The League for Coastside Protection has voted to endorse Measure S, the parcel tax proposal for local schools on the June 6 ballot. This is a big win for the supporters of the measure and a good indication of strong public support.  The LCP has historically been at odds with the school board over the location of the middle school and the fight over that issue has been a stumbling block for past parcel taxes on the Coastside.

The LCP, an environmentally-oriented political organization the Coastside, has traditionally not taken positions on tax measures. The League cited the need for quality schools, the school board’s decision to built its new middle school at Cunha. The LCP also cited "the school district’s stated commitment to providing a busing oriented tax measure in the near future".

Back to Basics Night at Pac Bell Park is May 22, 2006, when the SF Giants play the St Louis Cardinals at 7:15pm.

The Giants donate the proceeds from as many seats as the community can fill.  The seats are together in the View Reserved section, so the whole community is seated to enjoy the game and the performances of their local musicians together.

It’s going to be a special evening for Coastsiders.

The community will be featured throughout the game with scoreboard and on camera recognition.  The Half Moon Bay High band will play the National Anthem, Cunha Middle School will perform ”Take Me Out to the Ball Game” during the 7th inning stretch, and the Cabrillo Alumni band performs pre-game in Willie Mays Plaza.  A child from each of the elementary schools will have the memorable experience of being down on the field for batting practice, and one of our students will be awarded the chance to be the Junior Announcer, reading off the line-up during the 3rd inning.  Each Elementary school is devising its own contest to determine who the lucky child will be.

Tickets are $20. each, and must be purchased by May 8 to benefit Back to Basics.  Tickets can be purchased on line from Back to Basics, or by visiting the Half Moon Bay Brewing Company, Cameron’s Restaurant, The Half Moon Bay Inn, San Benito House and Lighthouse Water.  To sponsor a block of 25 or more tickets,call Faham Zakariaei of The Giants at 415-972-2258.

For more information, call Erin Tormey at 726-4802.

The traffic mess, numerous inconveniences and myriad of consequences due to the closure of Highway 1 have left all of us on the Coastside under a shadow of malaise. 

But we need to separate our issues.

In reading various comments posted recently, it is obvious that people are looking for someplace to direct their understandable frustrations.  Unfortunately, some people are misdirecting their frustrations at the Cabrillo Unified School District.

Busing has always been an important issue to the CUSD.  In fact, the $250 parcel tax that lost by a very slight margin in 2003 would have indeed restored full busing.  The closure of Highway 1 may highlight the need for student transportation; however, that is not what Measure S, the $175 school parcel tax on the June ballot, is about.

The top priority of our school district - first and foremost - is to provide a high quality education to the children and young people of our community.  Measure S funds are dedicated solely to the mission of improving student academic achievement and to help our kids meet and exceed academic standards.  (To learn more about Measure S, visit www.pro-school.org ) .

Had we all known in early March when the measure had to be filed with the county in order to make it onto the June ballot that Devil’s Slide would go out, I might guess that the school district could have felt comfortable asking the community to approve a significantly higher parcel tax - more in the area of $290 - to restore full busing in addition to providing the resources needed to improve academic achievement.  But without the benefit of precognition or a crystal ball,  the school board chose to deal with its most important mission first and ask voters to approve a more modest dollar figure.

When Devil’s Slide did wreak its havoc, the school district responded immediately to the road closure. That first Monday afternoon, Superintendent John Bayless and the principals met to develop solutions. 

The result?  Throughout the duration of the closure, the school district will operate buses for Cunha Middle School students and has changed school start times in the morning to reduce traffic during commute hours.  Additionally, supervised child care will be provided at all elementary schools beginning at 6:30 AM so that commuting parents can bring their children to school as early as necessary.

Regardless of the status of Highway 1, however, the overall transportation needs of our community extend much further than student transportation.  Recognizing this - and well before the road was closed - the school board took a proactive approach to improve local transportation by initiating an active partnership with San Mateo County, SAMTRANS, the City of Half Moon Bay and the Coastside Opportunity Center to assess overall transportation needs and develop the best solution.

In a perfect world, we wouldn’t have to deal with road closures; our local schools would have the funding they need to provide the kind of education we all want for our community’s kids; and of course we would have school buses.

We all know that we don’t live in a perfect world.  But by pulling together to do the best we can to solve one problem at a time, the closer we’ll be to that world.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This release from the Cabrillo Unified School District was revised on Friday, April 7.  Hours for Cunha and the high school have been pushed back 30 minutes and bus service been added to Cunha from neighborhoods north of Frenchman’s Creek.  School will be closed next week for spring break, and the new schedule will be in place April 17 until Devil’s Slide is reopened.

In order to assist the community in addressing the traffic impact from the closure of Devil’s Slide, Cabrillo Unified School District has developed a temporary alternative plan regarding Cunha and the high school schedules.  We have a temporary transportation assistance plan in place for Cunha students only, who live north of Frenchman’s Creek. 

The revised schedules will begin on Monday, April 17, 2006, and be in place until Devil’s Slide is re-opened.  While the revised schedule may not address all issues and concerns, we are hopeful that it will assist in reducing the traffic impact during the morning commute. 

The elementary schedules will remain the same.  However, if parents/guardians need to drop off students earlier than the normal starting time for school, we will have a staff member on site to supervise beginning at 6:30 a.m.  Parents are requested to walk the students to the designated area at your individual school site. 

Cunha will begin at 9:00 a.m. and end at 3:15 p.m. 

Half Moon Bay High School’s first period will begin at 8:15 a.m.; zero period will begin at 7:15 a.m.  All teachers  will be providing  tutoring from 7:45 -8:15 a.m.  

Temporary bus stops for Cunha students have been secured through the District’s emergency fund.  These no charge stops are temporarily in place during the closure of Devil’s Slide.  Times listed are approximate and may vary due to traffic.  THERE WILL BE NO AFTER SCHOOL TRANSPORTATION. 

Cunha Bus Stops:

• El Granada School   7:35 a.m.
• Montara Post Office   8:00 a.m.
• Moss Beach Post Office  8:05 a.m.
• Moss Beach Chevron station  8:10 a.m.
• Pillar Ridge Mobile Home Park 8:20 a.m.
• Alhambra & Cabrillo   8:20 a.m.
• Alhambra & Columbus  8:25 a.m.
• Medio  (West)    8:35 a.m.

We hope that these revised schedules and temporary bus stops will assist the community in addressing some of the impact of the closure of Devil’s Slide.  As soon as the Slide is re-opened, the school schedules will revert back to their original times and the temporary bussing will end.

REVISED April 7, 2006 

By Ken Johnson

When the Half Moon Bay Review, the Cabrillo Unified School District, and CUSD Superintendent John Bayless intersect; there can be casualties. The first is truth. The second is student education. The third is good old-fashioned common sense.

This was the case in the Review’s editorial on 8 March 2006. The editorial misled the public about the true status of CUSD student achievement, graduation and dropout rates. In an attempt to provide a clearer picture of reality, I wrote a “Letter to the Editor”, which was published in this week’s Review. The editor also chose to include an “Editor’s note” citing information from CUSD Superintendent Bayless which further misled the public.

I got involved with the question of inaccurate graduation and dropout rates a couple of years ago. I went to a CUSD Board meeting with charts in hand showing a far different picture than the District was claming. I presented them to Superintendent Bayless for “review” before the meeting began. He objected to their accuracy and offered to review them in detail. I played along, having already concluded he needed to be treated as if he were a ‘hostile witness—know the answer to any question before you ask it’. His email response to me on Wed 03-Mar-04 10:03 was:

SamTrans is adding an additional bus run in the afternoon and one in the morning, to help alleviate problems that have led to students and worker being left off buses in the last few weeks. SamTrans will also adjust the path of Route 294 to pick up the kids at the El Granada Mobile Home Park. This expanded service, which SamTrans calls "Operation Sea Otter", will last until the end of this school year, giving local agencies and the district time to find money, probably from grants, to serve these riders.

Cheri Parr, executive director of the Coastside Opportunity Center, which operates the buses under a contract with SamTrans, announced additional capacity at Thursday night’s meeting of the Cabrillo Unified School District.  SamTrans had added some additional capacity, but withdrawn it because it was concerned it couldn’t guarantee that level of service indefinitely. The new schedule is positioned as a temporary solution.

"Because of SamTrans, we no longer have an emergency," said Cheri Parr.  "Now it’s up the the Coastside community to solve the long-term problem."

At that meeting, the school board passed a resolution committing the district to working on the problem.

DISCLOSURE: Yes, Cheri Parr is my wife.

UPDATED: The CUSD board’s parcel tax resolution [PDF] can now be downloaded from Coastsider.

The Cabrillo Unified School District board of directors voted unanimously Monday night to place a $175 parcel tax on the June primary ballot.

The tax would apply to improved parcels.  Unimproved parcels would be taxed $30. Parcels whose owners are 65 and older would be able to apply annually for an exemption. There are about 8,000 improved and 4,000 unimproved parcels in the district.

According to the ballot measure, the goals of the tax are:

• A "highly qualified and well-trained teaching staff"
• Small classes in kindergarten through third grade
• Lower class sizes in middle school
• Increased range of academic programs a Half Moon Bay High School, including honors classes, science, math, and technology courses, literacy programs and
• Increased staff development time.

Transportation, which was discussed at Thursday’s meeting, is not included in the final version of the measure.

Monday, about forty Coastside schoolchildren who ride SamTrans to and from school will be turned away. Last week an extra bus was added by the nonprofit Coastside Opportunity Center, which operates the buses for SamTrans, to one run in the morning and one in the afternoon.  The Center added the bus when it discovered that students, mostly from Cunha Intermediate School, were unsafely crowding onto existing buses.

But SamTrans has terminated this extra bus.  Friday, after it was told by SamTrans to stop the service, the Center gave students riding the buses the following letter:

Dear Passengers of the Coastside Opportunity Center –

We are very sorry to inform you that late last night, the Coastside Opportunity Center was informed by SamTrans that we may no longer run the additional buses that we added this week to help with the overcrowding issue.  We are greatly saddened that starting on Monday, March 6th we will only be offering one bus with a full capacity of 18 seated and 2 standing passengers for each run of Route 17.  Unless another solution presents itself over the weekend, this will be the case for the foreseeable future. This was a decision of SamTrans and not the Coastside Opportunity Center.  If you have any questions, please contact Jonah Weinburg, Public Information Officer at SamTrans 650-508-6238.

Jonah Weinberg, public information officer at SamTrans, told Coastsider that the additional bus could only be a temporary measure, saying "We can’t guarantee that level of service and there is no funding for additional buses." He also noted that SamTrans is forbidden by statute from providing school bus service.

Ongoing disclosure: Cheri Parr, executive director of the Coastside Opporunity Center, is my wife.

There will be a second special meeting to discuss a proposed parcel tax for the June ballot. The board of the Cabrillo Unified School District is holding a second meeting Monday night (tonight) at 6:45pm at the District office at 498 Kelly Avenue, next to Hatch School.

Based on the discussion at the first special meeting, on Thursday March 2, the parcel tax will be between $150 and $200 per parcel.  Some of the uses considered at the meeting on Thursday were class size reduction, special classes, and middle school transportation.