuses.
Encinal had been a K-8 school years back, but the district is causing unnecessary pain to the community by insisting on just one middle school campus.