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Leaders from Bullis Charter School and the Los Altos School District are scheduled to meet next week to mend fences and talk openly about what the future holds for a new school in the San Antonio region of Mountain View.
The meeting comes amid growing frustration between the two agencies about a lack of communication, and on the heels of news that closed-door negotiations between the district and the charter school about future enrollment growth and facilities use have gone nowhere. Los Altos School District board president Vladimir Ivanovic said Monday night that the meeting could be the “last real chance to cooperate before we end up in all-out war.”
The Monday, Oct. 1, special board meeting proposed by Bullis Charter School seeks to strike a conciliatory tone between Bullis representatives and the Los Altos School District on the vision for a 10th school site. LASD officials intend to purchase 9.6 acres of land on the corner of California Street and Showers Drive — currently home to Kohl’s department store and several other businesses — and are rapidly approaching decision time on what school should go there.
The two most likely options are to move Bullis Charter School to the site or create a new neighborhood school serving nearby Mountain View residents.
While Bullis Charter School’s board of directors has yet to officially weigh in on which option it prefers, members of the charter school community have long questioned the idea of buying land for a 10th school site, pointing to the significant acreage already owned by the district — particularly the more than 15 acre-campus occupied by Covington Elementary School. At a school board meeting Monday night, Bullis parent Jill Jene said it feels like the conversation has been artificially constrained because land acquisition must be treated as a given, despite the lack of interest by Bullis and district school communities to relocate to the site.
“You really should look hard at why you’re buying land when nobody wants to go there,” she said.
In an opinion piece in the Voice last week, Bullis board chair Joe Hurd also raised concerns that the district may be on track to purchase expensive real estate for a school that would do “nothing to serve LASD’s only neighborhood without its own school.”
At the Sept. 10 board meeting, district school board members amped up their rhetoric about what they described as a lack of transparency from the charter school and its plans for enrollment growth, creating doubt about whether Bullis is a good fit for the new school site. Trustees raised the notion that the charter school may prompt school closures by growing to 1,800 students and beyond in the coming years — a number that charter school officials deny has ever been seriously considered.
School board members took a more measured approach at the Monday, Sept. 24, meeting, no longer referring to the 1,800-student figure, with Ivanovic stating that the community at-large would be far better off if the district and the charter school cooperated with each other.
“I believe that neither board has publicly acknowledged that the other side may have legitimate interests that conflict with the other side,” he said. “And I think that’s a first step before we can even hope to cooperate.”
Still, Ivanovic said he and the rest of the district leadership have been frustrated by the lack of transparency about the charter school’s plans, and lack of clarity on what Bullis expects in the way of facilities next fall. Communication between the two parties has been so limited that the district only learned of Bullis’ intent to grow to 1,200 students — likely over the next three to five years — through a report put together by the district’s hired demographer in May. Hurd told the Voice that sharing this information with a district-hired demographer felt like the “appropriate avenue” for enrollment information.
The idea that Bullis would grow past its current limit of 900 students likely stamps out the possibility that a new school in the San Antonio area of Mountain View could house the charter school in its entirety, with the Los Altos School District Associate Superintendent Randy Kenyon stating last month that cramming a 1,200-student campus on the site is out of the question. It’s unclear how the charter school would be split among existing and future district campuses after growing by 30 percent.
In August, a majority of a district-run task force agreed that moving Bullis to the future Mountain View school would be the best option, with opening a new neighborhood school as a second option. While Los Altos district board members have yet to make a final decision, some board members have opted to weigh in.
Earlier this month, board member Steve Taglio said his goal from the start is to put nine schools on nine campuses without closing any schools, and that relocating Bullis from its split-campus arrangement at Egan and Blach junior high schools was the only way to do it. He also argued that the district can’t handle the burden of operating another neighborhood school at an annual cost of $800,000.
Ivanovic, on the other hand, said he believes a strong case can be made for putting a neighborhood school in the San Antonio area, and that it could “improve education outcomes” of students without hindering other nearby schools. He also pointed out that enrollment is expected to grow in the area — quickly — and that the Mountain View City Council has unanimously backed the idea of a neighborhood school. With all the development going on in the San Antonio region, he said this is probably the last chance to create a neighborhood school.
“The north of El Camino area is the only area without a neighborhood school, and if we don’t put a neighborhood school there now, they will never get a neighborhood school,” he said.
The Oct. 1 meeting starts at 7 p.m. and will be held in Bullis’ multipurpose room at 102 W. Portola Ave. in Los Altos. Information on what precisely will be discussed at the meeting was still in flux as of Wednesday morning.
LASD trustees, let me save you a lot of brain power: BCS does NOT want to be located in Mountain View and they will do what they need to make sure they don’t get located there.
If you still want to make this nonsensical land grab, the ONLY way you can make it happen is to place a neighborhood school there. That means you will have to make the investment of running a 10th school even while enrollment is declining. LASD enrollment has declined by almost 300 students since 2014, and the LASD trustees still want to spend taxpayer money to purchase a new site in MV even when their own demographer projected a DECLINE in student enrollment over the next 5 years. If that math makes sense to you, go for it. BCS will support you.
If you insist on being rockheads, keep your rhetoric going about placing BCS at the Kohl’s site and watch BCS go nuclear. They will grow to 1200 (possibly more), and then you will suffer those consequences with even less students in LASD schools.
LASD currently has over 116 acres – that’s 50% more SF/student than Palo Alto, Cupertino and other high performing affluent public school districts. Meanwhile the other 9 campuses desperately need facilities upgrades and your precocious 6th graders need to be exposed to more challenging curriculum, likely best provided in a middle school setting.
LASD elected officials are not ethically managing public funds for the good of ALL students. They are so consumed with trying to shortchange BCS in the hopes that families will return to LASD. It’s not going to happen if you don’t spend your energy improving your own schools instead of being obsessed with screwing BCS over.
It’s time for a change. Taxpayers, please review this presentation before casting your votes in Nov: https://creativefacilitiessolutions.org/events/
Residents of Mountain View,
Our city has given so much to get this school built, we must make it our neighborhood school for the people in our Mountain View community. Please email or call Mayor Siegel Lenny.Siegel@mountainview.gov and let him know your voice.
It does not make any sense to build Bullis or Egan school here which would increase traffic all the way from Los Altos Hills past El Camino to the new site. Must not let that happen! Please save our city from making this mistake!
LASD “cannot afford” the $800,000 per year to create a neighborhood school and yet they keep dangling this carrot in front of the MV City Council and NEC residents. Their single-minded goal is to screw BCS, but this has clearly come at the expense of their own students. Please vote for change in November! The LASD Board is not serving our community well.
The LASD wants a neighborhood school at the Kohl’s site as much as Brett Kavanaugh wants to go back to being an obvious Republican political hack working in the White House. No one is fooled. Either the MVCC gives the money for the site (hearing on October 16) on the condition that it NOT house BCS or that is where BCS will be placed.
This alleged lack of communication is questionable. The 5 year agreement called for a new school to be built for Bullis. That was LASD’s idea and plan. But it said that if it had not been built by the 4th year of the agreement, then the two sides would start negotations on a follow on agreement. LASD delayed until last November to agree to hold such negotiations. At that point they brought back two former board members, Doug Smith and Tamara Logan, to negotiate with the charter school. The two sides did start meeting and they did discuss the follow on plans. There was no hidden plans from Bullis. LASD knew what was going on. They just kept denying the plans of the charter school were real. That’s not the same thing as a lack of transparency.
A school will not increase traffic. The soon-to-be opened movie theater and the thousand housing units there and pending will definitely increase the traffic. A nearby school allows nearby households to walk across the street to school. A distant school, puts a thousand more cars on the road in the morning.
I live in San Antonio. LA is close enough for high school students to walk/drive. Egan is close enough for junior high kids to walk but it is too far for elementary kids. A school that serves elementary school age kids in San Antonio is perfect.
If you want to end the wasteful spending that the current LASD BoT
Is committed to then it’s important to vote for YING LIU and only YING to avoid diluting her vote. Ivanovic and Johnson have perpetuated the feud with BCS and their current plan to move them to the San Antonio center is sure to bring further litigation and no resolution to the problem of permanent housing of the growing BCS- they don’t want to be there and they don’t fit there.
We don’t need a 10th site but we do need improvements at each of the existing sites. The 6th graders can be moved to middle schools, Covington can be given to BCS, boundaries redrawn and all schools remain small. But if the entire $150M is spent on an unneeded 10th school there will be nothing left for any improvements nor will there be any money to reconfigure the Jr Highs to 6-8 middle schools. And likely they’ll run out of money on the 10th site construction and be looking to the taxpayers for new bond money and/or parcel taxes. This shopping center school is a terrible idea that Ivanovic and Johnson are committed to. VOTE THEM OUT! They have agendas that do not benefit the entirety of LASD.
I was wondering who the BCS mole is this year and now I know. Sounds like Ying is the one who needs to be kept off the LASD board this time. Thanks for the heads-up. You saved me a lot of time.
Every election year, a Bullis parent poses as a parent of children in a neighborhood school (usually the one their child was assigned to attend but only briefly, if ever, attended) and then claims they want to help “all” the children. The list is long. John Swan, Martha McClatchie, Tanya Raschke. Their true purpose? No doubt to feed information to the Bullis board that they discover in closed-door district meetings. Meanwhile, there is not even one non-Bullis member on their board. Unless BCS allows a district parent rep on their board, they don’t need one on the LASD board.
As for the rest, BCS should take the new site and be thankful. If they don’t, they will be proving what so many of us have known all along. BCS will NEVER be satisfied unless they are able to take a neighborhood school away from the community that currently occupies it. Their only goal is to exact revenge on LASD for losing their school literally decades ago. Otherwise, they wouldn’t care about getting a brand new facility built for them. If that doesn’t tell you all you need to know about their motives, then you should get better informed.
NONE of the neighborhood schools should be given to BCS – EVER. If BCS doesn’t want to move, then they can continue to split their campus and stop complaining. They want to have what they want and to heck with the rest of the district children. They will sue and lose, then blame LASD for wasting money defending what the parents want. They will keep at it until they win. I hope to heaven they never do.
Mountain View Whisman, pay close attention. You are next. You have already been told that you don’t get a choice about having BCS “help” your district with a “low-income” charter. if BCS decides you have to have their “help”, then that is what you will get. I hope you pay attention to what the cost of that “help” will be.
Sounds like a meeting between Donald Trump and Brett Kavanaugh. What was the purpose again? To trick the Mountain View City Council into handing over $100 million to exile BCS to the Kolhs site?
When you think about it, this has to be a neighborhood school. The time is past. LASD can’t hide behind the need to benefit Los Altos any more. They have these kids split between 3 schools in Los Altos. The new school won’t open until 2022. They guilted money out of the city council saying they had no room for the Mountain View kids. So they need to pony up the promised school, even if it does reduce the size of the 3 Los Altos schools and make it harder to keep them open. They made their bed or laid their plans based on opening a new school for Mountain View.
The whole Bullis thing is a red herring, because they are going to be 1200 students 2 years before the new school opens. They won’t FIT on the new site. There’s little reason to use it for them.
Here’s a way LASD’s board can think about this. They need a decent site for BCS for the next 4 years before the new school opens. They can use it as an excuse to keep BCS on shabby facilities for the next 4 years, but when the new school opens, it will be fully needed by and promised to Mountain View kids. They’ll watch it rise from the ground. They’ll suffer the construction activity. It will be THEIR school. They should pull their heads out (of the ground, stuck there like an ostrich.) There’s really no decision to be made if they buy this property. It BELONGS to the neighborhood, even more than Covington belongs to that neighborhood. There are a lot fewer people living near Covington then there are for this proposed new site. LASD is mucking with the wrong neighborhood, thinking it’s one they can push around because it has no political weight on the LASD board. But actually, it has a lot MORE clout than other areas due to sheer numbers of residents and voters.
LASD will never put a NEC school on that land. They’ll abandon the whole plan before they do that. Again, vote for Ying Liu and only Ying if you want reason to prevail on the facilities plans. Ivanovic and Johnson need to go or we’ll have 4 more years of the same feud with BCS and before you know if the entire $150M will be gone with no solutions to the problems- just more problems.
@ Vote YING LIU
Yeah, right. The actual LASD parents have to go to make room for the mole working for BCS.
I hope no voter is foolish enough to fall for this obvious nonsense. A vote for Ying Liu is a vote to put the fox in the hen house. Don’t do it. The district kids have suffered enough at the hands of BCS. Don’t let them make it worse.