MV Whisman to redraw school boundaries

The Mountain View Whisman School District is taking the first steps toward changing attendance boundaries for its schools, as the city’s demographics change and a group of parents pushes to open a new school in the northeastern corner of Mountain View.

Changing school attendance boundaries can be contentious and controversial, and will be a “big challenge” for the district, according to Interim Superintendent Kevin Skelly. He said the changes will affect property values as well as the expectations of home-buyers, and it will be difficult for the district to please everyone.

“There’s a joke in superintendent circles that this is what superintendents do in the last year of the contract before they retire,” Skelly said. “There will be no way to make everyone happy with new boundaries.”

Growing enrollment at the newly-divided Castro Elementary School and possibly opening a new school in the Whisman and Slater neighborhood area are cited as the primary reasons for the review of attendance boundaries. Residents in the northeast quadrant of Mountain View complain that they haven’t had a neighborhood school since Slater Elementary closed in 2006. Current attendance boundaries have kids in the area split between Huff, Theuerkauf and Landels elementary schools.

On top of that, a 2014 demographic study shows projected student populations and newly-built residential housing could bump up enrollment beyond capacity at some schools. Huff Elementary, for example, has been at capacity for years, and accepted no students from its waiting list this year.

“Everybody agrees that the boundaries right now aren’t working particularly well,” Skelly said.

In order to get community input, the district created the Boundary Advisory Task Force, which aims to represent the community as a whole and make recommendations on how to adjust boundaries. The task force includes parents, principals, teachers, representatives from neighborhood associations and former City Council member Ronit Bryant representing the city of Mountain View. The task force is expected to come up with a recommendation by April, with new boundaries implemented in the 2016-17 school year.

Besides Bryant, task force members include Castro Principal Terri Lambert, Graham principal Kim Thompson and board members Greg Coladonato and Bill Lambert.

Skelly said the task force and its communication with the public needs to be as open and transparent as possible to ease any controversy over the results.

“Often times if people don’t like the result they criticize the process, so it has to be open with continual opportunities for feedback,” Skelly said.

New school a district priority?

The plans for re-drawn boundaries could mean the district will have to make a final decision on whether to open a school in the Whisman and Slater neighborhoods, which would have a big influence on the task force recommendations.

If a new school were opened, students in the area would no longer have to be redistributed to nearby elementary schools through a patchwork of attendance boundaries in the area where Highways 85, 101 and 237 meet.

Former Superintendent Craig Goldman and some board members have come out in favor of opening a new school in the district, saying it’s really more of a question of “when” to open the new school. But so far the board has not approved a plan to re-open either Whisman or Slater campuses, or construct an entirely new school. Whisman has been leased to the private German International School of Silicon Valley since 2000 and in 2006, the Slater campus was leased to Google for use as a daycare facility.

New attendance boundaries might not be the only thing hung up until the board makes a decision on a new school. The Boundary Advisory Task Force will be working concurrently with the new Construction Advisory Group, which will decide how to spend the remaining bond money from Measure G. Bond money is to be used to update and construct new facilities at the elementary schools. and could also be used to open a school in the Whisman and Slater neighborhood.

Bob Weaver, a resident of the Whisman and Slater area, said the board should formally announce they will open “some kind of walkable neighborhood school” right away. That way, he said, the Construction Advisory Group and the Boundary Advisory Task Force will be working with a “full deck” knowing whether a school will exist in the northeast region of the city.

Weaver argued that the new school would redistribute students in a way that will solve the overcrowding at Huff Elementary, and would be considered a win-win.

When the issue was brought up in April last year, Goldman said Landels and Theuerkauf Elementary, the schools near the Whisman and Slater area, are not overcrowded, and that a new school could siphon off too many students and cause problems, possibly forcing a school closure.

Board member Ellen Wheeler agreed at the time that the district should be cautious moving forward, but during the school board election said opening a school is “the right thing to do at this time.”