Where's the con side. This one ignores that LASD is heading toward a 20% increase in average school size..... Too much rush. Their plan removes small neighborhood school from the landscape and assumes all can reach the max size concurrently. This has never before been achieved!

Web Link

The reality is that TWO school sites are needed-one for Bullis Charter and a second for the ever growing enrollment north of el camino. If LASD does not buy land for the latter NOW it will never happen as 5 years from now all available sites that are large enough will have been fully developed. And unfortunately the district cannot float another bond for 10 years. The district may not have funds to build a NEC school now, but acquiring the land is critical, as is meeting the needs of the Charter school. Everything else on the district wish list has to be secondary. I keep waiting for a clear statement from the LASD board on this matter-and I wait and I wait and I wait.

625 at every single elementary school at once and 875 in middle school with tk through 5 and 6-8 schools. Even more if san Antonio area is changed to add more residential. this is just 2018. Bigger still after.

Finding a site for growth is primary. The district wish list is secondary. It's all in the facility priority document (Web Link LASD has been clear about this for a long time.

It's also in the article "The first priority is to accommodate growing enrollment. The second priority for the bond is to complete the repairs and improvements".

Growth? It's not growth to find a new site and relocate BCS's 700 kids onto that site. For growth you have to accommodate ADDITIONAL kids, not shuffle around some of the ones who have existing on a site for years. What you should do is to build permanent buildings for BCS on the existing locations and then to handle the expected 1000 students worth of growth, you do need to build 1 or 2 completely new sites. Otherwise, what do you do with these 1000 new kids?

No solution can happen without passing the bond. Find or build a permanent facility for BCS, you need a bond. Accommodate the growth North of El Camino, you need a bond. Accommodate existing populatoin and future growth throughout the district, you need a bond. No bond now means growing our schools as is in the presence of future growth, packing even more kids on the same crowded land. Postponing a bond for later makes it even more difficult and costly to handle the increased growth and with the less land that is then available. BCS, LASD, and our property values all benefit from this bond.

Here is why I can't support the bond:

They are planning to spend money on real estate. They do not to need to do this. It is just that they don't have the guts to do what should be done:

1. Move BCS to Covington. ( small cost there - might need a few portables added )
2. Move the six graders to the middle schools - could use current BCS buildings - or install new classrooms at those sites. ( some cost there, depending on how many permanent buildings are installed)
3. Redraw attendance boundaries - divide Covington to Santa Rita, Almond, Springer, Loyola and Gardner. ( Covington parents will be angry, but they will all still have a neighborhood school to attend, many will be able to walk to that school)
4. If needed build a new school, serving part of the NEC at the current Egan site.

You know what is great about this plan? It doesn't cost that much. In fact this plan would leave enough bond funds to take care of the nice to have projects at most of the other schools. If the bond doesn't pass this plan could still be inacted, but I would leave off number 4. Just like BCS, no school should have to exist for a long period of time in portables.

I agree with the other BCS proponents that hate this bond measure. Did you know that in the first year, how many Starbucks coffees will this assessment rob me of per week? It's 6 bucks for the cup I drink (YMMV), so on a $2,000,000 (assessed) house that would be $600/year. That's 100 coffees over the year, so with 52 weeks in a year, this assessment will cost me 1.92 Starbucks coffee/week. Let's call it 2.

I'm sorry, but 2 coffees/week is A BIG PRICE TO PAY FOR OUR CHILDREN'S EDUCATION.

If you love Starbucks, you will vote No.

It's That Simple.

Tax Payers idea will result in increased crowding at every site and close down an entire community school. Most of our schools are crowded out into portables, with many classes not in permanent facilities. No one in this community truly believes that overcrowding to save a few "starbucks drinks a week" is worth the result of impacting the future of our students success.

We are blessed to live in a community that can afford this bond and recognize the value of education.

The plan out lined above would not crowd schools for the following reasons:

1. Moving six grade to the middle schools opens up space at every LASD school reducing enrollment at those schools by 50 - 80 students at each school.

2. Enrollment is declining in the lower grades. District wide there is almost an additional school's worth of students in grades 5-8. Loyola had only two kindergarten classes last year.

3. Nothing wrong with having portables as classrooms, LASD considers them reasonably equivalent to regular classrooms. Doug Smith believes that they are actually superior. In any event, most students would likely spend only one year in a portable, if at all.

4. If a bond does pass, money could be spent building a fantastic, state of the art school at the Egan Campus for a portion of the NEC and North Los Altos, WITH OUT spending money on real estate.

5. As BCS grows, LASD shrinks.


I would vote for the bond if they were not planning on spending half of it on real estate that isn't for sale. Really dumb plan. The number one priority shouldn't be to add assets. Schools are an asset, not real estate. Use the property that is already owned by the District don't buy new land. Use Covington fully. Use Gardner fully. Use Egan. Move the district office. Many ways to solve this problem with out purchasing real estate.

Your argument is wrong, as much as Roode is wrong on most of the incoherent rambling in his No Campaign website. Enrollment is up throughout the schools, including kindergarten. Enrollment will continue to grow especially if more transitional kindergarteners enroll. Adding 6th graders to the Jr High sites will require a significant investment to increase the facilities to accommodate. No one said the bond has to buy new real estate. Reconfiguring existing sites is an option in the language of the bond priority. No matter what is decided and done, nothing can be afforded without the bond and kicking the can down the road makes it more costly.

Here are the District Enrollments for 2013 - 2014 - as reported to the state of California.

Kindergarten 456
First 447
Second 471
Third 509
Fourth 529
Fifth 526
sixth 533
seventh 551
eighth 528

Based on those enrollments - here are estimated 2014 - 15 enrollments


Kindergarten ?
First 456
Second 447
Third 471
Fourth 509
Fifth 529
sixth 526
seventh 533
eighth 551

As you can see the numbers are trending down. There are 100 more students in eighth grade than there are in first grade. Luckily there is room at the middle schools, room enough to move sixth grade there and give them better access to age appropriate facilities. I This problem may be even more pronounced as BCS added classes to several grades at the BCS Egan Campus - younger students that most likely came from various LASD schools. The good news for LASD is that even if you distributed Covington to other campuses, you would still end up with small schools, 500 or less students at each campus.

Before the district can enter into binding negotiations with property owners, a war chest of funds is needed. Without this, the district will lose out to other bidders who have the money lined up. Can you imagine a property owner having to choose to sell to:
a) a private developer with financing locked. or
b) a local government entity that needs to wait until the next election cycle to go out to the voters and ask for money

Which would you sell to?

Property values tend to go up over time and they are going up drastically. I guess we could wait 5 or 10 years and pay 2x the purchase price plus a lot higher interest rate on the bond (yes, bond rates WILL go up in the future).

We know we are going to DESPERATELY need more facilities in the future. Economy is strong (at least locally), interest rates incredibly low and the property values will likely not come down anytime soon, so why wait? What is the true motive of the naysayer(s) to fight this?

@ Smarter -

We might DESPERATELY need a place to house BCS, especially if LASD would like to move sixth graders to the middle schools.

The NEC neighborhood and the North End might DESPERATELY need a school for the growth on both sides of the El Camino Real.

We do not DESPERATELY need to purchase property.
We do not DESPERATELY need to build a war chest.
We do not DESPERATELY need to buy property that isn't for sale and isn't actually large enough for a school, even if it was for sale.
We do not DESPERATELY need to spend 70 to 90 million dollars of a 150 million dollar bond purchasing real estate.

What we DESPERATELY need is to go with scenario #2 - using existing sites to create new schools. It can be done as I outlined above.

What we DESPERATELY need is logical thinking. What we have are some people who DESPERATELY want to play Wheeler Dealer Real Estate Tycoon, with the tax payers money.

Hmm..Tax Payer.. So you are saying that with the school properties today, that that will last us for the next 50 years? There will not be significant population growth in LASD? From the data you provided, it does seem like enrollment is not taking off..but is the last two years sufficient data to forecast?

Looking at this data: Web Link
it seems the number of students have grown over the last 20+ years:

1990 2972
2000 3931
2010 4384
=======
47.5%

Of course, this excludes the charter school students, so the growth within LASD is even more substantial.

So, that's just looking at the data. I guess you could argue that past performance is no guarantee of the future, so let's just look around us and see what's what. With the pressure to build a lot of high density residential (and the state law to back it up with court enforcement), it only makes sense that growth will continue to climb at this rate, if not an even steeper one.

Curious is this bond an extreme burden for you? It looks like that for most people it's the equivalent of a couple cups of coffee/week. I still wonder at the motive for rejecting the bill? Some citizens will vote No for any tax increases, but I still think there is more going on here.

I am voting "YES" on N for the following reasons:

1) To stop the endless bickering about BCS taking away a school site from LASD kids.

2) To keep property values high by ensuring that LASD is still one of the most desirable school districts in our area.

3) To keep local schools as small as possible which creates a better community for our children.