Negotiations broke down? The thirty-plus committee couldn't put together a package they could "sell" to the Los Altos City Council? I think we need to rethink negotiations. Who, pray tell, could put together such a deal?

I've got an idea.

Call Donald Trump. If anybody could negotiate a workable scenario he could. I know he's running for President but I'm sure he could / would be able to take a few hours to donate to the Los Altos dilemma. Besides, he could even glean a few votes from grateful Los Altos residents!

By refusing to talk about Hillview, the City Council is ignoring children's possible best interests. By refusing to talk about existing school sites, the School Board is ignoring children's possible best interests. Shame on them both. Both sides should talk about possibilities and site plans they each abhor.

Shame on the Los Altos City Council. LASD has for years considered utilizing existing school sites every time BCS came up with their facility requests. How many times does our community have reopen case scenarios of handing over Covington or siting two schools there? This has been discussed by the LASD board with BCS countless times with community involvement. Every time it is the least viable option when traffic, student safety, and school size are considered. What makes the City Council so absent minded as to ignore all the years of debate?

It was the City Council that refused to let Hillview be discussed as a concept. For years City Council refused requests by citizens of their community and requests by LASD board members to even consider open discussions of how Hillview can be used jointly by LASD and the City. It was only recently the City Council shoehorned LASD into considering Civic Center land that excluded Hillview. It was the City Council that asked LASD to only consider land that would require moving the police station, council chambers, and destroying the apricot orchard. It was City Council that created an untenable option that was doomed to fail in the public's eye.

LASD tried to move forward honest dialogue that could be a win win for everyone while preserving the quality of our schools. Hillview could have been a viable option, but Los Altos council members shot it down irrationally from the start.

"It was clear that representatives from both parties were not seeing eye to eye."

Why is it so hard to reach a consensus with LASD leadership (board and Kenyon)? The sense of entitlement from them is truly jaw dropping. Not to mention Ivanovich's statement: "The board has not decided or even discussed how and when to consider the larger question of what to do absent cooperation with the city."

1 and a 1/2 years into the bond and the BOTs haven't even discussed what to do if the city isn't going to bail them out by handing over land? Kind of unbelievable.

Kudos for the Los Altos City Council for finally asking the hard questions of LASD and exposing the lack of leadership at LASD. The facts are that, excluding BCS, enrollment is down. If LASD is really concerned, then move the district offices and stop leasing space to preschools at existing school sites such as Covington.

It's time for LASD to do what is best for the community:
1. reboundary school lines so NEC kids are not commuting to Covington
2. Create two schools at either Egan or Covington that are properly sized
3. Move the district offices and the preschool space that generates rent to other sites.

1. LASD sold off Hillview to the City of Los Altos decades ago (now they want it back:)
2. LASD has 110 acres, the City has 55 acres open to public use, less than all other surrounding towns
3. Why would Los Altos residents zoned for Cupertino Schools want to lose their land to an LASD school? Why do people not understand that?
4. Co-sharing 900 children + 200 adults in the same building and public grounds is just creepy. Talk about traffic issues too!
5. LASD having an honest dialogue? Seriously?

Why in the world should the City lease land to the District to be used as a school? Just so LASD does not have to use district land to site BCS. That's it. Traffic is an excuse. Anything else is a whiny excuse. Sugar coat it any way you want Joan I mean John. The City Council exposed LASD's desire to eliminate their "BCS problem" by punting them to city owned land. The truth hurts. No shame on the City Council. They did the tax payers in Los Altos and in LASD and CUSD (Los Altos) a favor. Thank you!

Oh, by the way..BCS parents pay taxes to the District, just like everyone else. Those taxes are not shared with BCS. They are all absorbed by the district to be used for just district children. By law, the district must use district land to site BCS. Just in case you forgot. Oh and there is no LASD enrollment growth issue thanks to the existence of BCS which absorbs the enrollment growth. Funny that there is no space for BCS on current district land and sad that LASD will now run out and buy land at the sacrifice of updating LASD schools. And LASD parents are happy about that? Share somewhere on 110 acres of district land or all schools can't be updated using the bond money. Now it's time to thank the LASD trustees and wish you had never voted for Measure N.

Lack of viable Strategic Plans (and Plan B options) will kill any hope of smooth outcomes. Look at the foresight of the MVHSD administration and Board in their last facilities/bond endeavor 2010. Plan first, Program Manager on board, THEN ask for Bond passage = no problems.

Council people like Janice Pepper, who told MVWSD voters that 'no plan, no problem' was a good way to approach Mountain View's school facilities bond (June 2012 Ballot arguments) - are now making just as ill informed public judgements in this LA LASD situation. Being the current or past president of a volunteer civic organization - does not necessarily mean Good Public Policy judgement.

A word to the wise is never sufficient. Oh well - it's just democracy!

Mr. Nelson was elected in 2012 to a Mountain View local governing agency, it is no easier/or harder/ over here, or for him.

Why does the board of trustees need land from the City of Los Altos when they have two private preschools and district offices at Covington School and lease out 5 acres of district land to Waldorf School? Greedy are we? Sounds like City Council folks also are perplexed by the same thing. Get your land back from three private entities, give Bullis an equivalent home, then beg for City land. Oh, that's right. They just moved Stepping Stones from Blach to Covington. If they need land so badly, why move a private PS around on district land? How bizarre.

It's sad really, we have egomaniacs in charge of our schools. The trustees are so concerned with winning the war against BCS, that they forgotten what their real job is. They are about to spend the entire bond buying real estate, just so they shove BCS into the smallest campus possible. In truth it would be much better current and future LASD students to put two schools at Covington but that's not not the plan. Instead they are about to imbark on a crazy new venture where they build a 150 million dollar school for BCS, the more I functional the better the punishment. Crazy way to spend the bond, but that's what happens when you have egomaniacs in charge, they will never put students first.

It's all the Huttlingers. Blocking best use of existing land. Hurray for the city council.

It's about time that someone showed some backbone to LASD. The trustees have carried themselves like they were above every other constituent in this area of years. Their despicable cronysim and self dealing (friendly consultants, conflicted real estate deals) along with their jihad against BCS is deplorable. The gall LASD has to try and take away civic land that serves all Los Altos constituents, young and old, simply because they are unwilling to give BCS anything. The fact that BCS is not part of any of LASD's site explorations is stunning. Fortunately, we have true public servants on the City Council who get the bigger picture. LASD is harming themselves and more and more families will go to BCS as they show their true colors.

Just a reminder that these are children. Children. Little people ranging from 5 years old to 14 years old. A shout out to the adults who comprise the Hutts and the LASD Board of Trustees and all other adults who feel these children are not entitled to equivalent land and school buildings that their friends enjoy at LASD schools. They are children. Hate the adults all you want but the only individuals who are truly losing out in this endless and insane soap opera are the children. For all of the grown ups who desire that the Bullis children be stuffed like sardines into tiny pieces of expensive land and office buildings and not take up precious space at YOUR school, do you still feel big and important at the end of each day? Feel proud of your entitlement? I have observed Ms. Logan and Mr. Luther having a soft spot for the kids. Don't let them down. Find a solution that is right and ethical and allows all district children and their schools to benefit from the bond money.

In district applications are up 26% from last year to this year for BCS across all grades. Over 200 in district kids applied for Kindergarten. Many I.D. kids on wait lists for all grades.

LASD needs to say "Let's talk about Covington." LACC needs to say "Let's talk about Hillview." For the children.

Unbelievable that the board never considered what it would do "absent cooperation from the city"! You mean it was relying solely on Los Altos all this time? Funny, I don't recall Measure N saying anything about requiring city land. No one would have voted for it with that kind of huge contingency.

LASD you should have been doing your job instead of banking on the city to rescue you all this time.

After 1.5 years, with no public comments on WHAT SORT of use a new school would be put to, LASD's trustees have blown it. Their ineptitude is only surpassed by their self importance. Just look at the summary of the situations presented to the LACC by the 2 reps to the mutual public lands committee. It lasts an hour. We have yet to see anything so clear come out of ANY of the LASD trustees.

At this point, the idea of TALKING about Hillview is a waste of time. LASD needs to TALK about how it can site a new school at Covington, or at Egan, or at Blach, or at Santa Rita. They're all quite workable. BCS should expand to 1200 kids. They should have 2 sites, on at Blach, where Blach would give up a full 7 acres of land, and at Covington. At Egan, the full 7 acres of land should be reserved for a future new district-operated elementary school. Both Middle Schools can go to 6-8 configuration with just 11 or 12 acres of land. The resulting LASD elementary schools very likely will be below 500 students each.

So you see, there's a reason LASD board members are not talking. It's because there is absolutely no shortage of land space and no shortage for a solution. They just don't want to be responsible.

Maybe they can antagonize Los Altos Hills next to hand over their city land! Purissima Field would be fabulous for 900 students! At least it would come full circle with Bullis back in the Hills to make up for when the trustees closed it starting this whole thing. Perfect delay tactic for another year.

Is anyone else concerned that our supposed leadership is trying to fool all of us? I am including the PTA, LAEF as well as Trustees and school administrators. I understand why its difficult to do the obvious, (place BCS at Covington) but this other ideas just are not going to work and its hurting all of us. You have had more than enough time to figure this out its time to come up with a reasonable plan. Its not fair to the kids at BCS and its not fair to the kids in LASD schools.

I am certain that there will be people upset, but I think its a small group which unfortunately includes most of our leaders, but the rest of us want you to get going already and we really don't support spending all the bonds funds to build a new school for BCS which seems to be your current working plan. Really most of us will be happy if you put BCS at Covington and get going with fixing up all the schools.

Give up on Hillview. The city is never ever going to turn it over. And thank goodness for that. It was never a good idea. As the city council rightly pointed out, the concentration of a 900 student + 390 ( low estimate) Hillview users on 7 acres is much denser than 1500 students on 15 or even 20 acres at Covington.

How about using Hillview as a neighborhood school/community center? Covington could move to that location -- 300 - 400 students is much better than 900 students. Sharing is Caring!!!!!!

The real Huttlinger was a man prominent in Los Altos who sued the LASD board back around 1980 when they planned to expand Egan into a larger Jr High and use it to replace the former Jr High at Covington. He lost.

Meanwhile, back 2-3 years ago, a political action group formed and became active in lobbying the LASD board. They called themselves the Huttlinger Alliance for Education. They raised a lot of campaign money and were active in trying to influence the Los Altos city council elections as well as the LASD School Board elections. The donor(s) of their funds was never disclosed. The thing is that once Measure N was passed, they lapsed into inattention and didn't put forth any actual constructive suggestions as to how to move forward with spending the bond money or when to do it. They had paid lip service to supporting the use of Hillview, but they allowed the idea to drag out and become unwieldy due to its own complexity and lack of support. All of the other (still rare) cases of community centers sharing school facilities around the country involve High Schools with large (30-40 acre) plots of land and ONLY a community center, not a police station, library, museum, etc. They just never have done their homework or they'd drop that idea themselves.

It's a shame my city council leaders refused to listen to what LASD was trying to offer and gave up. Closing Covington to give to BCS or reducing the schools footprint to crowd in two schools with increasingly dangerous traffic is a no win. City council only looked at numbers, land vs land, without regard to what space children need. There is a reason schools have more land and not less. Hillview could have been an option and the city could have gotten other land use in exchange. Instead the council refused to discuss and quit the process.

It's a good thing my city council leaders refused to go along with a bizarre proposal to virtually eliminate the community center and squeeze more kids than reasonable onto a 5 acre parcel of land next to a small 3 acre city park serving that neighborhood and the community at large.

I don't get people who think you can't fit 2 schools into Covington's 16 acres but you can fit a double-size school into 5 acres at Hillview. They just don't care about how much space kids need for school.

You see, if you put 900 kids in a school, they clearly need less space than they do if there are only 500 kids in the school. Or wait, is it MORE? Gee, SOMEONE better look at the numbers AS WELL as how much space kids need for schools and how much Park the city should turn over to the school district during the daytime.

It would have been great for the city council to have an actual discussion over the merits of densely packing kids onto traffic tightened lots. Or how LASD values preserving land for growing enrollment. Or how working together to make Hillview and other lands a win win for both the city and the school community. Instead the Los Altos City Council just gave up in a tantrum and quit.

Interestingly, the school district has gone ahead and released drawings of some ideas of theirs to utilize the community center land. Best analysis is here: Web Link

It shows what they might have in mind for these small properties along El Camino Real they claim to consider as potential sites as well. Just too small for a school for 900, but might be OK as a school for the El Camino area. The latest property is 5150 El Camino Real, just south of Distel, on the very edge of LASD territory. 3.8 acres. Have to layout as shown above, but still small even for just a 500 student neighborhood school.