Foster City: The elephant in the mid-Peninsula classroom

It would be fair to state that the impact of Foster City on public education along the midPeninsula is not entirely well-perceived. In some important ways, it’s the elephant in the classroom.

That’s probably understandable. The island community, now just over a half-century-old, remains somewhat apart, located as it is out on the bayfront near the San Mateo-Hayward Bridge.

But, over the decades, the pupil count in the growing town of 35,000 souls has continued to rise. Increasingly, Foster City’s share of the large San MateoFoster City School District (it’s the biggest in terms of total enrollment) is almost a district-within-a-district.

The kinder-garten-through-grade-eight Foster City enrollment is now 3,500. Total district enrollment is 12,000. That Foster City enrollment share exceeds that of the Hillsborough, Millbrae and San Bruno Park elementary districts and equals that of Burlingame elementary; all of them are entities that feed into the San Mateo Union High School District.

In spite of the numbers, Foster City, which has been likened to an academic stepchild in some ways, has struggled mightily to gain much control over its public education situation. It’s been a rough road. An attempt to create its own unified school district fell apart decades ago.

Only in the last year or two has the town been assured that, yes, a fifth school eventually will be built within its borders. It’s needed. More than 300 Foster City children have to attend classes in San Mateo because of a lack of classrooms close to their homes. The other four Foster City schools are jammed with kids.

At the secondary level, a perennial bone of contention within the community, Foster City is in even worse shape; it does not have a high school of its own. When the town was on the drawing board more than 50 years ago, land was set aside by the developers for what was dubbed “Marina High School.”

Attractive drawings of the anticipated campus graced real estate blurbs for the new Foster City homes as young families shopped for living space at what were then affordable price tags (gee, remember those?). Marina was touted as a given. Wrong. The school was never built. It turned out to be a mirage, an enticing figment of the imagination.

Why? Because the high school district had (and still has) enough room district-wide to accommodate its Foster City pupils; currently, that figure is 1,200. Almost all of them are housed at Aragon, Hillsdale and San Mateo highs, all located in the city of San Mateo.

So adding a new high school in Foster City, runs the logic, would require closing an existing campus, more than likely one of those in San Mateo. That decision most certainly would be vehemently opposed.

However, at least Foster City parents, as the holiday season begins, can feel hopeful that, sometime fairly early in 2018, work can finally commence on the planned new elementary school, in spite of delays, some of them imposed by the town itself.

Once those glitches are ironed out, it should be full speed ahead.

Happy Thanksgiving.