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The Los Altos School District is looking to move sixth graders onto its middle school campuses in less than three years, a change that is decades in the making and involves the contentious prospect of relocating Bullis Charter School students.
The district’s school board reviewed plans this week to switch to a “middle school model,” where sixth through eighth graders share a campus, in time for the start of classes in fall 2028.
This would mean an additional grade level at the district’s two junior high schools, Blach and Egan. To make space, district administrators are proposing removing Bullis Charter School entirely from Blach’s campus. Currently, the charter school is split between Blach and Egan.
Instead, the district wants to split Bullis between Egan and a yet-to-be-built new campus in Mountain View. The charter school has previously strongly opposed being placed at the new school, which it argues is too small for its more than 1,000 students.
Which facilities the school district allocates for the charter school has long been a fraught topic that has led to multiple lawsuits over the years. The district’s current facilities agreement with Bullis ends June 30, 2027.
Bullis Superintendent Maureen Israel did not respond to a request for comment on the proposal before the Voice’s deadline.
Los Altos School District pursues middle school model
The idea of switching to a middle school model is not new. Administrators recently found a binder showing that the district has been looking to make this transition since at least the 1970s, Assistant Superintendent Erik Walukiewicz told the Voice this week.
Currently, the district operates seven elementary schools that serve students in transitional kindergarten through sixth grade, as well as two junior high schools that serve students in grades seven and eight. The district’s configuration is an uncommon one. State data shows there are only 53 public junior high schools in California, compared with nearly 1,300 middle schools.
Administrators believe that moving to a middle school model would be a “really great program improvement” for sixth graders, Los Altos School District Superintendent Sandra McGonagle said at a Monday, Feb. 9, school board meeting.
“Sixth graders can really benefit from a space for early adolescence, where they have social opportunities, emotional support, great academics and opportunities for independence,” McGonagle said.
Fall 2028 is not only the time the district plans to move sixth graders to Blach and Egan, but also when it expects to open its campus in Mountain View, a feat that staff have been working toward for nearly two decades.
After years of discussions, the district purchased an 11.7 acre plot in the San Antonio Shopping Center in December 2019 in the hopes of addressing overcrowding on its campuses and finding a long-term solution for housing Bullis Charter School. However, because of strong disagreements in the community about what school should go there, as well as the COVID-19 pandemic disrupting education, the project stalled.
Progress has since ramped up, with the board approving plans this past fall to build a 10th campus on the San Antonio site with capacity for approximately 600 students. The board also backed allocating the campus to Bullis Charter School upon its completion.
The district is on track to meet its goal of having the campus ready for students by fall 2028, Walukiewicz said this week, adding that construction is expected to start in late spring.
Deciding where to put Bullis Charter School
When the board members approved designs for the new campus back in October, they also voted for the district to conduct a study on whether Egan or Blach would be a better second site for Bullis.
With more than 1,000 students currently enrolled, the charter school is much larger than the expected 600-student cap at the 10th site, meaning that it would likely have to continue sharing space at one of the existing campuses.
To determine which campus is best suited to fit Bullis students, while still allowing the district to transition to its middle school model, the district’s architecture firm spent several hours at both Blach and Egan, looking at square footage, classroom capacities and the condition of existing portable classrooms.
Because Blach is more than three acres smaller than Egan and has significant construction constraints due to its location on a flood plain, staff determined that it would be a less feasible second site for Bullis.
Board members react to the proposal
At Monday’s meeting, Walukiewicz presented the board with three options for how to reconfigure the portable buildings at Egan to allow for sixth graders to move in while still providing some space for Bullis. The difference between the three versions was the number of portables being removed and how many Bullis students would be able to fit in the remaining space.
Board members seemed generally amenable to the scenario with the lowest capacity for Bullis students. It included keeping the fewest portables on Egan’s campus for use by the charter school. Some portables would be demolished or removed to make room for a potential playground, while others would be repurposed for sixth grade classrooms.
In total, about 350 Bullis students would be expected to fit at Egan under this option, with up to 600 more at the new San Antonio campus.
Board member Bryan Johnson said that as someone who has been “involved with this issue” for about 15 years, he has yet to see a more cost effective solution than developing the San Antonio campus and then relocating students.
“I’ve seen proposals of what it would take to provide permanent facilities for both BCS and Egan on the Egan campus, or on the Covington campus or on the Blach campus, and it doesn’t get cheaper than what we’re currently planning to do,” Johnson said.
Walukiewicz highlighted in his presentation to the board that the school district is only required to provide facilities for charter school students who live within the district’s boundaries. This year, Bullis has more than 170 students who come from out of the district, Walukiewicz said.
Board members favored the scenario that would provide Bullis with enough space for all of its in-district students, which total 910 this year, but not necessarily for all of its out-of-district students.
Moving forward, the district hopes to come to an agreement with the charter school to have it pay for the facilities for these out-of-district students, Walukiewicz told the Voice after the meeting. This could be in the form of paying to rent portables, he added as an example.
“I think up until now, we’ve been very, very good about finding facilities for the out-of-district students,” board President Vaishali Sirkay said. “Putting that responsibility back on BCS to house their out-of-district students – I think that’s a very fair point.”
Los Altos School District administrators are expected to come back to the board in the next couple of months with more details about the costs and logistics associated with making changes to its campuses, such as demolishing existing portable classrooms used to house Bullis, Walukiewicz said.
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