Palo Alto

One of the most desirable addresses in the nation.  Palo Alto is a cultural center of Silicon Valley.  Prestigious. Sophisticated.  A financial powerhouse.  What Wall Street is to New York.  'Home' of Stanford University and birthplace of Silicon Valley.  The university is actually located just west of Palo Alto city limits.

Stanford has its own community.  A few are families with children, a few are university employees and faculty, a few are people who just reside in the neighborhood.  About 70 percent are students.

Residents are generally well-to-do, highly educated and cosmopolitan.

Palo Alto is named for a majestic 250 year old coastal redwood tree along San Francisquito Creek, where early Spanish explorers settled.

Palo Alto has many lovely neighborhoods and homes of distinction. Trees line many streets and the level of care is generally high--a handsome collegiate town.  Barriers have been erected on many streets to slow the cars and nudge them off the residential streets and onto the arterials.  Cozy restaurants and small shops have moved out to the neighborhoods, adding to their charm.

In 1995, the Palo Alto Unified School District, which also takes in part of Los Altos Hills, passed one of the largest school-renovation bonds, $143 million, in the history of California, a great boost for local schools.  All the schools have been renovated or rebuilt and equipped with modern technology.  In 1998, the district opened another elementary school.


Hoover Tower
on the Stanford campus.

Palo Alto school district accepts minority students from East Palo Alto.  It also gets many requests from parents who live in other towns but want their children to attend Palo Alto schools.  According to the district, all requests are turned down.

Every year, the town's two high schools score among the highest in the state in the math SAT.  The graduation rates at Gunn and Palo Alto High schools are hitting almost 100 percent and the schools advance students to the most prestigious universities in the country.  Schools offer instruction in French, German, Spanish, Latin and Japanese.

Parents are not just interested in the schools; they are, as some concede, obsessive about them.  The town is full of academics and high-tech boffins and the unwritten rule is that you don't mess around with or compromise on education.