Planning & Design Meetings Meeting #4 12/17/2008 - MinutesPALO ALTO HS MP MEETING No. 4
Palo Alto Unified School District 17 December 2008
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PALO ALTO HIGH SCHOOL MASTER PLAN
Palo Alto Unified School District
MASTER PLAN MEETING NO.4
DATE: 17 December 2008, 3:15–5:00 pm
SUBJECT: Master Plan Meeting with Palo Alto HS Facilities Steering Committee
ATTENDEES: See attached sign-in sheet
The following are the highlights of the meeting:
1. As an introduction, architect Erwin Lee reviewed the master plan site diagrams from
the last meeting. He then introduced a new site layout diagram. The important
elements from the new diagram were:
• Media arts program to be located on the second floor of the new building,
keeping classrooms on the ground floor. Some portions of the media arts could
be two stories.
• Create a connector that enhances the relationship between the existing gyms.
This addition would face the courtyard to develop a courtyard edge at the south
end of the quad.
• When the library gets modernized, some offices should be relocated to allocate
more classroom space to the library building.
2. The architect presented a program and classroom distribution diagram of existing
conditions and suggested that the following topics be discussed at the meeting:
• Which activities must stay where they currently are, and which activities can be
shifted around?
• Which programs are growing and which programs are declining?
• Which programs can be provided on the first floor and which can be provided on
the second floor of the proposed new buildings?
3. The steering committee discussed their program needs with the architect. The
important requirements were:
• The gym needs flexible rooms that can be shared by different sports, such as
wrestling and Tai Chi, ample storage and large tables.
• There is no need for a separate lecture hall if it can be incorporated into the new
media arts building.
• The media arts department requires five classrooms, a studio, computer labs
and a video-production room.
• The eventual goal for math is to lower the student to teacher ratio. This will
require additional classrooms for the math program.
PALO ALTO HS MP MEETING No. 4
Palo Alto Unified School District 17 December 2008
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• The english department has grown to be the largest department. The many
publications have contributed to the increase.
• There has been previous discussion of increasing the world language
requirement for graduation. This department may grow accordingly.
• The IT department is satisfied with the amount of space that they currently
have, but would like to be more centralized for ease of sharing equipment.
• There needs to be a larger testing space that has the flexibility to accommodate
an overflow of students if needed.
• Special day classes should be clustered because they share resources
amongst themselves.
4. After the discussion of program needs and the site layout diagram, the following
were comments and suggestions by the steering committee:
• The Academic Resource Center should move to the tower building, so that the
adult school can use it without having library access and so that the noise level
is kept to a minimum
• The speech pathologist should move to the tower building, or be clustered with
the special education classrooms
• The home economics space could be better located, and the adjacent video
production studio is unnecessarily large. Home economics should eventually
move to the new building that will replace the 900 building, and the video
production classroom should be included in the new media arts building.
• If a new gym is built or the existing gym is modified, living skills and sports
medicine could be moved from the second floor of the tower building to the
modernized space.
• Principal Jacqueline McEvoy informed the committee of recent feedback from
staff that suggests that office space would be used more frequently if it were
within close proximity to respective classrooms.
• The general consensus is that no regular classrooms should be located in the
tower building.
5. The meeting was opened up for public comment. The highlights of the comments
and questions from the public audience are:
• There was an opinion that the existing Haymarket Theater should be turned 90
degrees so that it would be more viewable from the Embarcadero frontage, and
that no additional theater should be constructed.
• The estimated 175 trees that are currently onsite should be preserved so that
students will continue to have access to nature.
• Parking should be reconfigured so that it exists at the perimeter of the site, not
in the core of the campus.
• There should be a new theater built in the courtyard, not in the parking lot
adjacent to the Haymarket Theater. The Embarcadero façade is important and
should not be blocked by new construction.
• The courtyard should be defined as small pockets of flexible space, created by
the placement of new buildings.
• The steering committee should consist of more than one parent and should
include students.
• The courtyard should be restored, and open space preserved.
• There should be more action to eliminate the District Offices and corporation
yard from the school site entirely.
PALO ALTO HS MP MEETING No. 4
Palo Alto Unified School District 17 December 2008
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• The replacement to the 900 building should continue to house valuable
programs such as Robotics.
6. The architect announced that for the next meeting, it is important that each
department review the important adjacencies.
Next Meeting is tentatively scheduled for 07 January 2008 at 3:15 pm.
END
Prepared by Erwin Lee of Deems Lewis McKinley. Please advise if you feel that any of the above items are
inaccurate or need further clarification or detail.
cc: Attendees
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