|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
A huge crowd of parents slammed a proposal to give the Egan Junior High School campus to Los Altos’ growing charter school, calling it a bad deal that gives up the “crown jewel” of the Los Altos School District for little in return.
Emotions ran high throughout the two hours of public comment at the board meeting Monday night, with boisterous cheering when speakers suggested that they would rather get sued by Bullis Charter School and fight a legal battle than give up a campus that has been a pillar in the community for half a century.
Board members are hoping to vote later this month on a longterm agreement to cede Egan’s facilities to Bullis Charter School, which has grown to more than 900 students in recent years and is seeking to increase its enrollment to 1,200 students.
The charter school is currently housed in portable classrooms on portions of the Egan and Blach Intermediate School campuses, and school officials has long desired a single, permanent site. In exchange for Egan, Bullis officials would ditch long-term growth plans and agree to an enrollment cap of 1,111 students until 2030.
Egan wouldn’t technically be closed in the process, and would be relocated to a new school site planned in the San Antonio shopping center area of Mountain View. The move would happen no sooner than 2023, according to the agreement.
Calling it the best of many bad options, school board members said that the deal would end years of expensive litigation and annual fights over facilities, and bring some much-needed surety that Bullis won’t be allowed to grow unchecked. But for parents attending the April 8 board meeting, it seemed like an immensely unpopular giveaway and a big loss in the long-running battle against the charter school.
“I have not met two people who are in support of moving Egan,” said John Woolfrey, a Santa Rita parent. “Tonight, I still haven’t met two people who support moving Egan.”
Parents made the case throughout the evening that they chose to move to Los Altos and pay a fortune for the real estate because of the strong neighborhood schools embedded within the community of mostly single-family homes. To push the campus north into Mountain View not only betrays that model, but it also poses serious safety concerns, the claimed.
“I want my kids to bike to school,” said Warren Yang, a district parent. “I don’t want them riding across El Camino, I don’t want them riding down San Antonio Road during rush hour — it’s too scary.”
“There’s a good chance that we’ll start looking at private school, God forbid, maybe even BCS,” he said.
About one-fifth of Egan’s students come from Mountain View, and it’s likely that the remaining 80 percent will be driving their children north from Los Altos into the traffic-heavy shopping center for pick-up and drop-off, said parent Robert Burdick. Bullis Charter School draws families from all over the district and most parents drive their kids to the school, he said, so a couple extra traffic stops north won’t make much of a difference to them.
Other parents felt a long-term commitment and a big concession to the charter school would be a mistake at a time when California may be on the cusp of curbing the power of charter schools. They argued Gov. Gavin Newsom and State Superintendent Tony Thurmond are more willing to curtail the ability of charter schools to open and grow, and the state Legislature is currently considering several bills — including AB 1505 and AB 1506 — with the same aim.
With so much in flux, the district could be making a grave error by inking the 10-year agreement, said Bill Bassett, a parent and longtime district resident. The tide has turned, he said, and the playing field will change.
“How are you going to feel if you sign a 10-year agreement and 10 months from now the rules change and it’s on your side?” he said.
Closest to the sentiment in the room was board member Vladimir Ivanovic, who described it as a bad deal where Bullis gets most of what it wants rather than everything it wants. He said he is also convinced that charter school officials can circumvent the enrollment cap with relative ease by splitting Bullis into two charter schools and reconstituting enrollment between the two.
And even if Bullis outright violates the agreement, what can the district really do about it, Ivanovic asked. The district can’t exactly evict 1,111 students with no alternative place to go.
“We don’t have any place to move them,” he said. “What are we going to do if we decide to terminate the agreement? It is a remedy that has no teeth.”
Board member Bryan Johnson, one of two board members who helped craft the agreement with the charter school through a mediator, said he was still uncommitted and didn’t know how he planned to vote.
“I haven’t decided yet whether I think we should go through with this,” he said. “What I haven’t found yet is an option that I’m sure will do less damage to the school district in the short term and the long term.”
While Johnson said he heard the message loud and clear — families do consider Egan a neighborhood school and that relocation amounts to a closure — he worried that Bullis’ growth in the upcoming years amounts to a serious threat that needs to be addressed. He pointed out that Bullis, by growing to about 1,100 students in 2019, is expected to enroll about 20 percent of public school kids, and that the district may be on a path where Bullis itself becomes a “shadow” district sharing district school sites throughout Los Altos.
“I feel like there is an inflection point here about whether BCS is going to be a charter school or a charter school district — a school or a school district,” he said. “As the (Bullis) board president has said repeatedly, they should be able to enroll anyone they want.”
Johnson said he struggles to think of a way to give Bullis its own single school site without displacing another school. The new campus being considered in Mountain View made sense last year when Bullis had an enrollment cap of 900 students, but at 1,100 students, it simply doesn’t fit.
Board president Jessica Speiser and board member Shali Sirkay both argued that whatever decision is made, there needs to be some kind of enrollment cap on Bullis. Sirkay added that it’s a risky move to wait for legislation that has yet to be crafted, let alone passed by the Legislature and approved by the governor, and that Bullis would be allowed to grow in the interim.
“Capping BCS’ enrollment is a top priority,” she said.
The significant opposition to the 10-year agreement Monday evening was hardly a surprise. For hours that morning, several dozen parents and children lined W. Portola Avenue outside of Egan with signs protesting the proposal. Children from nearby elementary schools who would be directly affected participated, and event organizers estimate as many as 150 people showed up during the peak of the four-hour walkout.
Amber MacDonald, a parent and one of the organizers, said she and others were surprised to find out that Egan was on the chopping block as part of the negotiations with Bullis Charter School. After all, when Bullis requested Egan in its entirety in November last year, the district was swift in calling the request unreasonable. An online petition calling to “Save Egan” collected more than 5,000 signatures in the days that followed.
Similarly, a district task force had considered the idea of relocating Egan to the proposed school site in Mountain View in order to make room for Bullis, but the idea was swiftly rejected by a majority of the task force members. Trustees later criticized the task force for even considering it as an option.
“Six months later, we’re at the worst case scenario in a lot of peoples’ heads,” MacDonald said. “Five thousand signatures clearly didn’t mean anything.”
For MacDonald, the San Antonio shopping center in Mountain View just doesn’t seem like a viable home for a junior high school, with the high-density housing and commercial buildings, traffic snarls and a constant churn of people in and out of the area. She believes many families bought homes in Los Altos expecting to go to the school next door, and may choose private school or the charter school instead.
“I don’t feel safe sending my kids there, and that’s not what I envisioned when I moved to Los Altos.”
Peipei Yu, a parent who also attended the walkout, said she felt the 10-year agreement was an admission by the district that it simply couldn’t keep funding another round of lawsuits with the charter school over facilities. She said she understands the desire to end the fighting and sign the agreement in order to stop paying millions of dollars in legal fees, but it feels like the wrong reason to give up a school like Egan, particularly when the charter school lacks the same level of accountability.
“I don’t think we should be making decisions about our children based on who has bigger coffers to purchase attorneys,” Yu said. “I’ve got to trust the (district) board, but I’m unhappy because on the other side, the Bullis Charter School board isn’t publicly elected. They aren’t even elected by their families.”
Turning her sights to the larger debate over charter school power, Yu said she is fighting for reform at the state level, which she said is the source of the problem and the reason why the 10-year agreement is simply hits pause on Bullis’ growth and demands for school facilities.
“The only reason I’m doing this is because I don’t want any other children to go through this,” she said. “I think we absolutely have to have charter school reform, otherwise this is going to keep happening.”
More than a dozen public meetings are scheduled to solicit feedback on the 10-year agreement, which can be viewed here.
This should be the real question:
Why does Bullis Charter School even exist???
@Just Curious, No, I’d say 150 is a huge crowd for a local town issue like this. Compared to the usual number of people showing up, 150 is very much out of the ordinary on the large size, so in comparison, it was a huge turn out.
Perfect! Randy and Jeff- get working on taking private property from the Jesuit’s! You guys are hilarious. Don’t you think these two would have considered every inch west of Foothill BY NOW after 15 years?
When my child was growing up I did not live in a high performing district like LASD so I had to pay tuition for my child to get a great education–why live in LA, and pay taxes if you don’t like the school system? The original intent of charter schools is to provide all kids access to a quality education–especially if they lived in a poor performing district–can anyone from BCS tell me that schools in Los Altos are poor performing? and all the litigation costs have taken more $$ away from the kids..
LASD serves 4000 kids in 4 different cities. They have two junior high schools that each have an attendance area of 8 square miles. Included in the area for Egan is a small quarter square mile on the Mountain View side of El Camino Real. Currently about one third of Egan students cross El Camino to reach Egan for school. It’s not a school in their neighborhood. Egan is only in the neighborhood of maybe 10-20% of the kids who attend Egan. The rest travel to get to school, with many arriving in cars.
Going forward, the population is growing in the Egan attendance area around where the new school is going to be located. There is no change planned for 5 years. During the 5 years, LASD is going to spend $100 Million building a brand new school in the residential area planned for California Street, adjacent to The Crossings.
They have worked out a deal to get $100 Million worth of land for free, so long as it serves kids in that area. So a brand new $200 Million school is being built.
Planning in advance, the district is stating intentions to make use of this beautiful new facility to replace the aging Egan facilities. It will also be located in the neighborhood which provides 50% of its students, as opposed to the current location which is in the neighborhood of 20% of the Egan students.
Sounds like a good deal for Egan to me.
Lucky charter school. For 15 years they have existed in really poorly laid out portable buildings using just under half of the Egan campus. No permanent buildings. Now if they way 6 or 7 more years they will get to use the 65 year old decrepit buildings that were built over the years for Egan. How dare they ask for the worst of the two set of facilities? Who do they think they are. The parents of these 1000 students don’t pay any property taxes at all. How dare they!
So please don’t let it be lost here that there is a consorted effort to try and “Shape up” the public image of Bullis using these very msg boards. Look very hard at msgs that look more like advertisements. Those are the professionals, trying to reshape all the negative public opinion. Bullis is practically a curse word for so many that they know they need to stop the public relations bleeding.
I’ve got a quick question for Wanny Hersey: “If there were zero restrictions, how many students do you THINK you could get to sign onto the Bullis Charter Program?”
I agree that losing a school campus is a bitter pill to swallow but remember that the VAST majority of Bullis Charter students are, in fact, Los Altos residents.
That being said, given unlimited resources there are plenty of places in Los Altos Hills that would be suitable for a school exceeding 1500 – grades K-8. These include the Fenwick Residence, the Poor Clares site (a huge piece of land off Natoma Road) and, of course, the Jesuit Retreat off of University Ave in Los Altos.
DO not claim that these sites cannot be taken. We are within a gnat’s behind of exercising eminent domain and it’s just as easy to seize a piece of property from a religious order as it is from anyone else. A political can of worms? Absolutely. But what do we have now?
The current “site” for the new school is so awful I cannot begin to imagine.
Thanks for listening.
“Huge crowd” is a bit of an exaggeration, isn’t it?
…and event organizers estimate as many as 150 people showed up during the peak of the four-hour walkout.
Clarification for Just Curious: The “huge crowd” was in reference to last night’s LASD board meeting, which was unbelievably packed full of parents and community members. 150 was in reference to the rally outside of Egan yesterday morning, which I’d say is pretty large for busy working parents during rush hour and those with small children, whom this would affect.
Let’s not forget, the original idea for the 10th school site at the San Antonio Shopping Center was to put BCS there. If the site isn’t OK for 7-8 now, was it ever OK for BCS’s K-8 kids?
For 15 years, what BCS has wanted is equitable and equivalent facilities to operate a public school. For 15 years, LASD and their political patrons have fought to deny them this. Now here we are.
@ Politics
First of all, BCS doesn’t care about equitable facilities. The single reason they are in existence is to punish LASD for closing Bullis Purissima School years ago. Their mission is to get the district to hand over a school to them.
As for “equitable” facilities, how, exactly, is handing over a junior high school to a school with predominately k-6 children attending, “fair and equitable” to the rest of the children in the district? If this deal goes through, every other child in the district will have inferior facilities to BCS. That is unacceptable.
@ concerned taxpayer
You are right to question why BCS is even here. The reason is that a bunch of disgruntled parents with deep pockets decided they would work the loopholes in the charter law to punish the district that made a decision they didn’t like. They have been punishing the district ever since. They don’t care about the effect on the children, whose community they had damaged and whose schools have had less money due to frivolous lawsuits filed by the charter. It’s hard to have sympathy for the down-trodden BCS students when they go on field trips to China. Meanwhile, the district children generally stay within the confines of the state. Hardly “equitable”.
It is interesting to note that Mountain View City Council appears to be manipulating this situation a fair amount. Is it true that they have made it impossible for the charter to be placed on the new site due to restrictions they have placed on the deal? Why is it that this “deal” sounds remarkably like what Margaret Abe-Koga said should be done, despite vocal opposition from the parents of the district children? It sounds like she is the puppet master here.
It is notable that the MVCC endorsed Tanya Raschke in the election before last for LASD board despite the fact that she is a BCS parent and no LASD parents are on the BCS board. I don’t know who they endorsed, if anyone, in the last election, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was Ying Liu, the BCS candidate. Why is the Mountain View Council so cozy with BCS? Do they have their thumb on the scale with regard to this deal?
Also, why is the “task force” that came up with this idea made up of three BCS representatives and only two from LASD? How is that “fair and equitable? LASD has far more students, yet BCS has a bigger voice in this decision. Once again, this seems biased against the children in LASD.
There are several other possibilities that have yet to be considered here and they should be. NONE of the LASD schools should be moved or closed for the benefit of BCS. This “deal” is not a compromise. It doesn’t even get a permanent cap on BCS enrollment at the cost of a beloved campus. It looks like capitulation, but I suspect there is far more to it. The board may be trying to avoid the inevitable lawsuit that would result from BCS not getting to take over a school from the district (their goal), but there may be more to it.
We need to know how much more of this iceberg lies beneath the surface.
I noted one person talked about “taking away the Jesuit retreat.”
The retreat is a huge piece of spectacular property and, honestly, it isn’t used much. A school would use the property, in its entirety, for nine or ten months every single year.
The Jesuits are a great bunch of folks (I’m an alumni of Santa Clara University) but our local community has a great need of this property. Has anyone even ASKED the Jesuit community if they would consider such a request?
PS: My son was trained by the Jesuits at St. Mary’s of Moraga and his opinion mirrors mine, the Jesuit community is awesome!
And as far as the LASD Board looking at all possible properties available, I’d be stunned if they’d ever considered the Jesuit Retreat or the Poor Clares site.
Bring it on! Rally up the troops to move BCS to one of those beautiful sites! Don’t wait. Voting in a few weeks. Save Egan. Yeah.
For most of the public charter school legal fights here – the law firm DWK was the advisor/litigation attorney for LASD. DWK often lost. But DWK loves to fight against charters – they get paid, win or loose and they do not accept charter schools to represent (ever).
https://www.dwkesq.com/practices/charter-schools/
Has the LASD now changed their lawyers – to ones that are willing to negotiate or mediate an agreement? Is DWK now sidelined? [ MVWSD’s Superintendent has chosen DWK representation in his “legal fight” ]
Same questions for Bullis Charter School – do they now have legally competent “negotiators/mediators” (have they abandoned their lawyer/fighters?)
My guess is that Mountain View is going to tell the Charter School folks to take a hike – considering that the Charter “bagged” Mountain View this year.
I shouldn’t make so many comments but I’m a retired Los Altos School Teacher, know Wanny Hersey quite well, and hopefully have maintained a neutral attitude.
But I am STUNNED at the TOTAL failure of LASD to deal with their $150 million bond that was awarded many years ago. They’ve just (essentially) been sitting on the money without a conceivable idea in sight. Heck, I had plenty of ideas. So did many other teachers, not only in Los Altos but in Mountain View and Palo Alto.
So what happened? Where did the leadership go? Where is the leadership today?
Somebody needs to call up the ghost of General Patton and get him going on it. Things would be solved in about 30 minutes, at the most. If that’s not possible ask a 4th grader what to do. He / she probably have a perfect solution.
Thanks for listening.
The district started to make vague efforts to acquire new land over 7 years ago. They had the idea that they could pay $2 Million per acre and get land in the San Antonio area or elsewhere. Well, they found out that even in the sticks the land costs more than that and it was increasing every year in the San Antonio area. They spent a lot of time trying to get land in all sorts of places. This continued after they got Measure N approved. About 3 years ago now, they got a grasp on the potential of this TDR process, but they spent time looking at various sites in the San Antonio area once more. Some were too small, and many had projects pending. For some unknown reason they initially ruled out the Federal Realty property without giving it a serious analysis. They spent a long time going after the Greystar project that was much less suitable and much more expensive for them had they tried to condemn it for public use. Greystar was not interested in selling as they were very close to beginning construction. Greystar though pointed them at Federal Realty who turned out to be actually receptive to the idea of a friendly condemnation. That’s what they are working on now, but it turns out even friendly condemnations take time.
All this effort caused them to take notice of the population explosion in the San Antonio area, and they mixed in concern for that with the previous problem of finding a long term solution for BCS. 7 years ago this was 10-12 years in the future. Now it is only 5 years away from being realized that the NEC population is significantly greater than it has been (fairly steady) over the past 10 years.
Had they rushed ahead with work for BCS, the wouldn’t have prepared to deal with the San Antonio property growth. If the Egan move goes through, they will have organized things to handle the growth in the San Antonio (NEC) area. But there are a lot short sided people in the community who still deny that this is a consideration. They don’t even realize Mountain View kids go to Egan, let alone turn into 50% of the population within 5-7 years.
So poor Bullis just sits and waits while the district debates whether or not to plan ahead for the NEC growth, and what might be done about it. This in spite of Federal Realty, Greystar and the city of Mountain View agreeing to cooperate to the point that the land on California Avenue will be essentialy free of any cost to LASD.
It’s like the monkey banging on a typewriter. LASD is maybe doing good without knowing just WHAT they are doing, or at least without sharing it with the community at large along the way. Everything is BCS BCS BCS. The ignored issue is NEC NEC NEC. The people in Los Altos around Egan are so entitled that they can’t see they are sabotaging the future good of the NEC area by their unreasonable complaints.
@LongResident. Thank you. It is often hard for a parent of a student at a close-by school, to see the issues of Best For the Whole Community. We had it in MVWSD, when an old Bd. of Trustees was so concerned with SEC. (South of El Camino = Bubb and Huff and Graham Middle school. 1/5 of the population of the district, and 1/4 of the students)
Eventually, when less SEC people were on the Bd, and more NOT (North of the Tracks) the dynamics of Best For the Whole Community started to change, the Bd. was more representative of the entire MVWSD / not just SEC. It takes Trustees who are not Narrow in their Thinking and seeing for the best long term interests of All the Community to emerge. It is not easy, it is never easy!
In LASD, it seems to me, that community also includes NEC and the families that live there (& BCS students). The Board of LASD (minus Ivan the Terrible) seem to understand that better now. God bless them. May they have “a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence” to guide them through this difficult time.
@James Thurber. BCS has 1100+ students now and says it has a waiting list that will let it grow to as much as 1800 over several more years. [Egan has 600-700.] Over the years, a number of folks from LAH have tried to interest LASD trustees in buying land in beautiful LAH. I think it never appealed to the trustees…because they have been selling us on “enrollment growth” caused by housing development in the MV part of the LASD, affectionately called NEC, North of El Camino. The rationale to buy land in NEC is because there are lots of kids concentrated there.
They have population density maps to prove it.
http://losaltospolitico.com/2019/04/moving-egan-makes-sense
and data here https://www.lasdschools.org/files/user/1/file/New%20Housing%20and%20Its%20Impacts%20on%20Housing.pdf
https://www.lasdschools.org/files/user/1/file/Demographic%20Findings.pdf
@ Steve Nelson. It is interesting that the MVWSD Superintendent Rudolph is using the DWK pitbull law firm used by prior LASD boards to now litigate against the BullisMV… which isn’t even an authorized charter yet! It’s just an unsigned charter petition.
@A.Source
“a resident of another community”
Just say “a parent of the BCS community”
“It is interesting that the MVWSD Superintendent Rudolph is using the DWK pitbull law firm used by prior LASD boards to now litigate against the BullisMV…”
I would call it a sign of wisdom.
If you’re forced to go up against a group of people who have spent years litigating against school districts, why wouldn’t you want a law firm with the most experience in such law-suits?
I would be concerned if Dr. Rudolph hired a real-estate lawyer for the job, wouldn’t you find that to be a wreckles choice?
“which isn’t even an authorized charter yet!”
Actually, after the Dec 20th MVWSD Board meeting vote to authorize BMV, the BMV leadership sent a happy letter to the MVWSD thanking them for the approval and then BMV went on to take many other steps that they could ONLY LEGALLY take if they had in fact been authorized by the MVWSD.
The BMV leadership did and said everything you would expect of a charter that had been authorized and was now in the process of getting ready for an opening. The BMV leadership even set up an all day meeting with Rudolph and the District staff to go over implementation details on March 22nd (date?).
The BMV leadership then publicaly canceled at the last minute NOT by notifying the MVWSD, but by putting out a press release, which is how Dr. Rudolph found out about the canceled meeting. Then the BMV told other people and LASTLY BMV notified Dr. Rudolph the meeting was off and BMV was not going to open this fall.
” It’s just an unsigned charter petition.”
Funny how it took BMV until March to decide to play things that way.
From Dec 20th until March, BMV did everything as if they knew they had been lawfully authorized.
@Bullis Paid Msg Boarders
“So please don’t let it be lost here that there is a consorted effort to try and “Shape up” the public image of Bullis using these very msg boards.”
Not to worry, if the known behavior of BCS were not bad enough to permanently poison their name, here comes BMV, Bullis Mountain View, leadership who has once again reinforced the long-standing public perception of the name “Bullis”.
BMV leadership has pretty much made any outside voices of either bias pointless. It is futile to try to rehabilitate the Bullis name and the anti-charter people from LASD or other counties are irrelevant to the people of the MVWSD.
It’s always obvious when posters are nothing but shills for one side or the other and their claims don’t mean a thing. Only the actions of BCS and BMV leaders matters and we all see those clearly.
Bullis is a poisoned brand and only BMV and BCS leaders themselves can change that.
Look very hard at msgs that look more like advertisements. Those are the professionals, trying to reshape all the negative public opinion. Bullis is practically a curse word for so many that they know they need to stop the public relations bleeding.
ST Resident overlooks the fact that the main purpose of moving Egan is to get it California Avenue in Mountain View. LASD sought new land to address population growth in that part of Mountain View. Already there are 170 residents of that area among Egan’s 550 students. But the number is set to grow, at least according to the LASD board. They begged the Mountain View city council for help with this population growth. They never said a word about Bullis.
They got the land, and now they can build a new expanded school. They like small elementary schools, just like MVWSD and ST Parent. The LASD average elementary size at present is 450 students, much like MVWSD’s goal. So the LASD Board notices that Egan is in bad shape and they want to prepare to move 6th grade onto Egan in the future and have a more up to snuff school facility. So they decide to give the beautiful new campus on which they are prepared to spend $100 Million to Egan. So the leftovers in 5-7 years can go to Bullis and solve another problem.
ST parent should realize that comments may all be about Bullis but the real beneficiaries of the new school will be the people in Mountain View around California Street on both sides of San Antonio Road. They attend LASD schools and have no neighborhood school in the area at present. But there are 700 K-8 kids living there and the LASD forecast is for over 1000 within 5 years from now.