Thank you for posting this. Somehow I'm not surprised.

BTW, Mr. Kasperzak is still on the Council, and is not being termed out this election.

Mtn. View would be much, much better off if Mr. Kasperzak would stay out of Mtn. View politics as well. My dream come true would be his resignation from the Mtn. View City Council so he wouldn't be constantly overriding what the residents of Mtn. View keep begging for and not getting, thanks in large part to him.

People don't understand about Bullis Charter school. It is an LASD school. It is not one of the county-wide chartered, although its charter is overseen by the County Office of Education. The actual SPONSOR of this charter is LASD. Almost all of the funds come from LASD. 95% of the students reside in LASD. There is a complete enrollment priority for LASD residents. The students come from the attendance areas of every one of the 9 LASD schools, elementary or Junior High.

The story with Bullis Charter is that it was formed by LASD parents who wanted a better option available in the district. This option is not available county-wide, like some of the other charters. It is directed at LASD Residents, funded by LASD Residents, and it innovates for the benefit of LASD students. Many families are initially enrolled in LASD school and switch their child at year end to Bullis Charter the following year. They always have more interested children than they have spaces. We're talking about as many as 300 students on the lists in case a spot at their particular grade level opens up.

However, despite this, LASD has held space limitations over the charter's heads. They have forced the charter to expand only at a very slow rate. Going forward there are going to be fewer new spaces each year for these children who desire to switch to the Charter. This was forced by restrictions provided by LASD.

We can ask the questions, what options can LASD add to make it more attractive to those who are trying to get one of the open spots? There are few variations in programs within LASD. One option would be to create specialized programs within the district at various locations. Foreign language options are very popular among those chosing Bullis Charter. Students all study Mandarin in the lower grades and when they get older they have the option to switch to Spanish in the upper elementary grades. The LASD schools offer no Spanish at all in the elementary grades. Their only Mandarin programs are separate from the school, cost extra, and are done outside normal hours.

It seems like Bullis Charter is very much something which is part and parcel of LASD, having existed for the past 11 years and being very successfull--a National Blue Ribbon School this year.

Sounds like the original poster doesn't believe in freedom of speech. Yes, let's just silence the opposition. It would be so much easier to get out way.

To David R-
BCS is NOT a LASD school.
LASD is required to provide facilities to BCS and transfer the state mandated per student funds.

I apologize for the comments by "DavidR" above. He is being extremely misleading on the nature of our charter school. Spreading these transparent lies are hurting our kids, so let's break down his deceptions:

"People don't understand about Bullis Charter school. It is an LASD school."

Actually, this is untrue. Our beloved charter school is privately run and it's board meetings are confidential and not shared with the public. The Sunshine laws that are applied to the truly public school leadership does not apply here.

"There is a complete enrollment priority for LASD residents. "
This is untrue or at best misleading. What does "complete enrollment priority" mean? Complete? Does that mean top priority? If you read our enrollment FAQ here: Web Link you will see that the #1 priority for enrollment is "Siblings of current Bullis Charter School students who reside within the boundaries of the Los Altos School District". The #2 priority is "...students who reside within the boundaries of the former Bullis-Purissima Elementary School attendance area..."

For 11 years, we have ran our private-yet-taxpayer-funded school with these top priorities. Recently, the county (with direction from the court) has forced us to phase out this preference, which is unfortunate. The Bullis-Purissima is the wealthiest portion of the school district and since there is a correlation between wealth and high academic performance, it allowed us to minimize taking kids from lower economic areas that would negatively affect our test scores. Our opponents called this "creaming"--the recruitment of the best performers to influence performance results. I say it is just good business!

"The students come from the attendance areas of every one of the 9 LASD schools, elementary or Junior High."

Yes, there has been some recruitment from outside the elite Bullis-Purissima Elementary School attendance area, but I can assure you that currently it is minimal. As stated above, this will unfortunately change since the court has ruled against us and forced us to phase out our elite-area recruitment strategy.

"The story with Bullis Charter is that it was formed by LASD parents who wanted a better option available in the district."

Well, just to be clear here. The real reason we formed our school is that when our district fell on hard economic times, a school needed to be closed. They foolishly chose to target the school with the fewest number of students without looking at the wealth and influence of the parents involved. The plan was to open up a private school to service the elite, but someone came up with the idea of having this funded by taxpayer dollars! Brilliant! The LASD school board didn't want to do it, so we used our influence on the county and they forced the school district to accept and pay for our kids private education.

So, please listen to Kaspersak and elect Swann to the board. Since the court has ruled against us and we have signed a 5 year peace treaty (no lawsuits) with the public school district, our only recourse is to take it over. That would allow us to separate the wheat from the chaff. We could segregate our high performing or wealthy children in their own schools and the less affluent kids can be together. The middle-class kids feel so much pressure from their betters, it's not fair to them. Likewise, why hold back our elite students by mixing them with their future employees? How is it fair to them?

Just to be perfectly clear, I have no objection to the existence of Bullis Charter School. Choice is a great thing. I have no problem with having more rather than less.

What I DO object to are the tactics of the board of the charter school in their dealings with the district and in their attitude toward the focus of the district.

The constant litigation in the past years has done nothing to improve the educational experience of the children of the district, either public or charter, since all that has done is drain both organization of funds that could be better spent educating the children. Since the charter school has been the instigator of the bulk of the litigation, I can only conclude that the real goal is not the education of ALL the children. It is either to get better facilities for the charter kids than are enjoyed by the other children in the district, to precipitate the closing of a district school so it can be used by the charter, or both.

I have been hoping that the recent deal to halt litigation for the next five years is an honorable one. I am aware that the BCS charter is up for renewal in 2016. I hope that the peaceful coexistence currently can be a real one, since that would be best for everyone. What I fear is that, should the county renew the charter for BCS, the district will be served with more court papers the next day. The cycle of litigation will continue as in the past and, once again, the children, ALL of them, will pay the price.

It is clear that the current desire of BCS to grow to a much larger size is not in keeping with either their original ideas or with how LASD chooses to distribute capacity. If the desire they have expressed to cooperate is real, I suggest that they, in good faith, appoint an LASD parent WITHOUT BCS ties to sit on their board. It is unreasonable to have BCS proponents sitting on a school board that represents the children of the rest of the district when there is no voice for the LASD children on THEIR board. They claim to be a public school but public schools have democratically elected boards. Theirs is not. It isn't even elected by the parents of BCS children. It is appointed.

How about walking the talk?

BCS Parent:

Striving to keep middle class kids way from their "betters" is narrow minded. People can be better or worse for numerous reasons, with various abilities, skills, talents, etc. Test scores focus on so little, ignoring intuition, artistic abilities, and so much more, but mainly speed of thought over power of thought. The most important questions are not even asked within too homogeneous of groups. And your assumption that the middle class kids should not have to mix with the people they will later be working for is way out there. Did the two Steves, who started Apple in their garage, work for the "betters"?

These two groups must be kept separate, in case of what? That they might actually develop friendships and better understanding between them? Wouldn't that help when working together? Or I guess you would say "working under someone"?

In the school in which you shield the generally less scholastically achieving children, for their own good, from exposure to their "betters," you do this solely on the basis of their parents' incomes instead of on the basis of the developing person's actual school performance? This basis is guaranteed to exclude some of the greatest original thought out there and also to include some of the most seriously anti-authority youths to be found, as powerless children of the rich are a social group most completely hidden from public view and out of reach of any one or agency that might be able to help them, no matter how serious their problems are. And you are glad to keep it just like that. Yet scholastic achievement is so far from being all that is important for success in life or business, or for achieving happiness or fame or much of anything really. Highest scholastic achievers are quite narrow conformists. Break out geniuses benefit from their broad exposures in their developmental years. You have many examples to choice from to evidence this, like Einstein for one, with his socioeconomic background and really poor grades in school.

It's as though you are almost scared your "better" kids (they must be better if you have more money) would lose instead of gain from broader social contacts. Your fear of the invisible contamination from the less rich is akin to being scared of kuddies. Please educate yourself.

That "BCS Parent" posting is a spoof and a parody. He's not really a BCS parent. He does this all the time.

The various schools in LASD, BCS included, have different distributions of various populations, including abilities, skills, talents, etc. Even more so, the programs and teacher complement for each school vary. You get a huge emphasis on student drama productions at Almond because of the staff, not the kids. You get fancy tech lab gear at Gardner because of the parents, not the kids. (That's ironic, because where the kids could use a bit more of that, the parent don't realize it and so that school doesn't get the fancy tech gear.) In both cases, the fancy tech gear is only as good as the educational programs that are created with it.

This is why allowing parents to select from a variety of programs is good. This is why "psr" is wrong in saying he finds fault with the BCS board members. All the BCS board members can do is react to the attacks from the LASD administration. They don't want a charter school because it's a threat because it gives a choice to parents who don't want them to run the school programs for their child. They deny BCS just reasonable sharing of legacy facilities which belong to the LASD kids, for their education. The reason LASD has to provide the facilities sharing to BCS is because the law says they must not discriminate because these kids are in a choice program. They are just as much LASD kids as the kids at the traditional LASD programs. That's the law. LASD doesn't have to provide facilities to any of the county-wide Rocketship Charter programs, even if they do enroll some LASD kids.

Bullis is not OPERATED by LASD, but it is financially SPONSORED by LASD. LASD even has to pay a varying public financing share of the costs for non-LASD kids who enroll at BCS. Even so, they do everything in their power to make sure slots are not occupied entirely by kids who would otherwise be at traditional LASD programs, by falsely painting BCS as the opposition to LASD. That's not what BCS is. Competition and choice don't mean fighting. LASD makes it into a fight due to the self interests of the administrators.

DavidR is completely correct when he writes:
"Bullis is not OPERATED by LASD, but it is financially SPONSORED by LASD."

That is what I love about our charter school. The school district has little influence over what BCS does, but they have to pay for it! That was the brilliance of our interpretation of Prop 39. Or course, that law was passed to help innovate solutions in badly performing school districts and we are so happy to leverage the loophole that allows our elite private school to receive taxpayer funds.

As DavidR also wrote: "LASD even has to pay a varying public financing share of the costs for non-LASD kids who enroll at BCS."
So, we have students that are coming from outside the school district that is funding it into the BCS system and LASD has to pay for them! Another brilliant strategy from our foundation!

DavidR and I see eye-to-eye on many things. We love our elite private school and want to keep it elite and publicly funded (of course!) I just wish he would be honest in his writings. This talk about "choice" is a red herring. Of course more choice is available if you spend more money on each student. If BCS were to encompass all of the students in LASD, then taxes would have to sharply go up. The secret donations through the foundation can only go so far and bringing in the lower-classed students would result in a lower per-student annual "voluntary" donation. So, either the programs would have to be reduced in expense or more taxes would have to be raised.

So please.. Like DavidR says: Vote for Swann!

psr definitely has an opinion that many LASD parents with kids in school share. It's a very closed minded opinion with reliance on "facts" fed to them by fear-mongering parents. With no knowledge of Mr. Swan or Mrs. McClatchie psr has attributed a biased view to them. I understand psr that you are marching lock step with the haters of BCS. The smear campaign is heard loud and clear.

I hope that there are parents out there with kids attending an LASD school that wants to think for themselves instead of hunkering down into the prejudice and fear mongerin. I hope these parents would take the chance to hear a message directly from the candidates instead of listening to flaming gossip like this.

I'm also a MV parent with a child in LASD schools but I am glad that there 2 candidates that have a vested interest in creating a successful resolution for ALL LASD kids, not just the ones who happen to live close to a "neighborhood" school. Talk with those candidates and you'll find that they care about all students. I'm sorry that this scares you psr and you feel the need to smear them.

Don't worry your child will be out of LASD in a few years and you won't care any more about it. Too bad with fear mongering like this the district won't have a fair resolution by then either.

Back to a response about the actual article above - I too was a horrified recipient of such a call. How about an explanation - how would John Swan, a LAH resident, actually better represent Mountain View? Electing Mr Swan won't actually help pass measure N, nor will it solve the problem that MV City Council has (and CONTINUES) to create for LASD, which is to crowd our schools with no effort to limit growth or provide land / space for a school in NEC. So please, stay off of my phone. This is disgraceful.

Mr. Blossom Valley Resident--

You are WRONG. The student growth in LASD is NOT the fault or responsibility of the MV City Council. I assume you mean in the San Antonio Center, when you speak of MV as as a source of growth. But the facts do not bear out your accusation. Units added in the San Antonio Center area have a student yield of 1 student per 6 units. Elsewhere in LASD, the yield is 1 student per 3 units.

The truth is that the growth in LASD has been nearly uniform throughout the district since 2003. The bump rap given to the San Antonio Center area stems from population growth between 1996 and 2003. I would speculate that this was caused by replacing a large shopping center (the old Mill) with the type of residential development that does yield 1 student per 3 units. There's no longer any chance of that repeating.

It's false accusations like that (Blaming the MV city council) that likely motivated Dr. Kaspersak's thoughts. Surely John Swan is a more rational voice for the LASD board. And as a non-resident of Los Altos, he would clearly be more representative of the fellow minority (40%) of LASD who are NOT residents of the city of Los Altos.

Another thing to keep in mind with regard to San Antonio Center residential growth is this timeline:

1950's LASD opens the Portola Elementary School in Los Altos but which serves also the LASD territory north El Camino Real

1970's Old Mill Condos are built in the LASD NEC area and attend Portola School
Shopping Center at Old Mill is in decline and starts getting used for offices as well as retail.

1980's Shopping Center Old Mill continues decline as retail center despite efforts to revive it
LASD closed the Portola Elementary School despite potential for residential growth in NEC Mountain View
1990's Old Mill Shopping Center is redeveloped as The Crossings residential area

Today Student density in NEC LASD is growing at the same rate as the rest of the district.

We definitely need a Bullis Charter School advocate on the LASD BOT. Here's one of the reasons we surrendered to the LASD school district and gave up our right to bring frivolous lawsuits:

From late 2011:
"After sometimes-strident discussion, the Santa Clara County Board of Education voted 5-2 to approve Bullis Charter School's request to operate for five more years, through June 2017.

The board placed some conditions on its approval, including broader recruitment of students, although the language of the restrictions has yet to be worked out.

Critics of the charter, including trustee Anna Song, wanted the board to delay approval Wednesday night in order to persuade Bullis to change admission preferences, commit to enrolling more underserved students, drop its current lawsuit against the Los Altos School District and submit to binding arbitration with the school district. Bullis backers have sued the district four times.
Song and trustee Grace Mah dissented in the vote.

Song believes that the school did not comply with state rules that charters serve academically struggling students, and that it acts more like a private school by leaning on parents to donate $5,000 a year plus, for fifth- and sixth-grade students, pay about $2,000 for annual field trips..."

So, you can see that since we have not followed state law and have been deliberately excluding students from lower economic strata, we were in danger of losing our charter. Fine--we changed our policies. Hopefully if we can get a BCS supporter like Swan on the board, then we can push the agenda for our publicly funded private school.

@BCS Parent who is not really a BCS Parent. I am worried about you and think your loved ones need to do an intervention. Please take care of yourself. Spend some time with your family away from the computer. If you have medicine that you are not taking please consider taking it.

No one at BCS thinks the things you are writing. You sound very bitter and kinda mean. I hope you get help and find some peace.

Is this not true? Did not the Santa Clara County Board of Education influence the charter school to phase out their exclusionary Bullis-Purissima Elementary School neighborhood priority? It sounds like those are the facts--no medication needed to see the truth.