A 2022 warning about housing's cost to schools, quietly removed from the district's website.
When Menlo Park was considering adopting its current housing element in 2022, the Menlo Park City School District issued a "School and Housing: A One-Pager" supporting additional housing but listing the adverse effects it could cause.[1]
District public information officer Parke Treadway confirmed in a June 2025 email that the "document was created by our previous superintendent to engage the community in the housing element discussion that was happening at the time."[2] She noted that the district deleted the one-pager when it refreshed its website after hiring a new superintendent, that district enrollment now was more manageable, and a Nov. 2024 bond approval helped to "address safety and security investments at our facilities."
Nevertheless, the district's 2022 observations raise legitimate issues about the placement of any high-density developments geared for families with children anywhere in Menlo Park:
You can read the one-pager that went away by following the link below.
The district's current explanation for taking the page down — a new superintendent's website refresh, calmer enrollment, and a bond that addressed safety and security — doesn't rebut the numbers the one-pager raised. Per-student costs, the price of new campus capacity, and the shortfall between developer fees and real facility costs are arithmetic, not enrollment forecasts, and they don't expire when a webpage does. Whatever the reason for its removal, the document's underlying math and the flags raised remain relevant to any city weighing whether to add high-density family housing and where to put it.