Abrupt Farallone View schedule change leaves coastsiders hanging

Farallone View Elementary School changed its start time this year from 8:00 am to 8:25 am, but the district neglected to notify parents or any of the dozens of local merchants, tutors, or child care providers who were affected by the change. "I apologize for it," said superintendant John Bayless. "We should have sent a letter to parents, and there’s no excuse for it."

The only notifications were street signs and notices posted at the school the week before classes began. Because the school is on a dead-end street, no one who didn’t visit Farallone View the week before school would have seen the sign. As parents trickled in to read the postings of class assignements, they found out.

Monday morning, on the first day of school, one parent says she found principal Mike Bachicha "surrounded by unhappy parents" when she arrived to drop off her son. Gymtowne Gymnastics in Moss Beach has had to move their afternoon students and classes, and only found out about the change when one of their employees, whose child attends Farallone View, called the school. Jari Chidester, a tutor in Moss Beach, says that five of her afternoon students needed to be rescheduled.

The change was made because the January redrawing of elementary districts made it necessary to have two school bus runs from Half Moon Bay to Farallone View each day, according to principal Bachicha. The decision to have two bus runs, he says, was made the first week of July. But no one was in the Farallone View office until the second week of August, when everyone was so busy putting class schedules together that there was no time to write, review, translate, print, and distribute a letter to the community.

The only other public notice was in the third paragraph of a story in the Review with the innocuous title "Bell set to ring in new school year".