Last Tuesday, the Palo Alto Unified School District (PAUSD) considered a petition from families living in the complex located at 670 San Antonio Rd. to allow their children to attend Palo Alto schools instead of the Mountain View schools that they are currently assigned to. If these residents live in and pay their taxes to the city of Palo Alto, their children should be attending public schools in Palo Alto.

The above statement may incite outrage from worried parents concerned about overpopulation in Palo Alto schools until they consider the entire problem. Children living in 22 units in this complex near Middlefield Rd. are already assigned to Palo Alto schools, but the rest of the families living in the other 18 units are forced to send their kids to schools in the Mountain View Whisman School District. The PAUSD boundaries have often been described as illogical, but splitting a housing complex down the middle is ridiculous. Local neighborhoods are supposed to build a strong community, but how can the parents of these kids truly expect them to bond when they attend schools in completely different cities?

These families all live within Palo Alto city boundaries and pay taxes to the city of Palo Alto, so their children cannot be justly banned from attending Palo Alto schools. The city of Palo Alto taxes these residents for more money than if they lived within the city boundaries of Mountain View, and uses part of this money to maintain and expand schools within PAUSD. By forcing these kids to attend Mountain View schools instead of those in Palo Alto, the city is not allowing these families their full money’s worth. About half the residents in this housing complex are being taxed to pay for the education of other families’ children, and yet their own children are banned from attending these same schools.

While these residents living in Palo Alto face the dilemma of transporting their kids to Mountain View schools, children from other school districts are able to attend schools in the PAUSD. There are certain students with special circumstances who live in East Palo Alto but attend Palo Alto schools, but the city of East Palo Alto has its own school district and is, in fact, in an entirely different county. In addition, children who live in Los Altos Hills are allowed to attend schools in Palo Alto. District boundaries should be redrawn to remove students who do not live within the vicinity of Palo Alto from our school district and to allow Palo Alto children a place in their proper neighborhood schools.