Some of the people who live around the proposed new middle school campus at Creekside found a flyer on their doorstep yesterday announcing the "Scoping Meeting" for the Environmental Impact Report the school district is hoping will slide through to a rapid conclusion. And, given the way the project is being handled by the school district and its staff, why wouldn't it fly through? You see, the new $50,000,000 campus was OKed by the school board without any fanfare last January 11th. Construction contract work began right away, surprising the neighbors. As well, the staff told the community on June 16th that the plan and the buildings were done deals, i.e. public input is pointless.

But the project has baggage - lots of it. It's a big school on a too small site in a location that will disrupt the adjacent neighborhood big time. The only safe way for most of the student body to get there is by having their parents drive them, using streets that can't handle the traffic. And, if you thought traffic on El Camino was nasty already, you ain't seen nothing yet. Then there's the creek, the flood plain, the Nature Area, the failure to look at alternative sites, the unwillingness to consider a two-story building (even though two story buildings are abundant in the immediate area), 3 middle schools within 3 miles, etc.

The school district has {...wink, wink...} announced it will {...ahem...} "evaluate" the site to see if there are any environmental issues that, you know, should be {...ahem...} "mitigated". To do so, they will prepare an Environmental Impact Report (something state law says should have been done before the locked-in decision was made back in January on the 11th) and to do that, they are holding Scoping Meeting on June 30th pursuant to a Notice of Preparation that they issued on June 10th. The Environmental Impact Report has to cover any matters for which a "fair argument" (a term of art that the courts have upheld) is made as to potential impacts that should be investigated.

Sure, we all know the process is "fake", but unless people engage, the school district will get away with it without much stress. So, if you have an opinion about what the school district should cover in its Environmental Impact Report, the meeting on June 30th is a chance to speak up. As of July 9th the window to comment on what whould be in the EIR snaps shut.