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We invite our community to share its perspectives through a convenient and confidential online forum called ThoughtExchange, which is a critical next step in our bold collaboration with the city of Mountain View to provide a 10th school site.
We want your perspectives because we believe that Los Altos School District will best serve the needs of all of our students and community with the new school when everyone’s voices are heard.
Your participation will help us resolve school overcrowding for decades to come. Current student enrollment exceeds 5,000 students, including Bullis Charter School –a level last reached in the 1970s when we had 12 school sites rather than the nine we have now. We house 10 schools on nine sites, with Bullis Charter School sharing campuses with Blach and Egan Junior High Schools.
We must plan for the future. We face an anticipated increase in thousands of homes in our area over the next 10 years.
Since 2012, LASD has made progress, involving the community’s voices every step of the way:
• In 2012, the superintendent’s Enrollment Growth Task Force determined that the current and future student enrollment increase required new sites.
• In 2014, Los Altos School District voters approved Measure N, a $150,000,000 bond measure to help address school overcrowding.
• In 2015, the Facilities Master Plan Committee recommended seeking one new school site.
• In 2017, the 10th Site Committee identified four preferred sites for a school.
• In 2018, the Mountain View City Council agreed to collaborate with LASD on a site purchase to reduce the potential land cost by millions and provide a community park.
Now, in this next phase of planning, Los Altos School District Board of Trustees is seeking your perspective to make a decision regarding the school’s design and student attendance.
The ThoughtExchange is live and you may participate at any time between now and June 19. ThoughtExchange is a simple three-step process.
1. Stakeholders begin by sharing their thoughts.
2. Then they review and rate the thoughts of others.
3. Finally, participants discover the top trending thoughts.
Participants may re-enter the ThoughtExchange at any time to add, rate or discover newly contributed thoughts and the process is confidential. You may have received an emailed invitation. If you didn’t, please visit the LASD ThoughtExchange home page at https://tinyurl.com/lasdthoughtexchange to self-register.
To learn more about ThoughtExchange, visit www.thoughtexchange.com. To learn more about LASD’s progress in obtaining a new school site, visit www.lasdschools.org and click on the big, blue Facilities Master Plan button.
Vladimir Ivanovic is president of the Los Altos School District Board of Trustees.
Save the Redwoods from Greystar apartments by immediately reserving for a school whose type and social demographics will change over time and are best left to the school district. The ball is in the school district’s court to act now as this funding and opportunity will never occur again.
The cart is certainly before the horse on this one. Stopping this development project at this late date would really put LASD on the line for a lot of future compensation. They have delayed pulling the trigger on eminent domain. Meanwhile, the Greystar project is due for a final city council vote after 2 years of planning. That hearing is June 26th. The Greystar project has loads of grounds to contest the process by both Mountain View and LASD. For one thing, they arbitrarily set the value of these TDR’s which is something a school district cannot do when selling surplus property. Meanwhile they have said they have a backup plan to the Safeway site.
So it’s going to get interesting soon. Will LASD use eminent domain? What will happen next?
The thing is, they don’t need new land now. Their only case is maybe when Kohl’s/Walmart is developed and more apartments are added. Now that project hasn’t had as much work done yet so there would still be time to mitigate the cost of eminent domain in using some of that land. But LASD’s public statement of why that would not be good was that it would take more than one parcel to work. Yet the Greystar property is itself 3 parcels, with different owners. All the potential parcels at the FRT site are controlled by FRT.
So what the heck is LASD doing?
But anyway, that’s not what the online forum is about.
Sounds like you are the developer and are misstating key facts such as the zoning and that they were contacted well over two years ago.
This is the ham handed nature of LASD. They did NOT contact the developer (Greystar) ever before. They had been in contact with the land owners of 201 San Antonio Circle, which is 1 of the 3 parcels of land involved. However, they dropped out of talks with that landowner completely. They did not resume their greedy attempts to purchase land here until well after the deal had been struck with Greystar by TWO landowners representing all 3 parcels. Meanwhile, there had been another smaller
development project independently conceived with Prometheus which feel through for various reasons. Not a peep from the school district during that.
From LASD’s perspective it dragged on a long time, but really that’s because they were inattentive to the process.
@Hmmm
Greystar is wracking up some hefty design fees, but those costs are all calculated risks. Nothing is guaranteed until the entitlements are approved. Just ask Elizabeth Wong about her Shady Lane project in downtown Palo Alto.
If the TDR sales are an issue, LASD could always just put them up for auction to mitigate any lawsuit threat. However, 2 other housing projects are already counting on those TDR’s. Depending on the clauses in the letters of intent to sell those TDR’s, LASD may be exposed to significant litigation from those other developers. I’d worry about that more than any fallout from eminent domain. The courts will process eminent domain cases quickly, because good government often depends on that extreme measure for the greater good.
Here’s a sample of one of the thoughts on the Thought Exchange:
“We live in a district with very stark socio economic
populations. Kids living in $4-8 mil houses and kids in
rental apartments.”
Because…
“Schools that serve lower income children alone lack the
same resources as schools that serve higher income
families. Look at PTA giving alone.”
They’re saying deny that area a local school because the PTA
couldn’t raise as much money.
Vlad this is the most dishonest way of controlling the conversation. We are not second graders , shame on you for wasting money that belongs to the kids all because of animosity you and rest of LASD have for BCS. Think about the kids not your egos. Ughhhh waste of time.
The latest enrollment projection which has taken all the proved projects into consideration. For any future projects, it will take years to get planned and approved.
With only 150M Measure N, LASD can not build a new school site without affecting the overdue maintenance and upgrades for other schools in LASD.
LASD don’t have the need or the money to build a new school in the feasible future.
A prior example is Communication Hills project in San Jose. It planned 4500 residential units with a school. After 15 years of development and 2500 units completed, the school construction has not even started because the school enrollment has not shown any need for a new school.
Build the school in Los Altos, and while your at it include a few 10 storey apartment buildings, sick of MV being dumping ground for all development projects while leafy Los Altos retains its ‘quality of life’.
This idea of a brand sparkling new Middle School works even better at Kohls. With Hetch Hetch it’s an 11 acre site.
Where are these 10 story apt buildings? All I see are 4 to 6. Los Altos has 3 of these in the pipeline. They are smaller lots but just as tall. Mountain View to collect millions more in Google taxes. Will that be shared with Los Altos?
The LASD pretty obviously decided long ago to move Bullis Charter School to the targeted Mountain View site. The MV City Council should still condition the use of city money and the other concocted assets (transferable development rights) on establishing a neighborhood school in the San Antonio area. The Los Altos politicians in charge of the LASD would then need to convince the Mountain View City Council in the future to agree upon any change in use.
Ah, I don’t live within the LASD boundaries – just a resident of the City of MV and the MVWSD.
So the LASD ‘pulled a fast one’ on the MVWSD also! Great! Now over 200 additional RESIDENTIAL UNITS will be built in MVWSD, in the Whisman/Slater school area, and LASD will avoid 800 residential units within their boundaries.
For LASD – win, win (and with BCS at this California Ave. site) win, and with the TDR $,$$$,$$$s WIN!
Vladimir – I have to hand it to you and your Superintendent, what a GREAT SCAM you have pulled !!!! Incredible.
“Now, in this next phase of planning, Los Altos School District Board of Trustees is seeking your perspective to make a decision regarding the school’s design and student attendance.” How odd, the LASD hasn’t even purchased the site. How could we have a perspective on the design and attendance? Did I miss something? “We face an anticipated increase in thousands of homes in our area over the next 10 years.” Oops, our enrollment is dropping (per LASD demographer) and those ‘homes’ aka apartments/condos in MV will be mostly 1-2BRs and not popular for families with children. Maybe someone else should write these things up.
The Mountain View property being sought has changed – but the planned use of the (bulk of) the property has not changed. The purpose pretty plainly is to house Bullis Charter School. But maybe Mountain View residents misrepresented by their own City Council majority can still BEG the Los Altos residents on the Los Altos School District board to consider an alternative. Here is one: Keep the existing buildings at the new site – including Kohl’s – and offer courses in retail. Kids could get on-the-job training and the District could make money in the process. A win-win.