My child's classroom the is in the Bubb portables. Miss Scott is not exaggerating about the conditions and distractions they impose. I don't understand how there can such a disconnect between the school and district in the conditions of the classrooms. Communication should be improved all around.

Trustees please consider this situation when making decisions about opening new schools! We need to make sure current sites are up to standard before investing in new sites.

The portables are now like a car with 200K miles on it. An immediate issue might be fixed, but in a few days, new issues always crop up.
Now with mold in the mix I fear the district opens itself up to lawsuits.
Forcing children to sit and inhale mold spores all day WILL cause health effects in some.

We should NOT be budgeting in the building new schools while our current schools rot. This is literally what is happening at the Bubb portables. The children are sitting in rot. Now that it's an open issue I trust the issue will be addressed, and not with a band-aid fix to just get through the next few months.

Monta Loma missed out on some improvements during the district's last bond measure because bond funds ran out, and the aging facilities dating back to the 1950s have dry rot and issues related to drainage and leakage problems.
Other schools are having maintenance issues as well. But at least we have enough money to open new schools.

I've noticed a pattern with Ayinde Rudolph. Everything prior to him is an old issue, i.e., don't point the finger at him. So when do these issues become his?

No matter when it started, Ayinde Rudolph owns the FIXING of this issue. If not why was he even hired? Now that these issues are known, there is nothing else to do but fix them.

Its going to rain a lot this year. We'll be watching with eagle eyes, the progress of fixing the Bubb portables. We have many children in the classrooms who will simply tell us the truth on the conditions.

Mold and water leaking onto electronics? Children having to move to the non leaky parts of the room? That's outrage!!
There is no hiding heads in the sand now. FIX the BUBB PORTABLES!

Of course, rather than wasting money fixing portables we won't continue to use, we could just arbitrarily redraw attendance boundaries so that those students attend school in permanent classrooms, wherever there may be space in the district. Parents also have the ability to request such a transfer. Because Bubb and Huff are thought to be high performing schools (as opposed to housing high performance students) they are also overcrowded. Theuerkauf for example has pretty good classrooms, based on the last round of bond construction.

Snark and spite won't fix the issue, and in case you missed it, "Love it or leave it" died out with Nixon, (Really) Old Steve.

No classrooms in our district should be in this condition. It's unacceptable anywhere, but now that it's known, it needs fixing.
Yes, we love the school.
Yes we love the teachers.
Yes, we should construct permanent buildings.

I work in one of the portables at one of the schools in the district. The conditions in a portable are not pleasant. The thermostat/air system is antiquated and loud. We have to yell over it. It sucks in all sorts of smells from outside and pushes it into the portable for us to breathe. We have had to live with the smells of skunks, dead rodents, lawn mower exhaust, etc. I don’t allow students to use the water to drink - I have no idea how old the pipes are and what might be in them. The carpet is disgustingly dirty from many years of wear. We can hear crows pecking on the ceiling and can hear what is going on outside due to poor insulation around the windows. We only have exits on one side of the portable so if there is ever an emergency that affects that side of the room (fire, earthquake, campus shooter, etc.) we are in serious trouble. I don’t understand why campuses with acceptable facilities are being remodeled first while Bubb, Huff and Landels still are operating with portables (and the LAST schools planned to be renovated). I worry that insufficient funds will remain by the time all the other campuses have been remodeled.

Whatever you do, do it right this time, because we aren't giving you a blank check.

Come on, its the children people! For Gods sake, please stop all the health risks that are involved in this issue. I went to Huff 25 years ago and there was always great management, but now no one seems to know a single clue what they're doing!

@Schools, Who is "We"?
Who do you assume you are speaking for besides yourself, and more importantly, do they know you have elected yourself as their voice?

One thing you should all be aware of and that's the School Districts will (shortly) have to contribute 18 percent of a teacher's pay towards their retirement. Up from 8.5 percent this was the state's solution to the CALSTRS shortfall. This is, no doubt, affecting districts everywhere. Teachers will be paying more too, but only about 9 percent of their pay.

So California School Districts are very, very concerned about spending month . . . on anything.

Is there a solution? Likely not. Last year the voters gave Los Altos School District $150,000,000 (one hundred and fifty million dollars) in a bond measure and the district (apparently) has no idea what to do with the money. A year later it's still being discussed.

So the schools will likely remain structurally marginal. Does it matter? Probably not. A person can learn under a tree while sitting on the ground and batting away mosquitos. Stay positive, as parents you make the biggest difference in your child's education AND success.

I'm surprised that the health dept hasn't been called about the mold. Also, having very loud and ongoing construction next to classrooms at Graham all year has been hard on some students and teachers.

If loud construction is hard on students, how would you suggest we move the projects forward, given realistic construction funding and cost increase scenarios?

It's really important to keep talking about the needs of existing schools & keep priorities straight; as much as I like the idea of kids going to a school at the Slater site around 2020 when the demographic drivers are really happening, the District has an opportunity (and the money) to strengthen existing infrastructure before that. Quality drives quantity when it comes to enrollment.

Patience. We moved very quickly on the middle schools and we're over budget on those projects (with respect to how much we wanted to spend per school). We need to move quickly on this but we need to be frugal so that all the schools get renovated this time around. This renovation needs to last 25 years or so.

Get going with improvements. How about starting with the vehicle speed signs on streets in front of the schools? Other communities and schools have installed the signs (which display the speed of vehicles and slow traffic dramatically). I made the suggestion about a year ago. Also, the schools need modern camera systems to enhance security as I suggested in a letter to the school board earlier this week. Get to it.

@Gary of Sylvan Park wrote:

"Get going with improvements. How about starting with the vehicle speed signs on streets in front of the schools?"

I think decisions on street signs, stop signs, speed bumps, speed radar signs, parking restrictions and the whole host of alterations to how traffic is controlled should always be made based on existing statistics about things like accidents and tickets and measured congestion, NOT on copying what other seemingly similar streets elsewhere may have done.

And certainly NOT on the anecdotal stories nor on what makes some people "feel better".

Now, that being said, IF the existing statistics support such change, then yes, get going on it and if no meaningful statistics have been gathered or examined, then yes, get going on getting such data and analyzing it.

When it comes to Stevenson, we don't have a history of actual problems which demand further changes. If new statistics come to light and things change which demand changes, so be it.

But changes should be made for reasons that can be demonstrated by statistics, not from feelings or from a rare event.

Rare events tend NOT to be effected by any reasonable efforts to prevent them. Rare events tend to happen in spite of any/all efforts supposedly intended to prevent them.