The work has taken place inside buildings, which means that the 80 percent of Palo Altans who don't have kids won't know how their money is spent unless they've had some reason to visit a school. Moreover, the only new building that will go up in the school district will be a new headquarters building for administrators. Growing enrollment has forced the board to reclaim the former Terman Middle School, which means the Jewish Community Center will be evicted from that building. That criticism won't be fair since Stanford will pay for the building, but somebody is going to make an issue out of it. That's just the way politics works in our town.
Truth is the first casualty in elections.
We think there are good arguments for a school bond issue. Enrollment is growing, and yet everybody wants smaller class sizes. That means we'll need more classrooms. The schools should be our top priority, and everybody else can cut their budgets if they want money for new projects. The city doesn't even have a policy of reviewing jobs within its bureaucracy to see if they're still necessary.