Something happening here...

What it is ain't exactly clear.. to quote the old Buffalo Springfield song, but actually it is clear.

There has been quite a bit of kerfuffle here in the Rivermark neighborhood lately regarding the local elementary school Don Callejon. The main issue has been that the school is overcrowded with kids and basically bursting at the seems and the local school board has been wrestling with some unpopular options for resolving the issue.

There is a huge influx of younger kids (including ours) which is going through the school that will cause it to exceed it's maximum capacity this year or next and because the students are all young that problem will go on for quite some time.

As an example in Julia's grade (4th) there are just 2.5 classes but in Lea's grade (2nd) there are 5 classes and in Nicolas' grade (kindergarten) there are 6!! The grade school (the school is k-8 where the middle school is in a separate building on campus) has already had to put grade school kids into the middle school building because of the "bubble" of lower grades coming through. All demographic indications are that there will continue to be more years of 6 kinder classes which will further strain the resources at the school. Another example of the strain is that on rainy days (fortunately rare around here) there is basically not enough room at the cafeteria for all of the kids to eat inside. Normally they utilize outdoor seating for lunch which generally works when the weather is nice.

So the Santa Clara Unified School District (SCUSD) now has a problem and is trying to resolve it. They have suggested various ways to resolve the problem including instituting a "lottery" system where kids entering in kindergarten would be in a lottery to see who gets into the school. Those who don't get selected have to get bussed to another local elementary school. This is of course a huge issue because we know that most parents like us bought in this neighborhood specifically because there was a new neighborhood school our kids could go to.

Now let me say at this point we are not affected because our kids are already in and even if Nicolas wasn't in there would be priority for siblings.

One of the problems is that the original school boundaries have been expanded to include some higher density housing which is adding a lot of younger kids. The Rivermark neighborhood has become extremely organized around this issue creating new Rivermark only mailing lists, meeting regularly, attending school board meetings in mass. It has been pretty impressive really and Melissa and I have been observing the activity because any negative change could dramatically affect our housing prices. Other suggestions for soling the problem include rezoning (to remove some of the high density housing) and adding portable trailers to the field near the school (this was actually our preferred suggestion).

There have been some very strong reactions to some of the suggestions from the school board, particularly to the rezoning which would negatively affect some housing prices. There is even a website against it which someone created, check it out: http://nocallejonrezoning.org/

Well today is the actual registration day for new students and the short term solution was to have a line-up for registration on a first come first serve basis. What's remarkable is that the line for today's registration started at 2PM YESTERDAY and that people have been out there all night. Additionally there have been "support teams" going over to the people in line (the government should run as efficiently as these people!) bringing them tea, coffee, spare tents, chairs, relieving them in line so they could go to the bathroom! It's amazing!

Here are a couple of links showing the people in line last night and with the tents!

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=3799598&l=90cd47a605&id=730436630

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=3799573&l=b37226d6df&id=730436630

In one of these photos there is a school board member who stopped by to see the activity. This to me is all amazing to watch and Melissa and I are so glad that we are beyond these problems.