Amy Ruffo, director of Facilities and Construction at the San Mateo Foster City School District, responds to parent questions during a meeting about a new North Central community school at the College Park Elementary School campus Tuesday, April 11.
Parents filed into the College Park Elementary School cafeteria Tuesday evening to discuss design plans for what will become the new North Central San Mateo community school with much of the focus on student safety, access to quality open space and programming and building positive connections across grade levels.
“I’m fighting for the little one,” said Jose Andino, a parent of two boys, one a first grader who will eventually attend school at the new site while the other is already in middle school. “I feel excited. At the beginning I was thinking it wasn’t real but now we have to open our eyes. … Now you have to believe it and say wow. I feel like a part of the team.”
The San Mateo-Foster City School District is in the design phase of its plans to open a TK-8 community school in North Central San Mateo where College Park Elementary is currently located. The new campus would provide wraparound services to the families in an area home to a large Latino population. The area has been without a neighborhood school since Turnbull Learning Academy was shut down in the early 2000s and reenvisioned as a magnet school. Since then, North Central students have been assigned to other district schools.
To create the new North Central school, officials have decided to swap the Mandarin immersion program at College Park Elementary School on East Poplar Avenue with the Spanish immersion program at the Fiesta Gardens site on Bermuda Drive. Following the swap, the College Park campus would become the new North Central community school by August 2025.
The Board of Trustees, during its last meeting on March 23, voted to allocate $23 million from Measure X, a facilities bond measure approved by voters in 2015, toward developing the school. Another $13 million will be needed to upgrade the North Central campus, including adding six new classrooms for sixth, seventh and eighth grade classes, a science, technology, engineering and mathematics lab and other campus improvements.
During their last meeting though, trustees requested that the district conduct additional outreach on the school’s design after community members and trustees expressed concerns about the process.
Feedback from the first meeting, held on April 4, led officials to move where new classrooms will be built from along Poplar Avenue to the side of the campus lining Humboldt Street. Tuesday’s meeting was the second of three held to facilitate community feedback and parents eagerly offered additional ideas.
One shared hope the site would have adequate greenspace for students to play and not too much asphalt. Another worried the playgrounds may be too small, especially for the new middle school that will be added to the site. One parent suggested the students have access to audiobooks while another said both audio and physical books would be important.
Parents asked about security and access to the site during and in between drop-off and pick-up times. They wanted to know where bike racks would be placed and whether classrooms would have sinks. They worried the library would be too small or that students wouldn’t have enough space for arts and music programming.
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Another, worried about bullying, suggested elementary school students be separated from middle schoolers. Roberto Noceda, a longtime teacher in the county now substituting at SM-FCSD, argued against the suggestion by asserting the school should be a community where students know each other across age groups.
“When students are in a community school they’re not just in a school. They’re part of a community,” Noceda said. “The community school should promote respect, love, kindness and a sense that this is your school.”
Natalia Estassi, a clinical psychologist whose son is a student at Fiesta Gardens, said she was heartened to see parents advocating for mental health resources. The product of that advocacy will be dedicated offices for mental health providers.
A survey conducted by the district showed more than 88% of respondents were in support of building a counseling office where individual, family, group, youth and vocational counseling would be offered.
In the same survey, more than 80% of respondents were in support of providing the community with a parent and family resource classroom. It’s also been suggested that the site should also offer programming for parents like English language classes. Respondents were also in support of offering school-focused health services and community advocacy, housing, sanctuary and legal services.
The layout and offerings of the campus are still being determined. The public may provide input during one more public meeting April 18 starting at 6 p.m. on the College Park Elementary campus. Food, child care and translation will be available.
“These meetings are helping us understand the values of the community, the hopes parents have,” Superintendent Diego Ochoa said during Tuesday’s meeting “The future of this community is brilliant.”
Thank you for this article, it leaves us with one more big question:
Do children in low-income, predominantly Latino neighborhoods deserve bike lanes too?
According to publicly available data, College Park's current population is only 6% Hispanic, but 94% affluent in a low-income, predominantly Hispanic neighborhood. There are plenty of studies why this is a problem, and San Mateo seems to start acknowledging those problems. Changing it from a Magnet school back to a neighborhood school, so kids from that neighborhood can attend the closest public school campus, is very important and almost the right move.
Anyways, this currently, predominantly affluent school in a low-income neighborhood got very important bike lanes just last year. It's still just piecemeal and not part of the bike lane network Mayor Lee and her city council promised (Vision Zero), but it's a start.
So why is it that, exactly at the same time this is supposed to become a neighborhood school in a predominantly low-income neighborhood with a large Latino population ... why exactly at this point in time does Mayor Lee and her council even discus the removal of those very same bike lanes? At the very same moment Mayor Amourence Lee should be working hard at extending these bike lanes so that those very same children from her low-income, predominantly Hispanic neighborhood can safely bike to their new neighborhood school - at that very moment Mayor Lee wants to take those Safe-Routes-To-School away?
If people don't understand what "Systemic Racism in Urban Planning" looks like and how it always happens, just keep watching Mayor Lee and her council over the next few weeks and months, what arguments they come up with, how many "crisis actors" they will call in, and how they eventually remove much needed bike lanes, just because they would serve low-income neighborhood kids.
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Thank you for this article, it leaves us with one more big question:
Do children in low-income, predominantly Latino neighborhoods deserve bike lanes too?
According to publicly available data, College Park's current population is only 6% Hispanic, but 94% affluent in a low-income, predominantly Hispanic neighborhood. There are plenty of studies why this is a problem, and San Mateo seems to start acknowledging those problems. Changing it from a Magnet school back to a neighborhood school, so kids from that neighborhood can attend the closest public school campus, is very important and almost the right move.
Anyways, this currently, predominantly affluent school in a low-income neighborhood got very important bike lanes just last year. It's still just piecemeal and not part of the bike lane network Mayor Lee and her city council promised (Vision Zero), but it's a start.
So why is it that, exactly at the same time this is supposed to become a neighborhood school in a predominantly low-income neighborhood with a large Latino population ... why exactly at this point in time does Mayor Lee and her council even discus the removal of those very same bike lanes? At the very same moment Mayor Amourence Lee should be working hard at extending these bike lanes so that those very same children from her low-income, predominantly Hispanic neighborhood can safely bike to their new neighborhood school - at that very moment Mayor Lee wants to take those Safe-Routes-To-School away?
If people don't understand what "Systemic Racism in Urban Planning" looks like and how it always happens, just keep watching Mayor Lee and her council over the next few weeks and months, what arguments they come up with, how many "crisis actors" they will call in, and how they eventually remove much needed bike lanes, just because they would serve low-income neighborhood kids.
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Keep the discussion civilized. Absolutely NO personal attacks or insults directed toward writers, nor others who make comments.
Keep it clean. Please avoid obscene, vulgar, lewd, racist or sexually-oriented language.
Don't threaten. Threats of harming another person will not be tolerated.
Be truthful. Don't knowingly lie about anyone or anything.
Be proactive. Use the 'Report' link on each comment to let us know of abusive posts.
PLEASE TURN OFF YOUR CAPS LOCK.
Anyone violating these rules will be issued a warning. After the warning, comment privileges can be revoked.