Phillips Brooks School
Encyclopedia
The Phillips Brooks School is an independent, coeducational, day school, preschool-grade 5, located in Menlo Park, California
. The school is commonly known as PBS and was founded in 1978 by a group of teachers and administrators who split off from the nearby Trinity School
. Class size ranges from 14-16 in the preschool and 18-20 in kindergarten through grade five. Basic subjects are taught in self-contained classrooms, and the specialist teachers provide additional instruction in art, library, music, physical education, science, technology and world languages (Spanish and Mandarin).
At Phillips Brooks, they believe that understanding is even more important than getting the correct answer. The school maintains a strong academic curriculum that is designed to focus on process more than product. Of equal importance is the Phillips Brooks commitment to raising students to be good people. The teachers believe in blending the academic, physical and social aspects of the program with spiritual awareness and understanding. This balance provides an environment that celebrates individuality, promotes problem solving through critical thinking and encourages students to fulfill their potential.
Phillips Brooks School has actively participated in efforts to make classrooms more attuned to the needs of students, including a focus on identifying the unique ways in which each child learns.
This school is named after Phillips Brooks
.
along Interstate 280
that it planned to redevelop into a second campus. Environmentalists expressed concern that the school's plans would result in the loss of 1,000 oak trees. Discord in the community regarding the school's development plans were in a major issue in the 2001 Woodside Town Council elections. The school's controversial plan was opposed and ultimately blocked by that city's government. As reported in the California newspaper The Almanac:
Menlo Park, California
Menlo Park, California is a city at the eastern edge of San Mateo County, in the San Francisco Bay Area of California, in the United States. It is bordered by San Francisco Bay on the north and east; East Palo Alto, Palo Alto, and Stanford to the south; Atherton, North Fair Oaks, and Redwood City...
. The school is commonly known as PBS and was founded in 1978 by a group of teachers and administrators who split off from the nearby Trinity School
Trinity School (Menlo Park)
Trinity School is a coeducational, preschool through grade 5 day school located in Menlo Park, California. It is an Episcopalian school which is sponsored by St. Bede's Church and Trinity Church in Menlo Park....
. Class size ranges from 14-16 in the preschool and 18-20 in kindergarten through grade five. Basic subjects are taught in self-contained classrooms, and the specialist teachers provide additional instruction in art, library, music, physical education, science, technology and world languages (Spanish and Mandarin).
At Phillips Brooks, they believe that understanding is even more important than getting the correct answer. The school maintains a strong academic curriculum that is designed to focus on process more than product. Of equal importance is the Phillips Brooks commitment to raising students to be good people. The teachers believe in blending the academic, physical and social aspects of the program with spiritual awareness and understanding. This balance provides an environment that celebrates individuality, promotes problem solving through critical thinking and encourages students to fulfill their potential.
Phillips Brooks School has actively participated in efforts to make classrooms more attuned to the needs of students, including a focus on identifying the unique ways in which each child learns.
This school is named after Phillips Brooks
Phillips Brooks
Phillips Brooks was an American clergyman and author, who briefly served as Bishop of Massachusetts in the Episcopal Church during the early 1890s. In the Episcopal liturgical calendar he is remembered on January 23...
.
Woodside campus plan
The school had purchased a 92 acres (372,311.1 m²) lot in Woodside, CaliforniaWoodside, California
Woodside is a small incorporated town in San Mateo County, California, United States, on the San Francisco Peninsula. It uses a council-manager system of government. The U.S. Census estimated the population of the town to be 5,287 in 2010....
along Interstate 280
Interstate 280 (California)
Interstate 280 is a 57-mile long north–south Interstate Highway in the San Francisco Bay Area of Northern California. It connects San Jose and San Francisco, running along just to the west of the cities of San Francisco Peninsula for most of its route.I-280 from its northern end at King...
that it planned to redevelop into a second campus. Environmentalists expressed concern that the school's plans would result in the loss of 1,000 oak trees. Discord in the community regarding the school's development plans were in a major issue in the 2001 Woodside Town Council elections. The school's controversial plan was opposed and ultimately blocked by that city's government. As reported in the California newspaper The Almanac:
After hours of meetings, untold thousands of dollars and enough paperwork to fell a small forest, Phillips Brooks School's controversial plan to build a campus in Woodside came to an anticlimactic finale last week when school officials decided to pull the plug on the project at a board meeting....it was a dispute over the wording of open space agreements between the school and the town that reversed the divided Planning Commission's initial support of the Phillips Brooks project. School officials balked over the town's open space easement language, saying it was too restrictive and would make building and operating the campus unfeasible. Town staff countered that Phillips Brooks' easement language was too full of loopholes and would not protect areas of pristine open space. Ultimately, Commissioner K.C. Kelley, the swing vote, withdrew her support for the project, declaring that the easements the school were offering "ain't open space." The project was denied on a 4-3 vote.
Destruction of frog habitat
According to a 2002 article in the environmental journal Green Footnotes:The ink was hardly dry on the EIR (Environmental Impact Report) last June when the school, apparently at the specific request of the Woodside Fire Department, mowed a 100 feet (30.5 m) wide swath through the grasslands along the edges of the property. In direct contravention of the EIR mitigation measures for the frog, the school invaded the buffer zone and mowed right up next to the edge of the wetlands around the ponds. It is unknown whether any frogs were killed by this irresponsible mowing. There wasn't any investigation of the mowing until Committee for Green Foothills filed a complaint with the fish and wildlife agencies in July, and by then it was too late to look for dead frogs. However, under the Endangered Species Act, destroying habitat is also a violation of the law.