Palo Alto: School Growing Pains

If you’re about to move into the Palo Alto school district, be warned that the school boundaries may change in the near future, and you might not be able to send your child to the closest school in your neighborhood. As you can see in the chart above, the maximum capacity of the elementary schools (represented by the red line) will be exceeded in 2009. The bottom line is that the district administrators need to figure out how to handle about 1,000 new children entering the school district over the next five years.

There are a couple of ways around this problem. A thirteenth elementary school could be reopened at the Garland school site in South Palo Alto. The board could vote to increase class sizes. Or Palo Alto could reevaluate the “Tinsley Program,” which allows 600 economically underprivileged East Palo Alto children to attend Palo Alto schools.

I called the school district office and couldn’t get any information on which elementary schools will be overcrowded at the start of the 2007-08 school year, but I’ve heard from parents that Palo Verde is currently the most crowded. Duveneck is in second place, with most of its overflow going to Addison and Walter Hays.