Build East Palo Alto's first satellite campus

By J. Samuel Diaz

With most educational infrastructure ripped out already, East Palo Alto and Belle Haven residents would tremendously benefit from having their own satellite campus. Let's build these facilities and provide our neighbors with local access to college education!

In the case of East Palo Alto, most of its educational infrastructure was ripped out and its residents bussed to neighboring high schools. That was at the high school level.

At the college level, we can establish East Palo Alto's first satellite campus. This new campus would serve Fair Oaks, Belle Haven and East Palo Alto residents be only one bus ride away!

Compare that to today's situation, where it takes 1.5 hours and two buses to get to Caņada College and over two hours and three bus rides to get to College of San Mateo. That burdensome and costly impediment to education needs to be removed. As Mr. Edmund Harris might say, "Time is money! So don't waste it!" Mr. Harris, like you and me, knows that providing education locally brings the education to the students. So let's not deprive our neighbors of this resource the rest of us take for granted.

This could be done with a minimal investment at first by leasing a few buildings for high-demand classes and rotating in more classes over time. The long-term goal would be to provide all of the classes required for Associate degrees or Certificates of Completion locally.

On a similar note, the Half Moon Bay campus needs permanent facilities built and more classes offered; two years ago, it was the exact opposite. When you hear that $750 million dollars of bond money has already been issued, don't you wonder how come building these two campuses has never been done?

If you feel the same way I do, then vote. The honest truth is too few citizens vote, much less during non-presidential election years. So go out and make a difference with your vote. Otherwise, don't expect others to represent your views at board meetings and don't expect the current Board to change its policy making.