You know, it really is worth noting that the simplest way to reduce the cost of work across all elementary schools would be to plan on having a certain fraction of existing portable classrooms remain, instead of costly replacement. The permanent rooms are a little nicer, but they are not really worth the money. You could add 6 portable rooms into the plan for Mistral easily. New ones. The bond money will only stretch so far. It should be EVERY school that is affected by cost reductions. Every school now has portables. Keep some of them. Saves millions. Doesn't affect programs a bit.

I'm glad the wiser heads on the Board prevailed.

We need to spend these funds on the schools we already have. The longer the Board bickers about Coladonato's personal mission to open a school in his own neighborhood, the less money there is to improve the existing schools.

@Cost Reduction: When we looked at this idea in the District Facilities Committee, there were basically three choices across the schools: (1) tear down aging permanent classroom capacity & build new permanent capacity to replace, (2) tear down aging permanent classrooms & buy new portables, and (3) renovate existing permanent classroom capacity. (2) and (3) tend to be close to each other in cost, but permanent classrooms have a much longer lifetime than portables so in the long run, we thought that was the better investment. That's why a basic premise to all the DFC work was that we'd try to preserve existing permanent classroom capacity whenever possible.

Your suggestion of keeping existing portables is actually not feasible in terms of the budget, nor prudent given current enrollment projections... if the District renovates all permanent classroom capacity, builds to plan at Castro/Mistral, and builds Stevenson to the same permanent classroom standard as the other schools, there's enough space for all the kids in permanent classrooms, so save for a couple portables at each site to house programs like YMCA and Beyond The Bell, and one admittedly-painful redrawing of boundaries, we're all set (152 permanent classrooms @ 25 kids/classroom = 3800, vs. K-5 Moderate Projection of ~3800).

Now - the question "should the District add portables if enrollment increases beyond projections, or if the District reduces class sizes, or if the District expands preschool programs?" is interesting. That would be cost-effective in the short-term... but then you face a question of creating a new campus of portables (equity issue), or adding portable capacity at current sites as an alternative to opening a new school (which our Whisman/Slater community may find less than ideal given their desire for a neighborhood school). And in both, you're signing up the District for more costs down the line. I think the best long-term solution there is to open another site with permanent capacity - either a renovation of Slater, or construction of a new school at that site... and find more money to get it done (there are at least four different paths to get the money, all of which I think have some probability of success... so I believe Trustee Lambert when he says he's confident they'll find a way).

@Good:

Firstly, this isn't about reopening Slater. $2.5M one way or the other isn't going to open a school.

Secondly, whether or not reopening Slater is Trustee Coladonato's personal mission or not isn't so relevant as is the question that Superintendent Rudolph raised at the meeting: "Do the kids of the Northeast Quadrant of the city deserve their own neighborhood school?" You might want to consider that this $43M is going toward building the FIFTH school in the Northwest quadrant, while there are ZERO in the Northeast. This is despite the fact that the demographic reports show the greatest growth of enrollment in the NE quadrant while showing decline in the NW quadrant.

I'm not against opening Mistral, but this is just something you might want to consider before deciding who the wiser heads are.

The South West portion of the district, in terms used before in The Quadrants discussions seem to be south of Central Expressway and west of Shoreline. That included Castro before and the same students in a different school count configuration now.

That counts to one neighborhood school and one choice school, which used to be a DI program. Am I getting this correctly?

I think Steve Bell must be using El Camino to separate north from south, not Central Expressway. Let's take Shoreline as the other divider. That would put the schools into the quandrants as follows:

NE Landels
NW Monta Loma, Theuerkauff, Stevenson, Castro, Mistral
SE Bubb, Huff
SW None

I would think Central Expressway would be more accurate since that is the boundary for the middle schools. Also because this divides the city more evenly. If you take Central Expressway and Shoreline as the boundaries for the quandrants you get this distribution instead:

NE None
NW Monta Loma, Theuerkauff, Stevenson
SE Landels, Bubb, Huff
SW Castro, Mistral

In either case you have a quandrant without a school within its boundaries.

Some kids from Landels cross Central Expressway (and the kids at the choice programs come from all over) but generally, you can see why Graham is bigger: it has almost four neighborhood schools (Bubb, Huff, Castro, and some of Landels) feeding into it while Crittenden only has two and a bit (Monta Loma, Theuerkauff, and some of Landels).

All of that said, I am glad that the board made a decision about Castro and can now more forward with the rest of the decisions that need to be made around the Measure G funds!

In "Brown v Board", the US Supreme Court ruled against "separate but equal" education, stating that "separate" does not guarantee "equal" but actually is intended to guarantee inequality. Have modern school boards and educators gotten so obsessed with the problems that non-English-speaking students create for public schools that they are reverting to "separate but equal" to keep inferior education flowing smoothly through multiple channels?

quadrant squadron and Abigail: you guys are correct, I wasn't defining the quadrants as may be customary on here (I'm a relative newcomer). I was just looking at a city map and dividing it by longitude and latitude. Since El Camino and Central Expressway run in a NW/SE direction, my quadrants are at an angle to yours.

I can see why you would want to split it up along the transportation corridors. As Abigail pointed out, however, either way you have a quadrant without a school, and it is still the quadrant with the greatest growth in enrollment.

quadrant squadron and Abigail: you guys are correct, I wasn't defining the quadrants as may be customary on here (I'm a relative newcomer). I was just looking at a city map and dividing it by longitude and latitude. Since El Camino and Central Expressway run in a NW/SE direction, my quadrants are at an angle to yours.

I can see why you would want to split it up along the transportation corridors. As Abigail pointed out, however, either way you have a quadrant without a school, and it is still the quadrant with the greatest growth in enrollment.

I think Craig Goldman may have been the first one to split up the District into Quadrants- and he used Central/Shoreline as the dividers. Web Link
Perhaps because it seemed to divide up the elementary students into about 1/4 in each area? Maybe one of the demographics studies could show that better? I don't know if that was done.

Central and Shoreline are also already boundaries for schools: Central for the middle schools and Shoreline for the high schools. We got to see detailed data from the first demographic report. I wonder if we will get the same from the recent one.

Smells of corruption $42 million really

@PTA Mom,

I'm not sure what PTA you volunteer for. Doing a little math most of our students could do, the current estimate works out to about $10 a day for each student seat over 25 school years that such facilities as new classrooms typically last. If you have good ideas about how to save some money, I'm sure that particularly Trustees Nelson and Colodonato would like to hear them.

Sounds like someone is lining their pockets with our kids money.

No one in the district is lining their pockets with the kids money. The problem is that the board has caused so many delays, the cost of building keeps going up. Every time the board delays, the cost goes up even more. They need to figure out what they want to do and have a plan going forward.

As usual, I'm amused by some of the comments. If the Board has rushed into implementing these plans, (which would likely have cost more because of over runs) this message board would be chock full of screamers claiming the Board rushed into this decision and wasted money. But because the Board took a little additional time to thoroughly consider these expenditures, find some ways to cut some costs and make some hard choices, despite the fact that prices are still rising) they're being criticized for attempting to be cautious stewards of our money. SMH.

"Board president Ellen Wheeler said she is confident that the district will find some new source of funding for facilities, like a new school bond, "

She thinks money grows on trees and has no hesitation to spend money that isn't hers.

She's counting her chickens before they're hatched. I won't be supporting another bond for MVWSD.

@resident of Bailey

How can you be sure. 43 million is a lot of money to remodel a school. I know of bigger jobs that cost less.
In some areas of this country this school would be just fine as it stands. MVWSD is so far away from what's really important

For those paying attention, Castro/Mistral is more like two new schools than a "remodel". As planned it will include 36 new classrooms, as well and MUR, library and admin spaces. Using math the students could do, each student seat will cost about $10 a day for the life of the school.