Letter: Hillbrook Ignores Neighbors As It Seeks to Grow

I have been looking at ’s Strategic Plan 2015. This is a bold and ambitious plan that would generate . It would also turn Hillbrook into a teacher-training center, a conference center, a source of recreation department-style after-school activities, and a summer camp site for community use. All of this would occur without one important element: decent street access.

All traffic for Hillbrook School funnels into one residential street, Marchmont Drive. Cars come from Shannon, Kennedy, or Los Gatos Boulevard, travel down local streets, and then funnel into the single street that provides the only access in and out. Hillbrook currently generates excessive traffic for its neighborhood and overwhelming traffic for this single access. All these new projects and programs would simply generate more and more traffic. Hillbrook developed its plan with total disregard for these traffic issues and for the safety and needs of its surrounding neighborhood.

The strategic plan specifies that the after-school and summer programs would “enable the school to diversify its revenue streams;” they would, in other words, help the school make more money. Hillbrook is, of course, a business and has a right to increase its revenue. But we need the town to prevent Hillbrook from creating new revenue streams at the expense of the safety of our children and our right to enjoy our neighborhood.

I can understand why the relatively new administration would want to expand. Hillbrook is a 14-acre campus with beautiful fields and buildings. Hillbrook created some of these buildings after the school and town came to an agreement on a Conditional Use Permit (CUP) in 2001. Under this CUP, Hillbrook could renovate and expand, contingent upon the school not expanding beyond 315 students. Hillbrook made a commitment to keep its enrollment at 315. Without this agreement and the resulting renovations, Hillbrook would not now have the capacity to add the proposed 99 students.

According to the plan, Hillbrook seeks to be recognized as “a regional and national innovator in education.” This is a great goal. However, it is a goal that should not be achieved to the detriment of the neighborhood. The campus itself is large enough for new programs and even new buildngs, but this campus is in a completely residential neighborhood. Conferences, large summer camp programs, and traffic-generating afterschool programs are not appropriate for this site.

Intense negotiations led to the 2001 CUP because neighborhood traffic threatened the safety of local children and disrupted neighbors’ rights to quiet and privacy in their homes. This has not changed. If anything, the situation now is worse because many more young families with young children have moved into the neighborhood. The school needs to recognize that the neighborhood cannot safely absorb any new traffic. 

We urge Hillbrook to keep a small-country day school that follows the CUP guidelines at the present site, and to find an additional site for its other programs. For any new programs or additional students, we urge the school to seek a separate location—a location that is not tucked deep inside an entirely residential neighborhood without decent street access. We hope that by 2015 Hillbrook will have found a second campus on which to carry out its ambitions plans, a campus that has good street access.