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Bullis Charter School officials have formally asked for a stand-alone campus at one of the Mountain View Whisman School District’s schools, seeking to expand outside of Los Altos and serve students exclusively from Mountain View.

The facilities request, dated Oct. 31, states that the newly formed Bullis Mountain View plans to open up a charter school in the district for the 2019-20 school year, starting with transitional kindergarten through second grade. The goal for the first year is 168 students, and the charter school anticipates it will have no trouble reaching “100 percent capacity.”

The request is part of a monthslong and often contentious process under the state’s Proposition 39, which requires school districts to provide “reasonably equivalent” facilities to students residing in the district who choose to attend a charter school instead of district-run schools.

The timing is a little awkward, given that the charter school doesn’t exist yet. The Mountain View Whisman School District hasn’t approved or denied the charter petition — which acts as the founding document for the school — and school board members are tentatively scheduled to vote on the proposed school in December. But state statutes require that a charter school make the request for facilities by Nov. 1.

Unlike the divisive facilities request from the Bullis Charter School in Los Altos, which asked for “exclusive” use of a 20-acre junior high school that would essentially evict the current school, Bullis Mountain View took a softer approach. The 205-page request asks for classrooms and other school facilities in an area that currently serves students attending Castro, Theuerkauf or Monta Loma elementary schools, which would best suit the charter school’s goals of serving a high number of low-income students and English learners.

The charter school’s enrollment policies prioritize accepting students from low-income families in Mountain View, many of whom reside within the attendance boundaries of those three schools.

“We intend to serve a diverse demographic and being within walking distance of the charter school for low-income families is important in order to build an intentionally diverse school,” according to the petition.

The facilities request argues that the school must have a multipurpose room, an art room, a “makerspace” room and seven dedicated classrooms — a number that will rise in the coming years as third, fourth and fifth-grade students are added. The request goes on to say that all of these buildings need to be in one spot, rather than scattered throughout the district.

“It is critical for our students to be on one contiguous school site due to their young age,” according to the request. “It is important for young children to have consistency in spaces and with the adults that they interact with. Consequently, the charter school’s educational program requires a single contiguous school site in which to operate.”

While the request stops short of asking for a specific school, it points to a district report from last year showing some room is currently available at Theuerkauf Elementary and Crittenden Middle School. The November 2017 report shows Theuerkauf could potentially house 133 more students and Crittenden could house 264.

That report, however, was written in the context of North Bayshore housing growth and the ability for both schools to grow, which is different than planting a new stand-alone school on either site, and it’s not clear what configuration could accommodate 168 charter school students as soon as next year. The school is also expected to grow to 320 students over a three-year period, further adding to the challenge of housing all the students.

Superintendent Ayinde Rudolph told the Voice last month that it doesn’t appear that Theuerkauf, the Stevenson PACT choice program, the district office and the charter school — along with the planned expansion of the district’s transitional kindergarten and city-owned park facilities — could all be crammed onto one single site. District officials declined to weigh in on the viability of Crittenden as a home for the charter school, pending a full “inventory” of all of the district’s facilities.

The request also reveals that while the charter school is interested in recruiting families from schools with a high number of low-income students, the largest number of families who have shown an intent to enroll in Bullis Mountain View are not from Monta Loma, Theuerkauf or Castro. Projected enrollment shows 42 children would come from the Landels Elementary School attendance boundary, followed by Huff (21) and the new Jose Antonio Vargas Elementary School boundary (21). Monta Loma and Theuerkauf follow closely behind at 20 students each, followed by Castro (18). No families currently attending Stevenson are included in the projected enrollment.

Although the demographic makeup of this new school remains murky, charter school officials wrote in the request that families in the district have been clamoring to get into Bullis Charter School in Los Altos.

“Bullis Charter School (in) Los Altos has historically had a long wait list of parents who reside within the MVWSD boundaries and wish to attend Bullis Charter School — on average approximately 175 students,” the request states. “As such, it is very likely that many parents will be interested in enrolling in the charter school.”

Kevin Forestieri is the editor of Mountain View Voice, joining the company in 2014. Kevin has covered local and regional stories on housing, education and health care, including extensive coverage of Santa...

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  1. Of course! This is how they weasel in. First they share a campus and all is well. Just wait though. In a number of years they’ll be suing you for an entire campus and boom, you’ll have lost a neighborhood school. Be careful out there. If you need any evidence, look over one town.

  2. Sorry, same poster. Which school in the district has 2 of these?? One for the current school and one for BCS?

    “The facilities request argues that the school must have a multipurpose room, an art room, a “makerspace” room and seven dedicated classrooms — a number that will rise in the coming years as third, fourth and fifth-grade students are added. The request goes on to say that all of these buildings need to be in one spot, rather than scattered throughout the district.”

    How is this a reasonable request that can be finished by August? 1) second multi (what?), 2) art room 3) makerspace 4) classrooms and they’ll need more soon. Crazy town.

  3. BCS insists on an art room and a makers space room? MVWSD elementary schools don’t have dedicated art and maker space rooms, yet BCS is requiring that????

    BCS facilities should mirror MVWSD facilities. I’m sorry if Los Altos has dedicated rooms for specialty classes but in MV your homeroom is your art room. BCS for you to request otherwise is not appropriate or fair.

  4. I can’t see where the district is going to put them. Crittenden is a middle school and I’m not sure I would want 5 year olds there even if there is room.

    TH is suffering enough with PACT and its army of volunteers and special events right next door, not to mention the office and other plans. Monta Loma is in a residential neighborhood and not ideal because of the train and busy roads separating it from the area where most interested families live. And Landels is already over crowded, right? Where does that leave?

  5. Cmon Kevin, dig some more. It has been reported elsewhere that The Bullis MV team met with Rudolph and two Trustees. What was discussed at those meetings?

    The district keeps acting like they are totally surprised by Bullis’ actions, but that is a farce.

    To those shocked by what they are asking for, just think why don’t district schools have this? Why has the district refused to do anything innovative at its underperforming schools? Anyway, it’s not like they are going to get everything they ask for, but if they don’t ask they certainly won’t!

    In my opinion, the district should just pick one of its underperforming schools and plan to hand it over to Bullis as a neighborhood school. That is the only way one of these schools will EVER be filled to capacity.

  6. Anyone in MV who cares about their community should WELCOME Bullis!

    Fighting them is useless as the law is quite clear and interest in the school is quite real.

    The one argument people have used against Bullis LA is that it’s a model which only works in a rich community with few disadvantaged students. Well, Bullis MV is now trying to set up a school with a preference for underprivileged kids.

    Why try to blindly fight them?

  7. Today’s (or yesterday’s) Daily Post reported that Redwood City School District is closing five!!! schools and consolidating redundant remedial language and education programs — all due to a $4 million budget shortfall. Why the shortfall??? Redwood City has lost state funding due to a recent loss of 1500 students to “charter school transfers and families moving out”. I doubt that poor families are moving out of Redwood City, so my guess is that most of the public school funding losses are due to charter school transfers.

    If I were a parent with highly intelligent children in a school district obsessed with “closing the performance gap” for ignorant students rather than in “increasing the performance gap” for superior students by providing advanced education, I’d abandon that school district too. My children would deserve more educational support than failing children with failed parents. After all, people like me pay the school taxes, and our children will be superior and pay lots of taxes too.

    I’d seek charter school admission and if not then, pay for superior private school education for my children. “One size fits all” no longer works in public education.

  8. MV doesn’t need privileged LA charter schools taking away valuable resources from our local public schools. Bullis parents want private schools that the rest of us have to pay for. Just watch – they will already seed the school with LA families who can’t get into LA Bullis schools with long waitlists – and already enrolled families will lock enrollment and cause shortages in our MV campus’. Fight like hell to keep these folks out of MV – they will only cost us and won’t help educate our local kids. It’s the Bullis curse – don’t use their resources to be part of the community and help all boats rise – but get into their own privileged life raft. If Ayindé Rudolph and the MVWSD board cares about Mountain View kids they should do everything in their power to send Bullis packing.

  10. Maybe parents of LASD children know better, but many of us mere members of the public are cynical about BOTH for-profit schools and not-for-profit public schools that give away money to administrators and consultants like there is no tomorrow. School children are secondary.

    And that Councilman John McAlister with his for-profit preschool and conflict of interest. Outrageous. Maybe we need just voucher FOR DISADVANTAGED CHILDREN and more online education. Get rid of the HIGH-PRICED PROFITEERS.

  11. There are plenty of Intention to Enroll forms which list Bubb, Stevenson, or Mistral as their “otherwise would attend” site. Why weren’t those included in the article totals?

    Did the Voice independently verify the Stevenson/Mistral families which could have other older children attending allowing the younger ones to follow without going through the lottery? Why no mention of Bubb students at all?

  13. While I think the of expanding BCS to lower income families of MV is honorable, why is it necessary to have two sites? Don’t you think that communities would benefit from the diversity and inclusiveness of all demographics?

    As far as I can tell, TH, ML and Crittenden are quite happy with their school communities and don’t need or want BCS to swoop in and divide valuable resources amongst them. We don’t need a BCS solution.

    Has the district considered the new Vargas Elementary as a possible site for BCS? If the families that want this are from Landels and Huff, this is within closer proximity to them. Not to mention it is vacant. If BCS took half the site and MVWSD took half the site, this would alleviate the pressure of filling that school through MVWSD.

    Many families have been unhappily displaced by the new boundaries to accommodate the new school, so perhaps this would help solve that issue as well.

    Monta Loma Elementary has finally made gains in test scores within our very diverse community and the tiered learning is working. Our Principal is committed to a responsive classroom and the teachers are committed to all children at all levels. Having BCS on our campus will severely hinder our ability to continue making progress and we don’t want BCS there. We want our neighborhood school to remain a neighborhood school and continue to support all our students regardless of their economic status.

  14. The Month Loma principal has not achieved meaningful higher test scores of low-income students. She is more a politician than a principal who had no problem throwing her fellow principals under the bus in the worst display of unprofessionalism I have ever witnessed. Charter Schools are hear to stay. They are the law. I fully welcome Bullis to Mountain View because it will shake up the district once and for all. Make Rudolph and the Board dance!

  15. The story creates the impression that the MPR, art room, and maker space would be dedicated. However, if they specify dedicated classrooms and DO NOT specify dedicated on the other items, then this is saying they can be shared. Theuerkauf has been losing enrollment naturally, and will continue to lose more if some switch to the charter school. It has an MPR built for 450 students. If you only have 300 students at Theuerkauf, then you could easily share the MPR between them and this new charter school. It’s no big deal. How often is the room empty now?

    Now MVWSD schools may not have art or maker spaces, but they are bound to have some specialized classrooms beyond the basic classrooms. So some of that would be sharable too. Do the schools have libraries? Would that be shared with the charter school? Do they have any sort of a music program? Aren’t there classes from CSMA at the MVWSD schools? What room do they use?

  16. That charter school in rich Marin County has 30% low income kids and 10% ELL in a district with only 10% low income and 2% ELL. Even Los Altos SD has more ELL than that, by heaps.

    I think it’s a good thing there’s a charter school opened in Ross Valley. They’re trying to do right by the low income kids. We need more such actions. The short sighted school board there dropped the ball and let the charter get approved by the state board of education. That shows they have a good program and that there is a need. You’re barking up the wrong tree about Mountain View. Mountain View has 38% disadvantaged kids ACROSS THE ENTIRE DISTRICT. It’s a much more serious problem than in Ross Valley, with a lot more diversity of income levels too! You agitate to get this school board to turn the new charter over to the SBE? What a dumb thing to do that would be.

  17. I sure hope the school district checks to make sure the intent to enroll forms were actually signed by people that were actually “Meaningfully interested”, as is the requirement of the Prop 39 law. My guess is that some of the people who signed these intent to enroll forms really didn’t understand what they were signing. I could see Bullis outside of a grocery store asking people to sign their intent to enroll form without fully explaining that these signatures will take space away from their neighborhood public schools and that one should only sign them if they were meaningfully interested. The district should send letters to verify that the families that signed them are actually interested on a deep or meaningful level in attending the school. I bet the number drops in half if they do this. Bullis needs a certain amount of in-district kids to make their school viable and without true in-district interest the school will fold. Don’t let Bullis bully us into taking over our neighborhood schools. Give them one school and the next thing you know they will ask for another and another, until they finally bankrupt our school district.

  18. Charter School Intent to Enroll forms are completely confidential and the information contained thereon is NOT available to any school district. So much for that idea to discourage people form applying.

    Now what is true is that if there do end up being fewer kids than expected for the Prop 39 facilities, in specified cases that could result in a cash fee to the charter school. That’s how the intent is enforced, not by amateur detective activity. Only AFTER the school opens each year is the size of the facility verified.

  19. Superintendent Rudolph and the Board (read Jose Gutierrez, Laura Blakley and Ellen Wheeler) kept harping about the the highest in the nation achievement gap. Well guess what? Firing half the principals and stuffing their offices with friends from North Caroline certainly isn’t the solution. Nor is hiring Rudolph’s former boss as a consultant. Nor ramming TTO down everyone’s throats. Nor losing, then finding heaps of money. So guess what? State law says its perfectly legal for a charter school to give it a go. Or are the all of a sudden against following the law? Come on Trustee Gutierrez! Here at last is your chance to help out the low socio-economic population of the district with a charter school organization with proven results. Is your illusion of power over things getting in your way of following the law? And what about you Trustee Wheeler? Your chummy succession of superintendents from the vain and flirt Ghysels to the carpet bagger Rudolph have only made the achievement gap worse. And Board President Blakley? You seem to have lost your voice after telling parents you weren’t interested in what they had to say. Times up. Hear comes Bullis.

  20. I live in Mountain View, but I was able to send my son to Bullis Charter School for 7th and 8th grade. Bullis is an outstanding school, much better than MV’s middle schools. I look forward to Bullis coming to MV.

  21. If Bullis Charter School wanted to help low-income students, they could easily do so by amending their own rules for their school in Los Altos to give admission preference to such students. They fact that they would rather open a new school in Mountain View is telling, they don’t want anything to do with low-income students in their own schools. This is segregation and it’s wrong, Bullis needs to be held accountable. Mountain View should demand Bullis amend rules for their school in Los Altos before the charter application is even considered.

  22. Note: I do not have a child attending Bullis Charter or a public school in the MVLA school district.

    By law, charter schools have to be provided with “equivalent” facilities within the school district.

    All the objections I read is against charter schools per se. That debate is over. If someone wants to re-open
    that debate about whether to have charter schools at all, it must be in a different forum.

    Bullis Charter has done exceptionally well. It has long wait lists. Its students perform substantially higher in
    standardized testing. It has grown tremendously. All these point to success. It might be selective in admits;
    but that is the point. It wants to produce high achievers and is targeting a suitable student body.

    Therefore, by law, Bullis Charter is entitled to an “equivalent” campus. It is not entitled to special privileges,
    but should be afforded the same privileges as the public schools.

    For all the claims that public schools should be improved, I wonder if one of the ways is by introducing a charter
    in MV. Again, if students/parents flock toward it and its metrics are substantially better, perhaps, this is one
    way public schools do improve.

  23. @JR. That is not the way that the charter schools work. The Bullis Los Altos school is required by state statute to give equal access to students in their home territory. They can’t give preferential access to “low income” students. If you want to serve low income students, then opening a school in a region with more low income students is the way to go. It is still a lottery system, but you are likely to have more low income students enter the lottery.

  25. “The Bullis Los Altos school is required by state statute to give equal access to students in their home territory. They can’t give preferential access to “low income” students. If you want to serve low income students, then opening a school in a region with more low income students is the way to go.”
    I thought the original big selling point of Charter Schools is to give more opportunities to poor kids in under-performing schools. If they can’t at least give preference to kids in certain school boundaries (e.g., Castro, etc.), then I am out and will fight it. And there are plenty of low-income kids in Mountain View, JV.

  26. “Charter School Intent to Enroll forms are completely confidential and the information contained thereon is NOT available to any school district. So much for that idea to discourage people form applying.”

    And yet, submitted by Bullis to the school district, are the Intent to Enroll forms as part of the Prop 39 application. How else is the district to know how many and which students to plan to make space for?

    Take your lies elsewhere please.

  27. “The Bullis Los Altos school is required by state statute to give equal access to students in their home territory. They can’t give preferential access to “low income” students.”

    In Bullis Mountain View’s proposed charter they have listed lottery priorities that give “preferential access” for low income students. It’s more than what you claim they “can’t give” but admittedly only barely so. That is unfortunately the strongest show of commitment to serve low income students spelled out in the charter.

  28. @James Thurber said “Despite having been a political HOT potato for quite awhile there are nearly 900 Los Altos families that have embraced Bullis Charter School. Although they donate (heavily) to the school they have found their children getting an outstanding education – in every sense of the word.”

    I wonder if BCS children get an outstanding education BECAUSE of the heavy donation or DESPITE the heavy donation – intuitively seems like the former to me. Will this be their model for MV? I wonder how that will work if the targeted demographic is significantly different. If that isn’t their model for MV how is it different?

    Assuming the BCS model is going to work in MV because it did in Los Altos would seem like a poor assumption

  29. The tabulation of the numbers of the Intent to Enroll forms is in the Prop 39 request, NOT THE ACTUAL FORMS. Those signing the petition are shown in the charter application.

    If you look at it, the tabulation shows a lot more kids than the size of the school. So they won’t all be in the school, by definition. Letting the school district know their names would be unfair and discriminatory, allowing coercion…. It’s not done.

  30. @Intent To Enroll

    If you read the Prop 39 request under the “Supporting Documentation” section on the 6th page it shows that BCS has submitted the “Signed Intent to Re/Enroll Forms for all students for the request year” as well as the signatures on the petitions.

  31. Again for all of you vowing to fight Bullis MV, let’s look at the track record of BCS (Bullis Charter School, the existing charter in LA) with English Language learners compared with MVWSD

    English Language learners meeting or exceeding standards:

    ELA Math
    BCS 68% 86%
    MVWSD 14% 17%

    MVWSD is miserably failing these kids, yet you refuse to give Bullis a chance? Take a look at their proposal https://www.mvwsd.org/UserFiles/Servers/Server_418774/File/About/Superintendent/BullisMVpresentationOct32018.pdf.

    Looks at their proposed “elements”, which include many common sense ideas such as a strong pre-K Early Learners program and a real “Personalized Learning” (rather than Rudolph’s failed Teach to One).

    Fighting Bullis at all costs does not serve the interest of our community!

  32. @Why Fight Bullis

    ELL can be a misleading metric, especially at a place like BCS. I am from a country which was colonized by the British and we speak English quite well. But if a child is raised predominantly speaking their mother tongue at home, the child could be classified as ELL, even if they have been exposed to English.

    SES is a better measure of the demographic BCS is targeting in Mountain View than ELL. There is just not enough data to show that BCS will do well with them. They might do well with them and I hope they do. However to not question if they would is just as bad as “fight at all costs”.

  33. BCS is a sucking leach. They will suck the money from the district, hurting all kids who aren’t in BSC.
    This is why they have become pariahs in the community wiht many and why my BCS neighbor will never say her kids are in BCS in public.
    They take and take and drain the money from the district and yes, the kids do well…at the expense of the tax payers and kids in other schools. Then we all end up at the same high schools. Betsy DeVos is cackling.

  34. Dear @Why Fight Bullis.

    To compare Bullis ELL’s with MVWSD ELL’s shows you’re clueless on this subject.

    Bullis has 10.1% ELL’s of which half speak Mandarin. Only 0.8% speak Spanish. Of the 9.3% of ELL’s who speak languages other than Spanish at home I know many of these families and their kids were bilingual by kindergarten, but they were labeled ELL as there was a parent at home who spoke to them in Mandarin. So to say look at BCS ELL numbers and compare them to MV is an apples to bananas argument.

    The questions for BCS which EVERYONE should demand answers to is why are their percentages for students with free/reduced lunch and ELL lower than the Los Altos School District percentages??? Oh I know, because those kids lower test scores. If Bullis was doing so great for ALL types of kids their numbers for these demographics would be higher than the LASD, not lower. BCS has 1.5% kids on free/reduced lunch, compared to Los Altos with 6.1%, and for ELL’s Bullis has 10.1% to Los Altos’ 13.1%. So shocker why Bullis’ test scores are higher than Los Altos or Mtn View.

  35. @Why Fight Bullis

    Also, this isn’t about fighting Bullis. It is about what is better for the greater good of MV students. It is amply clear BCS is very good for its current students even if we aren’t sure if it is good for the SED demographic of students. Even if we assume it would be good for the SED demographic, it isn’t at all clear if it would be good for all of rest of MVWSD’s 5000+ students.

    If we look at LASD as a point of reference, BCS has been good for the 900 students that attend BCS schools. However has it been good for the remaining 3600 LASD students? What do the larger LASD population think? BCS certainly haven’t played well with their neighbors, they have been a thorn on the side of LASD administration and been a major distraction for them.

    On the other hand take Diane Tavenner and Summit Schools. They SEEM to play well with MVWSD with Summit Denali in MV (happy to stand corrected if that is not the case) . I can’t say the same thing about BCS. These are some of the things that MVWSD board needs to consider.

    Public education is funded by all tax payers, and its benefit has to extend beyond just the students who attend one school. Some might say the same thing about Mistral and Stevenson but at least they are governed by a board elected by the same tax payers, not so with BCS.

    Perhaps the MVWSD board before approving this petition could ask BCS to change their enrollment priorities at their Los Altos schools to have at least 20% SED students for 3 years. Show their method works for this cohort and then apply for this charter in MVWSD. If it works and the MVWSD board also believes they will play nice with the rest of MVWSD schools, then at that point perhaps they might consider approving the petition

    Let’s have a discussion and not dismiss a point of view just because it doesn’t happen to be the same as ours.

  36. With all the low income kids in MVWSD, the question to ask is why the number varies so much between schools. Some schools have as many as 80% low income kids, and others have only 8.6%. So 10 TIMES as much of a percentage of low income kids between schools?

    What does this do to the test scores of those schools? I mean you can dis BCS in Los Altos where the district puts as many kids as possible in the Free Lunch program. Some of those schools only have 5 or 8 kids total in FRPL. Oh, same as BCS. Why is it ok for Oak and Gardner Bullis, but not for BCS?

    Now another way to look at it is that this new program for BMV might have 30 low income kids, or 20% of the school. Maybe 25% or 30% of the school will be low income. So how successful will this program be for THOSE low income kids? What do we have to lose? MVWSD has 2000 low income kids. Try something different for 2% of them, and see what happens. Oh, experimenting with 2% is TOO much? What are you worried about, really? Why shove the low income kids into schools where they are over 50% of the school. Isn’t that better demonstrated as THE BAD IDEA?

  38. Despite having been a political HOT potato for quite awhile there are nearly 900 Los Altos families that have embraced Bullis Charter School. Although they donate (heavily) to the school they have found their children getting an outstanding education – in every sense of the word.

    Bullis Charter continues to ask for more space BECAUSE more and more students are attending. They need the space, it’s as simple as that.

    Whether or not I personally support the charter school is immaterial. There are plenty of families who do, ergo, it makes sense to consider their desires too.

  39. @Question for MVVoice/Kevin Forestieri

    The information is on page four of the Prop 39 facilities request, which lists the projected “in-district students broken down by grade level” that are anticipated to attend the charter school for the 2019-20 school year. This also includes the district school that the students would “otherwise attend.” The folks from the charter school tell me this is based on both Intent to Enroll forms and charter petition signatures.

    Stevenson has zeros across the board, Bubb has 17 and Mistral has 9. Hope that answers all your questions.

  40. Do you really think Bullis cares about low income kids? This is a Trojan horse for MV. Once they get in they will try to take over our public commons and compete with our neighborhood schools. This is part of the bigger privatization effort to turn our public schools into divided and segregated schools all funded by conservative billionaires; Walmart, Reed Hastings, Schwab Foundation, Bill Gates, Fisher Family(Gap). CCSA is their political arm that is pushing to get a foot hold into school districts like ours and their angle is to make you believe that they care about low income and ESL kids. It’s a total Scam. We don’t need Bullis. We need to ALL work towards making our public schools better, and supporting charters that are privately run but publicly funded is not the answer. Are the Bullis board members publicly elected?

  41. The district does get the names and addresses of the people who signed the intent to enroll forms and hopefully checks in with them to make sure they actually have “Meaningful Interest”, and that they knew exactly what they were signing. Signing those forms without meaningful interest is Fraud.

    Bullis is using the low income/ESL kids as pawns as an excuse to try and get support for their Trojan Horse. This is all about privatizing our public schools and not about the kids.

  42. Astounding to see all this controversy over allowing a charter school to help low income kids. Why not give them Castro School and be done with it. 82% of the Castro kids are low income and currently they’re performing very poorly. BMV could absorb ALL of the neighborhood kids so there would be no loss of a neighborhood school- they’d all still be in their neighborhood and just MAYBE they could do a better job with those kids. It would be hard to do any worse. All you liberal bleeding hearts don’t give a hoot about those low income kids when it comes down to it. You’re at war for no reason.
    @MVWSD parent- you want evidence that BCS can educate low income kids But MVWSD isn’t educating low income kids so there’s not much of a risk. Climb out of your little boxes and see what happens. Optimism is a good thing.

  43. @Wow

    Good push. Optimism is a good thing. Debating is a good thing too.

    Why doesn’t BCS take 20% of their current enrollment (~180 kids very similar to what they are asking) from MVWSD at the Egan campus with a priority for SED. MVWSD can transfer the $ per student to BCS. This reduces the risk of having to carve out space at an existing school by building or repurposing a new MUR, art room, Maker room, 7 classrooms etc. This approach could be less disruptive.

    As for giving an entire school (e.g., Castro) to BCS – I don’t think either party want that – Not all Castro students want to go to BCS and I am willing bet that BCS doesn’t want all of Castro students either.

    The debate over charter school is because charter schools aren’t the panacea that they are made out to be, especially for SED students. You have probably researched this too so this is just some food for thought – https://www.google.com/search?ei=lyHuW5bQOavk0gKVq464CQ&q=charter+school+impact+on+public+education&oq=Charter+school+impact&gs_l=psy-ab.3.1.0j0i20i263j0i22i30l8.4920.9568..11401…4.0..0.120.2311.13j10……0….1..gws-wiz…….35i39j0i67j0i131j0i131i67j0i10.hhkIwi-yPa0

  44. @WOW “Why not give them Castro School and be done with it?”

    It’s never done with Charter schools. They will keep asking for more and more. It’s about turning our public schools into privately run schools with no public oversight. Do you really think we should segregate our schools and put all the ESL and low income kids at one school? That is not legal and the Bullis petition is not legal by giving priority to low income and ESL kids. This is the Bullis spin to try and come in and divide our schools and community and fill their own pockets. They are backed by the conservative billionaires trying to destroy our public schools. Wake up!

  45. I don’t know for certain that a progressive Bullis model will bridge the achievement gap, but I do believe the needs of the 21st-century demand we try to offer socio-economically disadvantaged students a more progressive education, beyond prioritizing rote prep and remediation that is out of touch with the future economy.

    Some people question Bullis’ intent, but I rather go by facts, I asked them to report what they did to demonstrate their efforts to make good on their mission to help MV bridge our achievement gap, Bullis has reported the following:

    – Hosted several Spanish meetings at MV Community Senior Center
    – Hosted 2 coffees at Spanish bakery on Latham Street
    – Had Spanish meeting at Panera Bread
    – Handed out 200+ fliers outside Castro school on minimum days
    – Created Spanish Leadership team of interested parents
    -Created Spanish family contact database of over 250 contacts
    – Had meetings with the city’s of MV Spanish outreach coordinator
    – Had meetings with Head of MV Day Worker Center
    – Had meetings with Listos MV
    – Spoken with InPlay about Spanish Outreach

    Bullis will definitely cause great disruptions to district plans, but district plans aren’t children. No matter anyone’s opinions of charters, the law is clear, Bullis is on the right side of the law, and if they succeed at their mission to bring progressive education to disadvantaged children in MV, then they are also the right side of children.

    I can’t yet say the district has demonstrated equally good intent on this particular issue. Each week the district and board delays engagement with Bullis and other stakeholders (like schools that will be disrupted), they lessen any chance Bullis enrollment can be synced with the district.

    Teachers know what teachable moments are, and how hard it is to deviate from a plan, and how easy those moments on the surface can seem like disruptions, but also how precious it is to take advantage of the situation. Will the district miss their chance to shape a relationship different from LASD?

  46. @ Christopher Chiang

    What has Bullis done historically for ESL and low income kids? Who cares if they had coffee and passed out flyers and set up a network of parents to fight for their fake cause. Show me what they did for these kids in the past? This is their sneaky effort to get enough numbers of in-district kids so that they can open their doors. Your list above shows to me exactly their manipulative ploy and tactics to gain support. Do you really think they are doing this to help the kids? No. This is their sneaky way to make inroads into a school district by making them look like saints and meanwhile they can start to divide, segregate and slowly takeover our public schools.

  48. “Los Altos School District board members on Monday night accused Bullis Charter School of not being forthcoming with its enrollment growth plans. Trustees say that years of good-faith cooperation between the two agencies is threatening to unravel.

    The latest rumor is that the charter school plans to grow to 1,800 students, according to trustee Sangeeth Peruri, which could siphon students from Los Altos district schools and force school closures. He questioned whether Bullis parents would want that kind of “mega school” in the middle of Los Altos.”

    Read this article below. We all need to send emails and message on Facebook and stand up to Bullis in MV. Tell you friends and family we are under attack and need to be untied against this take over of our public commons.

    https://www.mv-voice.com/news/2018/09/11/tensions-grow-between-lasd-and-bullis-charter

  49. Young, Minney & Corr LLP is a law firm specializing in charter law. It looks like some ex-employee has an axe to grind and is posting on here. The posts don’t represent the truth.

    If you look at the Bullis Mountain View proposal it is different than the program at the original Bullis in LASD. LASD is a very well to do school district with an extraordinarily small number of low income kids. The original Bullis is charter in LASD. It has sprung off the new program to try to address low income kids in a neighboring district. LASD does serve a lot of Mountain View kids, but there too, it is an area of Mountain View with fewer low income kids than in MVWSD. The original Bullis does have some non-LASD Mountain View kids in the upper grades where the LASD junior high schools operate like private academies and provide more competition for BCS than do LASD elementary schools, leaving some empty spaces.
    LASD has so few low income kids that they have actively discouraged Bullis recruiting efforts directed at low income kids.

    The original Bullis has operated some summer programs to reach out to low income kids, and these were open to MVWSD kids as well as LASD kids. So Bullis has about 5 years of summer experience with the low income MVWSD kids. The new program has been designed to respond to their needs with a longer school day and a longer school year so that there is less of a summer learning loss. They’ll have more vacations during the year. I don’t if they will do this for sure, but often charter schools operate special programs in these mid year vacation periods.

    Since this is a different program, designed to serve low income kids in an environment with other kids, it has no track record. That’s how charters schools work. However, the results are tracked so we will see what happens. The gap is so bad in general that if it works, yes, it would be worth expanding.

    I don’t know what Miney Corr is saying exactly, but is the idea that he thinks it’s bad if in 4 years with a working program delivering benefits, the program would be expanded? How do you reason about that? It’s not like starting out we know that the program will expand after 4 years, with no one looking at the success or failure.

  50. @ ResidentSince1982. One doesn’t have to be an ex employee of a Charter School law firm to understand the damage charter schools can cause to a district. Are you part of Bullis? You seem to have a lot of inside knowledge as to how Bullis is working in Los Altos. Are you in the mediation meetings with the district and Bullis? We don’t need Bullis to come into MV to take over our public schools. This idea that Bullis cares about low income kids or ESL kids is a lie. This is about Market Share to Bullis. This is about expanding their choke hold on our local schools. This is about using the horrible Prop 39 law to forcefully take our public schools away. This is about privatization of our public commons. This is about the conservative billionaires turning our schools into privately run businesses with public funds. Why aren’t the Bullis board members publicly elected? Has Bullis sued the school district already 4 times? How much did that cost the district? Is this what we have to look forward to in MV?

  51. In response to @ResidentSince1982 post, I wonder

    – Why would LASD discourage Bullis from recruiting low income kids?
    – In the summer programs that Bullis has run over the last 5 years, what % of kids were low income?
    – How many weeks were those programs and who paid for them?
    – What was the impact of those programs on the learning outcome of the kids?

    The MVWSD board should look for answers to these questions and also ask why doesn’t Bullis apply for their MV charter on the basis of this instead of their record in Los Altos, especially if the model for MV is not the same as for Los Altos.

    If they had used their Los Altos record to get the signatures for the MV charter, that would also be misleading based on what you say. MVWSD board should also find out if that’s what they did.

  52. “A quick look at the Academic Performance Index scores for the Los Altos School District shows that BCS has performed abysmally in serving socioeconomically disadvantaged students,” Song says.

    Here is the link to this story. https://patch.com/california/losaltos/sharp-criticism-pointed-at-bullis-charter-school

    All you have to do is look at Bullis’s track record to see that this whole idea that they all of a sudden care about low income and ESL learners is a joke.

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