CUSD Superintendent Shares Plans with Midcoast Community Council for Board Approved Modernization Plans at El Granada and Farallone View Elementary Schools

One thought on “CUSD Superintendent Shares Plans with Midcoast Community Council for Board Approved Modernization Plans at El Granada and Farallone View Elementary Schools”

1. While appreciating the report to the MCC, I found the presentation to be a bit self-important and dictatorial. This is not to doubt the guy’s sincerity and devotion to his ideas about what is best for the district. But his responses to the questions of Dan and others about whether or not the communities around the schools in Montara and El Granada were taken into consideration and consulted on such matters as perimeter fencing and lighting were inflexible, dismissive, obtuse, historically naive, and tone deaf.

   Everyone wants all school children to be safe and comfortable in the facilities, but the perimeter security fencing is ridiculous from the standpoint of protecting kids from armed assailants. The mass murderers are getting in by way of the front doors of the schools that have been attacked, sometimes shooting their way in through locked doors. Having control of the campuses during school hours by requiring visitors to gain access through a single administrative entryway is a good idea, but let’s be real. A determined killer with automatic or semi-automatic guns would blow through the offices in seconds. Also, the security fencing proposed would be easily breached, or a killer could simply fire on children and staff from outside the fencing. Nothing short of high-walled, guarded, prison-like facilities would provide physical protection from the kind of insane, gun-facilitated violence loose in the U.S. Contrast that with the many benefits from community use of school facilities and playgrounds through both organized and casual activities outside school hours.

   The CUSD community is blended with the surrounding communities in which our schools are found. Using scare language to hype an undetermined threat as justification for trying to physically separate the two is a sad way to force urban-style change on our small towns. El Granada, Princeton, Moss Beach, and Montara are not Half Moon Bay. The CUSD superintendent needs to become aware of the distinct benefits and better life we have in our Midcoast communities and adjust his vision to our localities.

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