Do we really need a district office that parents can be proud of? How many parents have even been to the district office? Parents and kids see the schools every day and having better offices for administrators doesn't enhance the learning experience for the children.

Over the past few years, as the clock was ticking on spending this money before construction cost increases gobbled it up, this is what our board has spent its time doing:

-convening yearlong committees, whose recommendations they then ignored
-bickering over Slater, no Whisman, no, Slater, a school we may not need and definitely can't afford
-commissioning expensive architects to design a shared campus at Castro (now out the window)
-Preventing a lawsuit from a bullied superintendent with a large chunk of hush money
-And most of all, reciting Roberts Rules of Order to one another.

Every member of this board should be hanging his head in shame.

@District Office

It is a converted school from the 60's! Do you work in a 50 year old building? It needs energy upgrades to be efficient. It needs electrical upgrades to make our technology fully useful. It does not have proper meeting space for the various committees. If it was moved, Stevenson and Theuerkauf would be easier to modernize, given the site constraints. Qualified teachers are easier to retain when they are offered fully functional classrooms. Same logic applies to district office folks. Top leadership makes pretty good money, but other people, who work there all day, twelve months, don't make much, and should not have to suffer any more.

Shoreline $
The comments from Dr. Skelly occurred at an April meeting, “The district chose to spend money that could have paid for key programming needs of the district on construction. One could argue that voters gave the district a strong mandate to improve its facilities by using bond funds for this purpose,” The later Board vote was 5:0 to follow his advice, and reverse the advice of Goldman from Oct. of 2014 to use Shoreline fund for facilities overruns due to scope creep etc.. (4:1 Nelson in dissent) [Our Program Manager Greystone West differentiates between staff recommended scope increase and construction cost overruns]
[ Web Link ] April Voice pg. 11
[ Web Link ] Oct '14 Agenda Item VII D. Goldman recommended "Combined Budget Summary"

The logic of the Board vote on the Dist. Facilities Committee "Bullet One" recommendation is well explained by the Voice article of April [ Web Link ]

The Shoreline Fund (and yearly JPA transfers) represents but a fraction of the general property funds diverted every year from the MVWSD. This source of general property tax funds would normally go into the MVWSD General Fund, to be used for instructional programs etc. You cannot use Bond funds for learning/teaching, but you can turn learning/teaching funds into real estate or buildings.

Steven Nelson is a MVWSD Board Member and these are his opinions on public policy

@ What a Waste. Neither the Boundary Adjustment Task Force or the District Facilities Committee was convined by the Board (was Superintendent) or lasted a year. There were two Trustees on the Board Facilities Committee - that met a year earlier and did meet for a year. That BFC acted only as a "focus group" and produced no report to act or vote on. The Board acted (voted) to accept most of the important "bullets" (1-4) of the District Facilities Committee. Please read the adopted Minutes of the MVWSD Board to stay correctly informed on government public policy votes [ Web Link ] pg. 2-3

Or read the Voice reporting closely, it's usually pretty accurate, In My Opinion.

@Old Steve:
If my company had very limited money and had to pick between spending it on it's core business or on giving the executives nice offices, I think it should improve it's core business.

The district office is a really old school. So is Stevenson right next door. Do we improve offices for dozens of staff members or improves classrooms for hundreds of kids?

@District Office,

Stevenson has been worked on much more recently. The merger dates back 15 years. That is when the District Office was worked on. Stevenson was a pre-school, and had to be remodeled when PACT moved their to allow DI (now Mistral) to share the Castro campus. Nice Office is different than giving people the tools to do their jobs. At our district office I am speaking of the latter. Otherwise, we get all of the hassles of high turnover. If a Trustee is going to hassle District Staff, and they have to work in 50 year old former classrooms, why would anybody not take a better job?

It feels like I'm watching a slow motion train wreck every time I open the Voice. Where is the strategic thinking? The broad wants to do all these things and there is no focus or commitment on any of them. The district is wasting so much time and money going back and forth on construction issues(settling nothing), convening committees (whose advice will be ignored), hiring consultants (whose advice will be ignored), drawing up detailed designs (which will be scrapped in the end). What will we have to show for it in the end but lots of time and money wasted?

For those who haven't read it yet, the school quality report (SQR), spells out many of these issues in detail in section 3.2: Web Link

What makes this all even more sad, is that the district desperately needs to raise more money from the voters. I don't think the board understand how much harder they are making it for themselves and how their ineffectiveness is hurting all the students in the district, see SQR section 3.2.

Thank you. I could not agree more. And the sad thing is that the students are the ones who pay the price for their incompetence.

All I have to say to you is what the independent auditors wrote in their report. Here it is, and I echo the previous comment. You should be ashamed, and you should step down:

"The Board of Trustees has not established improving learning outcomes of all students as the primary focus of their work. They have been spending much of their recent meetings focused on construction issues and the potential re-opening of a school. The construction budget has been significantly
overdrawn due to delayed decision making by board members. The Board is not functioning successfully as a team of leaders who focus on improving the learning outcomes of all students and, as a result, district leaders are hindered in their abilities to make decisions and take the necessary actions to ensure that all students are highly successful in the district."

Voters of MVWSD,

All four elected board members are acting in accordance with their various campaigns. Nelson ran disturbed by District's reliance on the older 2009 SFIP. Reviewing a new set of community expectations set the Middle School Classroom Modernization project back a year. Much discussion of Middle School PAC (Performing Arts) also slowed down construction at the Middle Schools. Middle School construction costs escalated due to red-hot local construction market. Thus the squeeze on Elementary School scope and budget.

Various community forces have introduced the reopening of Slater into an already complicated bond construction program. I won't re-argue the merits, but much staff and board resource has been devoted.

In my part of the construction world, owners usually have among Good, Fast, and Cheap to choose from, but you only get TWO. Given the level of discussion we insisted on electing, we are heading for Mediocre, Slow, & Expensive. This malfeasance brought upon us by the board we elected, so we also own it.

If folks want to read ahead over the holidays (because what could be more fun than that?), the agenda packet for the January 7th board meeting is already posted at Web Link Facilities-related items start on page 28. Skip to the Measure G summary tables starting on page 41 if you only have time to look at one thing... these are very useful, objective summaries of the overall spending picture.

This just shows how the govt. is no good at handling taxpayer money. The finance personals we pay big money to have no clue what they are doing.

@govt failure,

I disagree completely. The paid staff is doing outstanding work, inspite of egregious meddling by various board members we elected. Board members get paid hardly anything.

From the audit:

"The board’s inability to function as a group of leaders and to work collaboratively with the District office has established barriers that directly impact the students, employees and families in Mt. View Whisman School District."

"District leaders spend a great deal of time responding to arbitrary requests by board members. Relationships between board members and the district office are strained to the point that progress is difficult to achieve because district office leaders are focused on planning and preparing to improve student outcomes while the board continues to focus on things such as construction and delay in making decisions that impact learning and teaching."

"....Lambert made a point to say that it's important to have a quality, permanent facility for the district office that parents can be proud of."


This statement gets a Pants On Fire rating.

Trustee Lambert, please tell us about all those times that parents came to you with their worries about the quality of the district office building?

Didn't we see this coming, when the pricey architects put together a laundry list of (perceived) needs repairs that added up to $400 million, and the trustees decided to ask for $200 million?

It’s a great sign that the new district staff is making tough choices to bring cost in line, and also committed to making sure all school sites get modernization. It was wrong for the board to award a single school site what would likely amount to a quarter of the Measure G funds after cost escalations.

Shoreline Funds are intended to support instructional innovations, so it is also equally exciting to hear plans for those funds to be used to support technological upgrades at each of our school sites. I hope those technological upgrades don’t wait for Measure G construction, but happen right away. Shoreline Funds, unlike long-term bonds, are the perfect vehicle to get powerful tools in the hands of students and teachers, and can, and should be used to provide new staff to support teacher and student training in new instructional innovations. LASD and CUSD have long had a team dedicated to instructional innovation. MVWSD has not a single educator dedicated full-time to instructional technology.

Regarding long-term construction bonds, I hope the board goes with modular, which these days last as long as traditional construction, rather than the portables, which with their short lifespan, are a poor investment of long-term bonds, decision on the next board agenda: Web Link I also hope the board will break with their determination to have 450 school sites at each campus. Such size may be excessive for district choice programs or a new school at Slater, which really should start as a micro-school to prove local demand. None of our nearby districts have uniform school sizes (uniform size sounds great on paper, but doesn't always match local housing trends and safe routes). It's great we have a district staff with vision, we should all help the board get in line.

First by getting the board to stop playing politics with the parcel tax.

@reader, SFIP was actually economically done. Meas G based on legal bonding limit in 2012, not just some number to "ask" for. Where is your suggestion as to how to proceed?

@Chris, I did not hear you advocate for modulars as Board President? You did support the long discussion with the community. Pursuit of the perfect is killing off the Good we could have done!

@OldSteve I tried to build support for modular by inviting district staff and board members to visit Next Gen school modulars at 21st century learning conference at the Evergreen School District (video: Web Link more info on affordable fast building eco modular school buildings Web Link Some attended, and I provided the modular materials to all the board members in a subsequent meeting. My philosophy back as a board member was, you can suggest innovative ideas to the district staff, but in the end, a single trustee can only go as far as the district staff want to go, and the district staff at that time was against them. Single trustees have, and should have no power.

It’s not the job of the board member or even collective school board to run the operations of a school district. It’s the board’s job to pick a leader they think can do that job, set and monitor benchmarks, and lead by example, a joyful culture the celebrates student learning and staff achievements.

The board could have set construction benchmarks that favor modulars, or similar ultra-green buildings that in my opinion have an educational effect simply being present on campuses. But like all potentially good ideas (or even simple board governance responsibilities), so much bandwidth is taken on board politics and interpersonal squabbles, that there is little room for anything else. The public can help change that by paying attention to their school board, the school board YouTube channel: Web Link

@Old Steve and @Chiang. Both these gentlemen are rather informed. However - in Dec of 2012 Chiang and I inherited a Facilities Plan ($423M) that was $225 million over the Budget (Measure G $198M) and that had not had any Administrative/Board work on it for the 6 months since the Bond election. You might now say - we have reduced the deficit to only $20 M/ reduced the deficit by a factor of ten/ or reduced the deficit by about $200 M) Thank you Patrick N., Jill R. and the other members of the District Facilities Committee that worked with Mr. Lee in the 6-8 weeks before Dr. Skelly left! Mr. Chiang - thanks for your Vote for Bullet 1 on Action adopting the biggest DFC recommendation.

As Chris writes - Board members can individually even Vote to support more modest permanent-modular construction (1st version of 6 classroom innovation buildings) but district administrators can 3X the costs - when they come back with 'bigger' 'better' 'more costly' special purpose designs. I Voted against (4:1) those "big shinny boxes" - but majority Vote of the Board rules. QED - it was Administrative practice (2008-14) to recommend only one choice/ and not offer options. Since Dr. Skelly (Jan. 2015)- this Administrative practice is slowly starting to change.

Can this Board/ this Board leadership change and work faster/smarter? Pray. Loud and often and to as many gods(s) and saint(s) and prophet(s) as you can.

SN is one of the five members of the MVWSD Board, these are his opinions /concerns

@ Steven Nelson

Are you delusional? Or, do you think we are gullible?

The SFIP was a list of what could be done, not a final budget. Now, as near as I can tell from your garbled prose, you claim to have saved the district $200 million dollars. Wow! that is some kind of spin!

Not only did you not save any money, you cost more than $200,000 for Mr. Goldman's severance and who knows how much in reduced buying power for measure G money because of bickering and delays.

Please, stop blaming everyone else and start taking responsibility for your actions. You have been on the board for 3 years. That is long enough for you to have gotten your stuff together. It's more than long enough for the district and its students to have suffered through your antics.

The DQR is clear that the board's inability to work with each other or others is harming student achievement. They are talking about you. Please, for the love of our students, knock it off.

Trustee Nelson seems to ignore the fact that the Measure G bonding amount of $198 Million is based on the legal limits on new bond impacts on property taxes, based on 2012 assessed valuations. Given the amount of controversy arising from the bond campaign (generated by Mr. Nelson), it is completely understandable that the board and staff at the time waited for the new board election six months after bond passage, before plunging ahead. Without said controversy, it is likely that middle school classroom modernization could have moved forward expeditiously while the rest of the program was discussed with the community. Can't go back, but those facts, combined with rapid construction bid escalations is how we got where we are. Modulars may be an option, but given Silicon Valley's rising values and economy, so too should raising more money be considered. All the arguing only impedes progress, it does not shed light.

@ Old Steve. It is entirely possible to override the Gann limit, and impose a general obligation facilities bond tax that is approved by 2/3 of the voters. The MVWSD Board in spring of 2012 chose to go instead with the 'easy tax,' the 55% approval one. That political move resulted in a $198M possible revenue source for the $423M SFIP (Facilities Plan) adopted in 2010. (same Board members).

The Board and Administration in 2012 never went back to align Facilities Plan "wish list" (Mr. Palmer) with the financing available (Measure G). That is the public record.

Mr. Old Steve's interpretation of the facts, are his own, as are mine. I again urge Old Steve of Rex Manor to run for elective office - and see exactly how many of the electorate agree with his views in Nov of 2016.

happy New Year

Mountain View needs state of the art schools built to last with innovation, technology and of inspiring designs. We should not settle for anything less. Raise taxes if you have to, but build schools to represent the innovation and prosperity of our times and of the city. If you want an example, take a look at city hall, the library, the new fire station, the new housing developments. Why are we short changing our schools and student, our future? Portables and modulars are cheap fixes. Chiang is out (resigned, thankfully) and Nelson's time on the board is ticking down (also thankfully, but I'm not saying he should resign).

What good is state-of-the-art if they're not being taught the basic fundamentals .