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District searches for new superintendent School board president to invite search firms to make presentations in March by Chris pening a search to replace Palo Alto Superintendent Kevin Skelly, school board President Barb Mitchell said Tuesday she would invite three or four search firms to make public presentations to the board next month. Mitchell polled colleagues on their search preferences Tuesday at the first Board of Education meet-
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Kenrick ing since the at-times embattled Skelly announced on Feb. 18 that he plans to step down June 30. Members agreed they wanted to engage a search firm rather than conduct a search themselves and said they preferred to interview multiple firms before settling on one. “Professional search firms have the ability to go out in a much wid-
er way than we could in just doing advertising,” board Vice President Melissa Baten Caswell said. Since presentations by each firm typically take at least an hour, board members also agreed not to make them part of the regular March 11 board meeting but to find a date for a special meeting, preferably around the same time. Though the meeting will be open to the public, board members said competing search firms should not be in the room during
their competitors’ presentations. The board will ask the firms how they identify potential applicants and whether they have unusual approaches for ensuring an adequate pool of good candidates. Other questions on a list culled from the district’s most recent superintendent search in 2007 include “How would you tailor your search for the needs of Palo Alto?” and “What do you see as the biggest challenge for us in filling our superintendent position?”
Board members, as well as Palo Alto Council of PTAs President Sigrid Pinsky, stressed the need for a transparent search process that solicits a wide range of community opinion. The board will ask search firms what they would do to ensure adequate participation from the community. Among the firms that board members said they hope to interV Ì Õi`Ê Ê«>}iÊ£Ó®
LAND USE
Palo Alto looks to scrap Cubberley covenant City Council unanimously supports eliminating 1989 provision that requires annual payments to school district by Gennady Sheyner
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Savoring the rain, while it lasts Walkers, some armed with umbrellas, cross University Avenue at Ramona Street on Wednesday evening. More rain is expected over the weekend.
HEALTH
Rare, polio-like virus striking Bay Area children Doctors discuss cases at press conference, stress rarity of the disease
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polio-like illness has stricken 25 children in California, Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital officials announced Monday at a press conference. Patients suffering from the disease quickly and permanently become paralyzed in one or more legs or arms. Some patients have respiratory symptoms before the paralysis begins, said Dr. Keith Van Haren, a pediatric neurologist. “We suspect it is a virus,” but doctors have not yet confirmed its presence in all of the patients, he said. Van Haren and Dr. Emmanuelle
by Sue Dremann Waubant, professor of neurology at the University of California at San Francisco, are researching the cases and have found a virus, enterovirus-68, in the nasal swabs of two, but that sample is too small to draw conclusions, Waubant said. Enterovirus-68 is in the same family as the polio virus. The polio vaccine does not protect against enterovirus-68, and there is no evidence that the vaccine causes the disease. Doctors Monday emphasized the disease is rare. It has been seen occasionally in the Bay Area, but the presence of five cases in the past 18 months
is unusual, Van Haren said. Other enteroviruses can cause similar symptoms. Another strain, enterovirus-71, has been implicated in similar cases of acute flaccid paralysis in southeast Asia and Australia, but that strain is not known here, Van Haren said. The enterovirus-68 cases, which began in September 2012, have ranged from Monterey County to the North Bay, with others in southern California. There are no confirmed cases outside California. Most of those stricken are ages V Ì Õi`Ê Ê«>}iÊ£Ó®
alo Alto officials on Monday took a firm stance against a two-decade-old provision in the city’s lease of Cubberley Community Center, a covenant that requires the city to pay the school district $1.8 million annually in exchange for the school district’s promise not to sell some of its property in the city. School officials are loath to give up the revenue, however, and negotiations over a new lease are heading into the final stretch as the current lease nears its expiration date at the end of this year. The covenant not to develop was adopted in 1989 with the idea of giving the cash-strapped school district a much-needed injection of funds while keeping the district from selling off five school sites. With the district no longer suffering from plummeting enrollment and sagging revenues and with all five sites now in use (Jordan and JLS middle schools and the Ohlone, Garland and Greendell campuses), the City Council agreed on Monday with City Manager James Keene’s assessment that the circumstances prompting the covenant no longer exist and therefore it should be eliminated. The covenant was part of a broader agreement between the city and the school district, which allows the city to lease from the school district 27 acres in the 35-acre south Palo Alto community center that was once a high school. Today, Cubberley houses an eclectic collection of tenants and amenities, including artist studios, child care providers, athletic playing fields, a theater and
the local campus of Foothill College. School and city officials are now working on a new lease. A 2013 report from a broad committee of community stakeholders recommended development of a vision in which Cubberley would be shared by the city and school district and an assessment to determine the best long-term uses for the sprawling center on Middlefield Road. But as Keene noted on Monday, the covenant remains a subject of disagreement between him and his counterpart on the school side, Superintendent Kevin Skelly. “The superintendent and I have been exploring different ideas and options, but I think we’re really reaching a sticking point as it relates to continuance of the covenant not to develop in the lease,” Keene said. From the council’s perspective, the issue is simple: Conditions that made the covenant useful no longer apply. Accordingly, it should be scrapped. That was also the recommendation of the community advisory committee, which voted 18-0 to remove the covenant from the new agreement. “I see no public-policy reason why anyone would expressly agree to do something for which they’re no longer receiving the intended benefit or result,” Keene said Monday. The council overwhelmingly supported Keene’s position. “I don’t see how anyone can explain to our voters, most of whom are voters in the city and V Ì Õi`Ê Ê«>}iÊ ®
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