I am back on this because I am so tired of the attitude that the City and the PAUSD are different entities and there is so little communication between the two.

We have new housing developments all over town and have done for at least 10 years now. The school board uses demographers that look at statistics that assume the housing is for seniors, or singles, or may bring in one school age child. The truth is always that new housing here is always producing children. Even in the case of seniors, they eventually seem to have an adult child with a couple of other children moving in at some stage. Sometimes they really live with the grandparent senior, other times whether this is just an accommodation address to get the kids into our schools, who knows?

The point is these two headlines side by side just point out the gross inability of the Council and PAUSD to communicate at any basic level.

I am back again and still feel strongly about this.

I am not in favor at all of the idea of more housing in Palo Alto.

Our schools, infrastructure and everything else are stretched to the limit. What is crazy is that the CC can even think about putting in all this potential housing without consideration one iota about schooling the kids, traffic implications, public transit implications, water/sewer services, etc. etc. But, the most crazy part is that they do this at exactly the same time as the school board decides not to go ahead with a new school in exactly the part of town that many of these new homes are proposed.

Doesn't anyone else put their hands up in horror at the very idea of two Palo Alto government bodies working without knowing what the other is doing?

It is like two parents, one telling a child that of course he can go to camp/soccer/ballet and we can afford it somehow, while the other parent says no more extra curricula activities until you improve your grades.

They are at cross purposes and their lack of communication is abysmal.

I agree with that you say, but it's not just the leadership. The school communities themselves are silent about City issues. These are the residents, and do you ever see them at Council meetings? Some of the council members are old time school volunteers, like the Mayor, but they are grandparents by now, so really there is no representation from the school community on Council issues.