Thank you MV voice for printing this. I am a kinder Parent at Huff and my child has one of the new teachers. I find it alarming that Trustee Chaing lives in MV and yet teaches outside of MV and sends his kids to school outside of MV also. If he was really invested in MV schools, why does he not send his kids to MV schools?

Why are the school board members not aware of the enrollment numbers to begin with? Is that not part of their job? Why did we parents know the high enrollment numbers back in June and the school board did not? I hope the Inter Super stands by his word that the kids in the kinder class rooms with the new teachers get the more experienced 1st grade teachers next year and that they don't allow anymore new students into this kinder class level for this year and next year. I have informed real estate friends that they need to let potential buyers with school aged kids looking at houses in the area that even thought they might buy the home that does not mean their kids automatically get into the school as it depends on the enrollment numbers.

It is important for parents to realize that there is an indiscernible difference between having 25 and 27 students in a class. This issue boils down to splitting hairs. Your child will succeed if he or she is supported at home. Your child will not succeed if you have a hands off attitude and say, "Well, that's the teacher's job" in regards to teaching children.

If parents want their children to succeed, volunteering in the classroom is a great way to be a part of your child's education. Some of the parents that are complaining are noticeably absent from the classroom. Should a school rely on parent volunteers? Perhaps not. But we are a community, and these kids are our future, we all owe them an investment of our time and expertise.

Oh boy.

Back when my kids went to Huff, there was "class size reduction" (special funding, I think) with a limit of 20 kids in K-3 and then the big move up to 30 kids in 4th and 5th grade. 27 is WAY too many kids for a kindergarten classroom, that is just unacceptable. History tells us that with this district, parents will have to do something extreme, like "go on strike" and keep their kids home from school, to get any action from this district.

@be part of, actually there is a discernible difference with larger class sizes. Now there are more papers to grade, more essays to read, more kids to make a personal connection with, more money out of the teacher's pocket for classroom supplies, more desks filling up the classroom, more parents to meet with, etc. There is no way that your child's slice of the pie is going to be the same. Teachers may be amazing people with endless patience but time, money and space have limits.

Follow the money. A $200,000+ payout to Superintendent Goldman from general funds that could have been used to hire another couple of teachers. A $60 million bond to plunk 2-story buildings on all the elementary school campuses instead of going after another parcel tax for the programs and services for the kids. A 40% reserve sitting in the bank, your tax dollars that you thought were going to be spent this year on your kids. A top-heavy district management team with 4 superintendents for a small district of less than 10 schools. And a school board that apparently is unaware of something as basic as class size? Whatever happened to "it's all about the kids?" Where's the transparency? Where's the integrity? Where's that daily demonstration of a relentless commitment to the success of every child and other phrases from MVWSD's sparkly strategic plan?

There is a difference between 27 and 20, but any class size reduction is going to be minimal. There are too many kids who want to go to Huff. There are parents who flat out lie about where they live to get a chance at a spot. I doubt that having 20 kids per kinder class has ever been a true goal of administration, It's so much easier on the budget to cram kids in than to think of solutions that cost millions. The $200K payout to Goldman just underlines this point. When given the choice between personal gain and actually helping kids, the answer is glaringly obvious.

Parents have options. They can send their kids to different schools, they can accept that this is a less-than-ideal situation, and step up to help, or they can accept that Huff is a distinguished school and is still churning out highly educated well performing kids.

To answer the "Huff parent, my only daughter is four years old and goes to preschool by where my wife teaches.

That has not prevented our family from believing in the importance of investing in MV public schools early on. It's why I started to volunteer in MV schools and it's why I donate to MVEF, despite the toll preschool tuition has on our family budget. I hope more new parents will do the same: invest early on in their children’s future schools.

In a year, our family will have to make a tough decision among so many great choices: Monta Loma is our zoned school, a beautiful school with the most caring team of educators, or she may apply to our district’s dual immersion program since Spanish is an important part of my wife's culture, or we may apply to Stevenson, where its project based learning is most closely aligned to how I teach my own middle school students. I feel so blessed that our town has so many great schools!

Since my wife and I both teach at K-8 schools that offer free after school care to staff, we will look at those as well. State law prohibits educators to teach in the same place they serve on the board. I am proud to bring different perspectives back to MV.

Our district is full of great educators doing great things, providing greater student supports, with far less money and less help. Link to comparative local school finances: Web Link
Whenever anyone brings up why our schools are not doing more, I will always first ask them to get involved, and if possible donate, and be part of making this great community greater.

Christopher Chiang
MVWSD School Board Trustee
The views expressed herein are my own and do not necessarily represent the views of the Mountain View Whisman School District or the school board.

I may be along in misunderstanding this, or it may just be poorly written, but it sounds like Sokolove is quoted as saying that each classroom gets 40 hours of parent classroom participation. This is either a misunderstanding or a misquote.

My child's class teacher doesn't get close to 40 hours of parent participation. Even in the classes where parent participation is high, it is nowhere near 40 hours per week. Perhaps all 4 classes combined rack up 40 hours.10 hours over the course of a week split between 5 or more people is really not a whole lot of time!

I try to help as often as I can, and wish other parents did too. Going to board meetings and making a fuss may help in the long run, but if you're unable to help your child TODAY, what is the point really?

Many are working parents and are unable to be present during the school day. There are plenty of tasks that can be done by parents at home or on the weekend. I frequently see the teachers at school after hours or on the weekend doing tasks that parents could have done. A couple of parents each putting in a hour of their time would free up the teachers to do only the things that she can do. Emails home, confidential reports, IEPs etc.

I wonder if these parents are equally willing in their desire to take the pressure off the teachers as they are to have their child in a smaller class. What can we collectively do until this gets resolved?

So many issues with this situation:

(1) School revenues from property taxes for MVWSD were up by 9% or so in both 2013-2014 and 2014-2015.

(2) The district had a surplus of $6 Million in revenues less expenditures in 2012-2013.

(3) The degree of crowding in the K classes at 34 students is much worse than that in the 27 students for 4th grade situation. There's really no equivalence.

(4) It's all to set up parents to be in agreement that there is crowding for when the boundaries are redrawn, which is inevitable. If not all the sites were crowded, kids wouldn't be being redirected in the same way, but there would be more effective of the waiting lists keeping kids out of their assigned school just because their parents were late in arriving and/or enrolling.

I feel the neighborhood school should be for the zoned location and if students were let in on a lottery system or wait list from out of zone they shld be re-evaluated each open enrollment period for residency and not grandfathered in for the rest of the stay in the school, I have been a resident since 2007 in the huff neighborhood but was out of town for a couple of years to find out that my daughter cannot return to the school even though she went through open enrollment. Being a resident and an old student at the school and yet not in. I am sure there are students not from the neighborhood in grade 4 who have been in school from earlier grades.