Council weighs in on boundary dispute

The City Council voted Tuesday to support the Mountain View families who oppose a change in school boundaries which could force their children to attend a different school farther from their home.

The controversial changes have been proposed by the Los Altos School District, which serves about 1,200 Mountain View students who mostly live near the city’s northern border. Three of the four scenarios presented by the district would force students currently attending their neighborhood elementary schools, Santa Rita and Almond, to attend Covington or Bullis, both of which are about three miles away.

Tuesday’s council action endorses sending a letter to the school district expressing support for the residents who might be affected by the boundary change, and encouraging district officials to keep students in schools close to their home.

Council member Margaret Abe-Koba, who brought the item to the table, said 30 percent of the district’s students are Mountain View residents, and the council should weigh in as a matter of representation.

All agreed that boundary changes should support “walkability” — making it possible for students to walk or ride their bikes to school — but members hesitated to get into specifics and wanted to keep the letter generally supportive of local residents.

“I can see resentment with a different elected body telling another elected body what to do in their jurisdiction,” council member Nick Galiotto said. “I really believe it’s in the hands of that school board.”

Audience members pointed out that two of the five LASD board members — Bill Cooper and Margot Harrigan — are Mountain View residents, providing some Mountain View representation on the school board.

The letter will be drafted and sent by Mayor Laura Macias, and the council agreed it should also encourage the full participation of Mountain View residents in the discussion process.

Many residents who live north of El Camino Real — a major dividing line in the district between Los Altos and Mountain View — feel the northern portion is being unfairly targeted in the redistricting. Under current proposals, more students from those neighborhoods would have to change schools. Bullis and Covington are both south of El Camino Real.

The crux of the problem for the district is that a majority of students live in the northern section of the district, which continues to grow, while most of the schools lie in the south. Overcrowding at Santa Rita and Almond, the schools that most Mountain View students attend, has resulted in the need to shift boundary lines.

Amanda Aaronson, a Mountain View resident of the Crossings neighborhood, told council members that three of the four proposals for boundary changes unfairly target Mountain View residents.

“It’s an attempt not to disrupt Los Altos proper,” Aaronson said.

Aaronson is part of a group of parents called the North of El Camino Neighborhood Coalition who are working to make sure children in their neighborhoods — including the Crossings, Del Medio, Monroe and Showers Drive neighborhoods — attend nearby schools.

The coalition says it has collected 1,147 signatures, all of them parents living in the district, in a petition asking the district to guarantee students can attend their first or second closest school.

The coalition objects to what it sees as the district placing the burden of boundary changes on the northern neighborhoods alone.

“We are asking for something fair and equitable across the district and not just targeting one group,” coalition member Shakeel Khader said.

Khader said the petition contained a majority of signatures from parents living in the northern part of the district but also included signatures from those living in the south.

The coalition also presented the district with two scenarios it drafted itself, one of which includes converting the Egan Camp School Site, in the northern part of the district and currently housing the Bullis charter school, into a sixth grade campus for students from Santa Rita and Almond.

The board said it will review the coalition’s maps and discuss its findings at its next meeting, scheduled for Monday, May 21. The board has said it will make a decision on the boundary change sometime in June.

The North of El Camino Real coalition is also said the district is moving too fast on the matter, and should delay a decision to provide more time for study.

“We want to collaborate with the district,” Khader said. “Such an important decision that displaces kids should not be done in haste.”