Most stories about East Palo Alto begin the same way. And for good reason: It’s not hard to determine where Palo Alto ends and East Palo Alto begins. You do not need a map. Or signs. Or much knowledge of the area. Although the distance between these two towns in the middle of the bustling Silicon Valley is the mere six-lane width of Highway 101, the contrast couldn’t be more striking.

Take a drive down University Avenue, for example, which connects the two: You might start at the avenue’s western terminus on the Stanford campus, where, upon a gently arcing oval, you would glide by a quad full of Rodins and a field dotted with tawny co-eds. Heading east, you’d then drive the length of downtown Palo Alto, past storefront windows full of luxury bath soaps from France and then past large mansions with large garages to accommodate large SUVs.

After crossing 101, however, you enter another world. The lanes of clogged traffic separate the beneficiaries of the new economic prosperity from those, as the politicos like to say, who are getting left behind. The contrast is so obvious, in fact, that last April President Clinton chose EPA (as it is affectionately called) as the place from which to launch his campaign to close the digital divide. Until recently, this largely Latino and African-American and Latino community has had one of the worst crime rates in the country and lacked basic community services such as a bank and a grocery store. It still does not have a bank.

Nor is the future really being addressed through the advancement of education. EPA has been without its own public high school since 1976, when Ravenswood was closed due to declining enrollment. Nowadays, after the eighth grade, the bulk of EPA youth are bussed twenty miles, a discouraging routine which requires them to wake up at 5:00 a.m. and either catch the bus home by 2:00, or fend for themselves. Classes are over-crowded and the student body is so heterogeneous that those needing the most help tend to fall through the cracks. The drop-out rate is alarmingly high. Sixty-five percent of EPA high school students don’t graduate and only 6 to 8 percent go on to college.

And all this in the midst of one of the most prosperous areas in the country. Just up the highway are the shiny, mirrored headquarters of Oracle, a tribute to high-tech capitalism. And just down the highway, companies like Cisco and Intel mint millionaires almost as quickly as they crank out new routers and processors.

But there are people like Chris Bischof and Helen Kim who, instead of driving by on 101, have, metaphorically speaking, taken their careers off the information superhighway at the EPA exit. Four years ago with the help of board members assembled from Stanford, where the founders studied, Bischof and Kim established Eastside Prep, now the only high school in EPA. This past spring, the first class of eight seniors earned degrees and are, as this is being written, heading off to college. All of them. Seven out of eight, will be the first in their families to attend a four-year college. And the list of destinations includes Stanford, Penn’s Wharton School of Business, and UCLA.

But while the school is meeting its educational goals, difficult issues lie ahead—principally in the form of gentrification. EPA, like every other city in the developing Bay Area, is trying to attract new businesses and rich homeowners while paying lip service to preventing displacement. It’s all in the name of expanding the tax base, of course, and in the nineties, as a percentage of EPA’s total populace, families making between $75,000 and $150,000 rose from 6 percent to 29 percent. just the last year, several mMajor commercial development projects have been started along EPA’s western edge also suggest changes. “Gateway 101” now includes a Home Depot and a Taco Bell. Ikea’s arrival is said to be imminent. And the EPA neighborhood known as Whiskey Gulch was cleared of its liquor stores and community non-profits, renamed “University Circle,” and will soon be the sight of a hotel and new office space.

Full Disclosure
A budding PR flack wrestles with the world he’s helping to create.

Friends and Family
How a man can get lost in the Information Age.

A Different Kind of Start-Up
In a distressed neighborhood at the heart of the high tech revolution, a school gives real options to its students.

CEO’s Having a Baby
Can a pregnant entrepreneur get the venture capital to keep her startup alive?

Escaping the Corporate Cult(ure)
A former Silicon Valley dot com insider lashes out against the technology industry's HR efforts.

Money Changes Everything II
Economic futurists predict that, thanks to technical innovation, the road ahead is paved with gold.

Alarm Clock Communications is dedicated to providing a platform for opinion, and here is our promise: ANY editorial submission that is consistent with our editorial mission and that meets our editorial guidelines will be published. And the best of what we receive will be printed in alarm:clock magazine.So let us know what you think.

andrew@thealarmclock.com & brian@thealarmclock.com