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Battles over facilities may be commonplace between school districts and charter schools across California, but the Mountain View Whisman School District appears to be on track towards a peaceful resolution.
Earlier this month, Bullis Mountain View (BMV) — a new charter school in the district opening its doors in the fall — sent a letter to the district expressing “appreciation” that Mountain View Whisman was able to find facilities that work for the charter school, and that they expect to accept the offer in the coming months. The letter is the latest in a back-and-forth over school facilities under California’s Proposition 39 law, which has been the source of divisiveness and lawsuits in the neighboring Los Altos School District.
The proposal, which the school board approved in January, calls for putting BMV in portable buildings at 1400 Montecito Ave., a somewhat compact site next to the district office that also houses Stevenson and Theuerkauf elementary schools. The district has played musical chairs with facilities on the campus during construction starting in 2017, putting Stevenson in what it calls the “portable village” on Montecito Avenue before moving the district office into the buildings last year. The new district office is expected to be completed this summer, leaving the portables free for the charter school.
Originally, district officials sought to use the portable buildings to expand its preschool program, but later offered the space to BMV. The other ideas — putting Bullis in portable classrooms on the blacktops at Bubb, Huff or Landels elementary schools — were seen as unreasonable, as was re-drawing boundaries to create classroom space for the charter school at an existing school.
Although the March 1 letter amounted to tentative acceptance of the district’s offer, it wasn’t without serious concerns. BMV’s head of school, Jennifer Anderson-Rosse, pointed out several deficiencies in the district’s offer that could cause problems. For example, the district agreed to provide enough classrooms for the projected 168 charter school students in the 2019-20 school year, but didn’t allocate any space for a multi-purpose room or kitchen and cafeteria space.
“As charter schools are now required to provide all their eligible students with meals each day, the lack of legally compliant food service space is extremely problematic,” Anderson-Rosse wrote in the letter.
Proposition 39 is a complicated process that pays careful attention to whether school districts are providing “reasonably equivalent” facilities for students residing in the school district who choose to attend the charter school. This is typically done by measuring the amount of space available for classrooms and specialized uses at what it calls “comparison schools” in the same district.
That analysis took place, but Anderson-Rosse points out that none of the data was shared with BMV, making it impossible to determine whether the charter school is getting a fair deal.
“Prop. 39 requires a level of transparency by the school districts in explaining how they calculated the space to be offered to a charter school,” she wrote in the letter.
In the final facilities offer, which the district is required to make by the end of the month, Anderson-Rosse requested that the district make clear how parking will be handled at the site. No parking was specifically allocated to the charter school, meaning the existing parking lots would likely need to be shared. Parents at Stevenson have also asked the district to clarify how traffic and parking would be mitigated on a site with an ever-increasing number of students.
If the charter school grows to 320 students as planned over the next five years, the total number of students across Stevenson, Theuerkauf and BMV will exceed 1,000 — the largest number of children at any one location in the district.
This is a buy your way in school for those who want to game the system, just like USC.
That site (where the district office is now) doesnt have hot water. But neither does Stevenson so it’s reasonably equivalent.
There goes the neighborhood…. Another charter school, another slew of helicopter parents dropping off their children and clogging up the neighborhood roads. Yay.
Oh Happy Day! He’s My Man! He’s The BEST (when he tries).
Dr. Rudolph, Superintendent of MVWSD has shown very reasonable restraint in totally avoiding a fight, an unnecessary costly legal fight, over this particular charter school issue. Contrast this (if I may Just the Facts) with the kind of ‘fight to the last portable’ that Ross Valley administrators / Board / hired lawyer continued fighting – or that our own neighbors, the Los Altos School District continue to “fight” (Ivan the Terrible and friends).
I think keeping preschool classrooms – around the district in other high Economic Disadvantage areas (like Castro and perhaps Whisman-Slater: Vargas) may actually be a benefit to the clients of that program. REMEMBER MVWSD BOARD, the poor do not all have private cars like You Do! They do not have the money To UBER. They do not have the money for private kid shuttles.
Beats the daylights out of the incredibly BAD choice of the Mervin’s/Kohl’s site at California and Showers. Maybe sanity will prevail and MVWSD won’t attempt to build a school at such and inappropriate location.
Rex Manor is a very nice community for Bullis School along Montecito Rd. Altough, we do not a elementary age children but I just love the school and neighborhood. Although having more traffic and congestion would be a negative. One thing that I would ask for when the decision makers come closer to a commitment is more stop signs and safety measures because especially on Montecito, pleople run the stop signs daily. It could be easily monitored. Burgoyne St. Has a crosswalk where kids flow out of school at San Luis Ave. and there is no 4 way stop sign there. Kids are on bikes, scooters with or without parents, etc. I would add more safety precautions for such young kids. Beyond that, the politics of where when and why seem to be challenging and I am unaware of why there seems to be friction. Additionally community support and funding for this school district seems to be a problem. I think more support in such an affluent community reflects an investment into the foundation of a better future. Good luck!
@Webb Art
I’m a parent at Theuerkauf, so I drop off several times per week, and there is a bit of traffic, but there is a crossing guard at the Burgoyne and San Luis intersection in the morning and afternoon, and they make a big difference. If anything needed to be added; I would more prefer crossing guards rather than more stop signs. As you said, people don’t stop for stop signs, but they do stop for crossing guards.
I don’t have any experience with the morning drop-off traffic on Montecito, though I expect it will be even more congested next year with the influx of new students.
Can someone explain how you buy your way into this school? The current mountain view school system appears to be a buy your way into Huff or Bubb.
To William Hitchens:
The Kohl’s site has nothing to do with either Bullis Mountain View or the Mountain View Whisman School District. It is a potential site for a Los Altos School District school and/or Bullis Charter School in Los Altos. This decision has zero impact on that site.
@Steve Peters and @Web Art. I know the area around the 16 AC school district owned site is impacted by all school building and school use. And, you get all the girls softball league action, and soccer and …
If you are concerned with TRAFFIC the City of Mountain View traffic engineer is the person who will help find the improvement. When there was (during my term) a build-up of traffic problems at Graham Middle School (Castro vehicle-student collisions) – the City requested that site-specific traffic problem discussions BE INITIATED BY THE SITE PRINCIPAL. No need for the City Council or Superintendent Rudolph to add ‘administrative layers’ (inefficiencies) to a simple expert-to-expert communications (2-Way).
So – get a few parents and talk to your Principal (same for Stevenson – more directly affected). Or, community can come to a Principal Coffee in the morning (I hope)(communications: 2-Way)
MVWSD smart use of it’s real estate resources. The former Whisman District site is the largest that holds elementary children. It also, since the 1970’s, for a while, also had two operating schools. When “Stevenson” campus was closed down – it later became the Whisman School District Office, and a non-profit well attended preschool (run by the Y). Putting a lot of classrooms (total) on this very large site, is good public fiscal responsibility (IMO) ! [LASD, refuses to do this at Covington’s large site – for their own political reasons. That was a former Jr. High]
Crossing guards – ABSOLUTELY. The payment for these yearly service contracts? It is inconsistent how they are paid / and who [ wealthy parents or poor(er)? ] or what site-intersections gets these limited funds. Sometimes, usually, the City of Mountain View pays. I Adore the city traffic engineer – if enough questionable-school-crossings are monitored by THAT guy – it will take the wealthy-school-parent/loud&connected part of the equation down to insignificance. Dr. Rudolph might just like – not having to ‘fight politics’ on something.
It is also easy to get small fixes from City to obvious street mistakes. (new STOP sign is not small). I went to a City Neighborhoods meeting for Rex Manor, and, just a ‘comment card’ and a small verbal comment got the “15 MPH” school zone signs installed/updated around the corner of Monticeto Rd. & San Luis.
As for the idea that the Stevenson Park site in holding 3 elementary schools could someday exceed 1000 students, one can take note of the following. The design goal of the district is for it to house 900 students in 2 schools of 450. Adding 100 more students seems like a fairly minor overflow. But the district has a big problem with its existing plans for the cookie cutter equal schools of 400-450 students each. The current population K-5 is 3575. The 9 currently defined schools could hold up to 4050 students, or a growth of up to 475. But the kids don’t live where they fit into the existing schools naturally to start with. There is a lot of monkey business going into shifting kids around. The current schools are larger where they need to be, maybe up to 600 kids even. That’s an inherent flexibility. It makes better use of sites like Huff which is nearly 10 acres for just the one school. Killing off this flexibility causes all sorts of problems. It’s just not reasonable to expect Theuerkauf to serve 450 students, because growth in that attendance area is likely less than the planned capacity of the school. This is sort of okay so long as district growth doesn’t materialize fully, i.e. there aren’t 475 more students than currently seen.
Right now Theuerkauf has about 370 students, but about 234 are low income. For the charter school to reach it’s stated goal of serving 100 low income kids and 200 other kids, the kids have to come from somewhere. It seems likely that Theuerkauf would SHRINK rather than grow. So we might be more at a situation of Theuerkauf serving 150 kids, the charter at 300 and Stevenson at 450 (it has about 400 now). That adds up to 900 students on the site.
@ResidentSince1982June
This is the problem with someone having a little knowledge but not enough to understand the big picture, how it got this way and what will really happen in the next few years. I will try to bring you up to speed.
“As for the idea that the Stevenson Park site in holding 3 elementary schools could someday exceed 1000 students,”
SOMEDAY??????? Try THIS August!
Well OVER 1,000 students, not counting adults!
Stevenson NOW has over 430 kids & 30+ staff & typically 40 parents rotating in shifts on campus.
Theuerkauf at 370 & 30ish staff & 8ish volunteer parents.
Google preschool at about 150ish kids & staff 12ish (could be low on that).
District staff about 55 (could be low on this too).
Based on the limited information from BMV, very few applicants to BMV come from the Theuerkauf boundary, in fact, just about the same number come from the Huff boundary.
Bullis first year 168 kids & 20ish staff & some volunteer parents.
Add about 60ish each year
Bullis fourth year will be a full TK-K-5th school of 465+ & about 30+ staff.
So, for 2019-2020 school year:
430+370+168+150=1118
We WILL be well OVER 1,000 kids on the Stevenson/Theuerkauf block THIS AUGUST!
Not to mention the adults (roughly estimated, I could be quite low here):
70+38+12+55+20=187
By the fourth Bullis year we will have about:
430+370+465+150=1415 kids. Adults will probably be over 200.
“The design goal of the district is for it to house 900 students in 2 schools of 450.”
Until Bullis came along, now it will be 3 schools of 450 plus Google preschool plus the District office.
“But the district has a big problem with its existing plans for the cookie cutter equal schools of 400-450 students each.”
That was a fiscal decision based on the VOTERS only being willing to give the MVWSD $198million through Measure G bond.
Each of the existing properties and facilities could be made to accommodate 450 kids with modern facilities upgrades. Adding Vargas required another loan (certificate of participation) of $40million to complete Vargas.
Only Theuerkauf has more than 450 classroom capacity, but NOT in over all major facilities, so even TH is a 450 school.
“There is a lot of monkey business going into shifting kids around.”
That is in the PAST, as of 2019-2020, each neighborhood school will now be able to properly fit the kids who live in their neighborhoods and each school will be able to get rid of all those expensive portables and have enough major facilities to meet the needs of the kids.
“The current schools are larger where they need to be, maybe up to 600 kids even.”
Huff only became a school of 600 kids because parents were allowed to just keep transferring to the “best school” and the district just kept dropping portables on the blacktop. The rest of the major facilities at Huff are only able to support 450 kids.
“It’s just not reasonable to expect Theuerkauf to serve 450 students, because growth in that attendance area…”
The TH boundary has been changed to increase how many kids there will be in the new TH boundary. ALL the boundaries have been adjusted. Also, there is a fair amount of new housing being built already in the new TH boundary.
“Right now Theuerkauf has about 370 students, but about 234 are low income.”
And according to BMV info, very few TH area kids have applied.
Actually, it looks like interest in BMV is spread around rather evenly across the MVWSD.
“For the charter school to reach it’s stated goal of serving 100 low income kids”
BMV claimed they were going to get 45% low-income kids. So, by year 4 BMV will need about 200 low-income kids and 250+ others.
Sorry, but your information is just too limited to see the big picture.
I hope my details have helped.
@What about transparent admissions?
“This is a buy your way in school for those who want to game the system,”
The only people who are certainly buying their kids way into Bullis Mountain View are the founders/board members/staff of BMV.
Assuming that is, that BMV is running an honest lottery, but since they wish to run it privately, it’s going to be hard to know what they are doing.
All the rest of the schools in the MVWSD have enrollment done in a transparent manner by a published set of rules and is all subject to county and state verification.
HOWEVER, any family living in Los Altos who want their kids in BMV can buy their way into the MVWSD by moving their residence into the MVWSD and then applying to BMV and maybe they get in.
If wealthy families move into the Huff neighborhood, they at least are assured to get into Huff if they don’t get into BMV or the MVWSD-run random lottery for Stevenson.
Preschool? The district had been going to add 200 preschoolers to the site before BMV. It’s a net reduction next year if you count preschools. But they are less intensive in their load on the site. BMV has no plan to go over 330 in the next 5 years.
“If wealthy families move into the Huff neighborhood, they at least are assured to get into Huff…”
Wealth inequality leads to achievement gaps in the public school system, but the problem is a charter school that hasn’t even conducted its lottery yet.
@Jason K. “Wealth inequality leads to achievement gaps in the public school system, …” And the mission, of some of us, is to use the public school system to vastly reduce that wealth-education-level inequality in The Next Generation.
IMO – good use of 20% more money for Target students (LCFF intent) would result them getting 20% more good learning time. Time: longer school days (5 per week). or Longer school weeks (Saturday learning). or More instructional days (> 180 – go into summer). It is just impossible, to find a magic bullet! Some magic digital math, some magic language program, some magic teacher training – that CONSISTENTLY DELIVERS MORE LEARNING. More learning takes more time (for Target Students).
When you take, 180 regular length instructional days, and a student cuts it by 10%, that is called Habitually Truant, and the state monitors it. Researchers find, consistency, that 10% or 20% less instruction, year after year, results in achievement gaps. But – any kind – of extra classroom time, does not necessarily result in GAP improvement. There are many remedial and catch-up program failures! Well researched failures.
The experiments tried in MVWSD have here to fore mainly been – make all teachers better! Train all for educating all students! The GAP persists in MVWSD. QED – try something substantially different (if the Economically Disadvantaged are at the same % as in MVWSD)
[charter school lottery – with the ‘priorities’ as in their granted charter (not petition) / the lawyer-doberman advising BMV seems eager for a dog-fight with the lawyer-pit bull advising the MVWSD]
The comment about wealth inequality made me crunch some numbers. It appears that the district is a case study in having a different fraction of low income kids at each location. Here’s the fraction in 2017-2018 of Free and Reduced Price lunch kids at each site:
Huff 8.6%
Castro 88.1%
Mistral 42.4%
Bubb 18.6%
Landels 23.4%
Monta Loma 40.8%
Theuerkauf 63.4%
Stevenson 7.2%
The person commenting above that it is okay to REMOVE some of the low income kids from Huff in order to prevent overflow is just not looking at all the data. First of all, Huff has 600 kids, and it will drop to 450. This says that there will
still be a good chance of overflow at one grade level or another. By making the school smaller at the same time the low income area is assigned elsewhere, the only changes are to decrease the low income fraction and reduce the total size of the school.
The district as an average has 34% low income kids. None of the schools is close to that average, and none of the schools are really close to each other. By breaking Castro into 2 schools and creating Mistral as the language immersion school, the district has made Mistral more palatable to English speaking students as that site used to be 60% low income when it was a single school. Now Mistral is 40% low income, but Castro now rebuilt to hold 450 has half that number of kids and 88% low income.
The charter school wants to approximate the district average enrollment of low income kids and also will offer special features to benefit low income kids. These includes a longer school year and a longer school day and programs during vacation breaks. All the fixation on just how many low income kids will attend is misplaced. First of all, the non-disadvantaged kids aren’t in need as much of the increased instructional time. This isn’t the kind of program that by itself draws in affluent kids such as those attending Huff after the low income kids are removed. But pretty much ANY composition of low income kids will match one or another of the district schools. Then those two programs can be compared in their success with bridging the learning gap. Fixating on just what fraction of low income kids will be enabled is a waste of time and a diversion. When the district’s own schools are so uneven as to the wealth gap, there is no need to pick on the charter school. The district needs to answer for its own programs and it needs to assign more resources to the schools with 50%+ of low income kids even if it means taking funding from the other schools.
There is research indicating that the socio-economic composition of the school correlates with higher student academic achievement, even for students of low socio-economic status. Current Mountain View school district demographics appear to show similar findings. The optimistic thought experiment would be to use a lottery and bus everyone around. But we have SF to show us how that will work out (spoiler: it won’t). It won’t work for many reasons, but I suspect one main reason is that at the end of the day, people don’t actually care about diversity, they care about control. They care about control over their kids’ lives and they want to send them to the best school by whatever metric “best” is defined.
Indeed, just three years ago, we had this gem from the voice explaining what the socio-economically privileged would do if just a rezoning were to occur for Huff:
https://www.mv-voice.com/news/2016/03/17/mv-schools-hit-with-big-wait-lists
“An attempt to rezone the area to the closer school, Theuerkauf Elementary, didn’t go over very well. Test scores at Theuerkauf are significantly lower than Huff, and a survey last year showed just about every prospective parent in the area would apply for intradistrict transfer, send their kids to private school or leave the area entirely rather than have their student attend Theuerkauf.”
So, we’re left with the haves buying their way into Huff and Bubb, the middle haves going to Stevenson or sending their kids to private school, and the have-nots going everywhere else. You don’t need a charter school to highlight the class dynamics occurring in Mountain View. The current system already embraces socio-economic inequality in spades.
The article cited by Jason K shows the fallacy of the district’s approach in seeking to force everyone into a school with no more than 450 students. He misunderstands the geography, so he must not live around here. The Wagon Wheel neighborhood is not predominantly privileged families. Sure, Landels would be closer to the Wagon Wheel neighborhood but many there LIKE being assigned to Huff. As the article states, under the current system, any student may request a transfer to any other school, but there is one school where the student has a presumed right to enroll. It’s a big source of the 50 or so total students in the low income category attending Huff. But the entire Wagon Wheel area only sends about 70 of the current 600 Huff students.
Look at the numbers. Huff will be cut back to 450 students but eliminating its Wagon Wheel subarea will only reduce the current enrollment of 600 by 70. Huff will be left with 530 students mostly without low income and only 450 spaces. The new plan makes no sense.It will be masked by a transition period with a few grandfathered students, but it will quickly become apparent that the 450 size as a cookie cutter across all schools had BIG problems.
The point is that the current system is flexible despite its perceived drawbacks. The new system worsens he income disparity problem and creates others. One solution is more choice programs such as he Charter school. However,Huff is not a big provider of students interested in the Charter. Basically, the busing from the Wagon Wheel area has had a positive affect on the low income students who live there. That is being eliminated.
@ResidentSince the percentages (currently) for the MVWSD elementary schools are well known. Trustee Gutierrez and Trustee Blakely at various times over the last 2 1/3 years have mentioned this problem of neighborhood segregation. They have just hinted at improvements.
No majority of the Trustees, or even two together, have ever issued an independent white-paper or report, on changing all elementary enrollments to MATCH THE DISTRICTS AVERAGE of Poor. It could be a distance based – economically diversity based priority. Each Economically Disadvantaged student, is assigned to the closest school up to the district average ED%. (see the assignment distance-based algorithm for BelmontRRS [link] or the Bullis MV charter #1 priority according to the MVWSD’s grant of charter). Then other students are assigned – to the nearest school, with a similar algorithm. Teachers reassigned to schools – before the process. All classrooms of pre-assigned assigned teachers are filled BY Public Policy DESIGN.
[https://www.brssd.org/school-assignment-process]
It will not happen. You need to live in the world of Real Politics. Real $$ talks in Real Politics. MVWSD/no different
were aren’t / where are the Economically Disadvantaged?
Stevenson 7.2%
Castro 88.1%
Huff 8.6%
Theuerkauf 63.4%
Bubb 18.6%
Mistral 42.4%
Landels. 23.4%
Monta Loma 40.8%
But these change next year. There will be less Wealth Flight next year due to legal changes (no Romero Act). There will only be flight to diversity (multi-language Mistral) or (statistically) flight from economic diversity (Stevenson/PACT).
More than $2.5 million dollars now are diverted from specific Target student uses (like BMV has enumerated) and instead are used at All Schoosl for All Students RTI. A shame but a common shame throughout the state in how the 20% LCFF Enhancement Grants are not used “primarily proportional” to the numbers of Target students.
@ResidentSince. Bussing of Economically Disadvantaged students to Huff started a long time ago. Until a recent Principal, made it her personal priority, to bring up Those Kids measured academic performance, those kids did not academically thrive (beat the District ED average academic levels). @ResidentSince – your analysis, seems of-the-cuff because it is so faulty and full of urban myth.
The Current System, with all it’s problems is KAPUT! The new nearby neighborhood access program – will have it’s problems BUT THE MAJORITY OF ELEMENTARY FAMILIES WILL STILL BE SENDING THEIR KIDS TO THEIR NEARBY NEIGHBORHOOD SCHOOL! That’s the numbers. (And Huff will not be anywhere near 530)
Steve Nelson is making the point about the duplicity in the board focusing on the diversity of the new charter school when its other schools are so screwed up diversity-wise. The point is that the district had a system which at least resulted in the overly low income schools being smaller. Small schools might give an opportunity to focus more resources in the disadvantaged students. He’s saying that Huff started to do right by its small cohort of disadvantaged kids. He points out that special attention is needed and explains a source of funds for this, or a justification anyway.
The district should focus more on doing right by the disadvantaged students and less on diluting their presense in schools like Castro by trying to force more fortunate students to enter that mess. Even if it COULD work, making an abrupt change like this is sure to cause some of the parents to take the kids out of public school. They are being forced to change schools anyway. It won’t work out well. The idea that “at least’ is being used in describing it shows the lack of planning. There is no certainty to the “at least”. The algoritithm used by BRSSD is not much different from attendance areas and the policy now used by MVWSD. The concept is to force kids to attend a certain school. In MVWSD it is impossible to believe that the attendance areas can be drawn to both equal out enrollment at all schools and accomodate growth in enrollment each year. So they are going to be moving some kids away from their assigned school. Keep in mind that each grade level is separate. Some grade will have too many kids in each class, even though the school is below the target of 450. You’re going to get into situations where new kids arriving in that grade level are not going to get to go to that nearby school even if they live a block away. This idealistic planning is what’s not realistic.
The new system will change the numbers but it won’t be a change for more consistency regarding diversity. It was obviously dictated by parents at Bubb and Huff who want to get rid of some of the low income kids that now attend their school. They will get fewer low income kids and fewer kids overall. Just wait and see.
Meanwhilee the district is quibbling with the Charter as to whether it will have 29% low income or 32%. Ridiculous.
Whats notable too is the difference in the quality of the sites between Huff, Bubb and Landels vs. every other site. These 3 have large playgrounds but the predominantly low income schools are sharing 2 or 3 schools on a single site where the effective usable space of the site is smaller. There’s a large park open all day on the Stevenson site, district offices, and other uses (Google) which means the part of the site effectively dedicated to school uses is less than 10 acres, for 3 schools. Castro+Mistral share a site which is 8.8 acres with 1.5 acres in an all-day park as well. So you have 2 schools sharing 7.3 acres. The new school by Slater will be on under 3 acres of land. Then look at Huff and Bubb. Pretty gross differences.
At Bubb there is even a separate park next door, which still leaves the main Bubb site at 10 acres. So reduce the enrollment at the schools with the big huge sites. Way to go.