I'm guessing they had a hard time getting anyone to volunteer, for many and obvious reasons, and had to promise anonymity. Maybe they are meeting in a secure location underground.

And like so many, many things in this district, Steve Nelson is probably to blame. He harassed former committee members, blamed them for opinions he didn't agree with, called their objectivity and motives into question in public forums, and generally created a hostile environment.

Is this a news story or an editorial?

Not all meetings are public and these task forces have apparently been set up as non-Brown Act committees. Let these people do their work, away from the daily scrutiny of the press and anonymous bloggers. How well did that work last time?

The Board will ultimately receive updates, will likely be given some kind of recommendation (in public), and will then have public discussions and opportunities for public comment.

Depending on the magnitude of changes, it's possible the Learner Task Force recommendations could be implemented without Board approval, as are many classroom policies. However, I'd be certain that anything related to boundaries will have ample public airtime.

Let the process play out.

The article says, "District spokeswoman Shelly Hausman said the two task forces are not subject to the Brown Act". I'm very surprised and disappointed to hear that; either she is wrong or the law should be changed.

She also said, "The district will be as transparent as possible and provide updates through the newsletter and the (district) website". Other statements in the article make me believe it will not be "possible" to be very "transparent".

For example, according to the article, Ayinde Rudolph said that "the district does not plan to disclose the roster of either committee, [because the members] will be able to get work done better without public scrutiny." And yet, according to Hausman, "the meetings are open to the public, and community members are encouraged to attend."

I find those two statements diametrically opposed.

does it really matter what those committees do? The board members will ignore them and do whatever they want anyway.

I am a member of the specific learner committee. I'm more than happy to talk about what was discussed and when future meetings will be held. But I'm not stating my name here now because I want to yell and scream over the terrible job done to recruit parents of ELL students. There was not one in that meeting. The most active Spanish speaking parents in the district had no idea such a meeting existed. And the ones who supposedly were asked to come did not make it, and they were publicly shamed for it. I hope Heidi Smith does a better job recruiting and respect ELL parents in the new school year!

Since i can remember this district has always practised shady business. Behind closed doors or in the open.
Who could forget how they handled closing of Slater School.

How about a Public Records Request?

This superintendent and school board better not ask for more money from voters.

"The most active Spanish speaking parents in the district had no idea such a meeting existed. And the ones who supposedly were asked to come did not make it, and they were publicly shamed for it. I hope Heidi Smith does a better job recruiting and respect ELL parents in the new school year!"

Uh.. Heidi Smith doesn't even speak Spanish, so good luck with that... . None of this is off to a very good start. Are there no administrators that speak Spanish?

I think the editorial was earlier - last year 2015 August
"Editorial: A strange definition of transparency"

Web Link

With current demographics of mountain view not much can be changed, unfortunately. It is solid educated middle class who is being priced out, not the families who bring the test scores down.

Maybe they'll discuss in secrecy, they made a mistake in creating a privet school within a public school. With our tax dollars.

To answer several poster at once:

Solange
"I'm guessing they had a hard time getting anyone to volunteer, for many and obvious reasons, and had to promise anonymity. Maybe they are meeting in a secure location underground."

Got more people this time around to volunteer and from all across the district this time. No promise anonymity was made or asked for. Board room is above ground, though I sometimes wonder if it should be.

Seriously?
"Is this a news story or an editorial?"

It read like an editorial to me.

Me of Willowgate
"does it really matter what those committees do? The board members will ignore them and do whatever they want anyway."

Most likely, but the other option is to not try at all to make a difference.
Some of us are just eternal optimists.

nothing new of Old Mountain View
"Since i can remember this district has always practised shady business. Behind closed doors or in the open. Who could forget how they handled closing of Slater School."

The archives of the Voice would agree with that assessment of both MV school districts histories. The way Slater was closed was worse than shady, from what I've learned about it.

No more money
"This superintendent and school board better not ask for more money from voters."

Because punishing the children for the actions of adults is such a wonderful example of social justice?
Because taking away from the education of Mountain View kids will somehow eventually "teach" the politicians and District Staff a "lesson"?
Seriously???

Realist
"With current demographics of mountain view not much can be changed, unfortunately."

Certainly not by anything the MVWSD has the power to do.

Realist
"It is solid educated middle class who is being priced out, not the families who bring the test scores down."

I would say that almost everyone is being priced out except those who are very highly paid or those who have owned a home here for decades. The new housing going in wont help much, if at all, to reduce the housing prices because of our job market. Nor would rent-control. It's always job market driven.

Anyone who has owned a home here for even 1 year is not being priced out.
It could be a condo or a townhouse or freestanding home. If you bought it,
your costs are rent-controlled!

Also note that over the last 3 years, the house costs have risen over 50%. So, it was
easier to afford 3 years ago, by quite a bit. And those costs too are rent-controlled. You don't have to go back even a full decade before you saved 50% over current sale prices. So it's not required to have been around for decades.

Hurray for rent control!

With such expensive housing and lack of affordable housing, why are three out of six MV elementary schools have such a high rate of free and reduced meals?
Are lower income people not being priced out?

@Decades?

Before I explain why I said "decades", I want everyone to see that this is a prime example of why individual posts get so long. All it takes is one person who cannot understand how some obvious things work which then require much more detailed explanation to address the ignorance of the nit-picking poster.

Decades? claimed:
"Anyone who has owned a home here for even 1 year is not being priced out.
It could be a condo or a townhouse or freestanding home. If you bought it,
your costs are rent-controlled!"

There are always individuals who are the exceptions to the rule, but generally, the first years of buying a home is very risky and many people lose their homes and find the did get priced-out of the MV housing market.

You don't sound like a home buyer, or perhaps someone else did all the real work and you were not paying attention? In any case, I'll try to put it in terms you will understand. Well,I can only try, you got to do your part too.

Lets look at the typical home buyer who bought their home more than 20 years ago and has managed to make the payments and hold on to his home all these years.

This means that by the time a home buyer makes it past about the 20 year mark, then they have a huge buffer in the form of major equity value they have earned over those 20 years. Such a person has a low principal on their mortgage, a high level of equity they can borrow against and since most people re-fi.they mostly will have a lower monthly payment & lower interest than they had at first. If someone bought a house 20+ years ago, then they have a huge powerful buffer against negative financial events that will allow him to weather the storm while keeping the home. And of course, if your old enough and desperate, you can go for a reverse mortgage if you have enough equity.

So, once a home buyer reaches the 20 year line his odds of being able to stay in the house and survive whatever financial problems may come along get much better. Thus he is most likely be able to stay for life and then even pass his now paid-for home along to his kids. So, the kids will only need enough income to pay the taxes. Low income, but a MV home owner anyway.
Many MV residents bought their homes decade ago or even generations ago. They may well qualify for financial aid and free lunches, but they are pretty secure right where they are.

Then the more typical case for most home buyers, a family pushes their finances to the hairy-edge to get the most expensive house they can afford. After 1 year of payments they are worse off because they have put everything they have on the line and they cannot recover from any minor setback. They can quickly find they cannot pay the bills and are forced to sell. Within the first 10 years home buyers are highly vulnerable to even small financial glitches and they lose their homes and by then they don't have the money to find another MV house. Such a case was how I got my house decades ago. A guy failed due to a very minor glitch and found himself desperate to sell fast so he could move to a cheaper city and a small apartment not a house.

Then there is the rarer case of a home buyer who has plenty of money, but they do not feel the need for the most expensive house and will buy a home that is far below their financial resources. They can weather any financial storm even here in Mountain View.

I know a few elderly couples who got married young, bought a great family MV home and paid off the mortgage, then when all their kids moved away, they went a bought a tiny house they could manage within the same neighborhood. They are set even with low income and when they die their kids will have a paid-for home they can live in with only low-wage-jobs.

Owing a home is not relevant to renting or rent-control laws.
Rent-control laws are self-defeating "Feel good" political games to make politicians look good so they can get re-elected. In pretty much all "x-control laws" the result of the new "control" law provides zero benefit towards the issue these "control" laws were supposed to solve.

"X-Control laws" exploit something the public cares about but are generally ignorant about to frighten the people into believing that only by surrendering your rights and property to the government can the government "protect you" from whatever "exploited-scare-issue" they wish to employ at the moment. These "control" laws have never managed to prevent or even noticeably improve the issue that was being exploited to pass the new "control" law.

The reason why all "control" laws fail to improve anything is that they are never designed or intended to improve anything but the power of the politicians. "Control" laws don't make us safer nor help make the housing market any better.

Rent-control will accomplish many bad things and only a tiny percentage of lucky low-income people will gain some short-term benefit at the cost of all of us and our dynamic housing and job markets. As it should be.

@Realist
"With such expensive housing and lack of affordable housing, why are three out of six MV elementary schools have such a high rate of free and reduced meals? Are lower income people not being priced out? "

Again, it depends on their living situation. If low-income people are living in homes with multiple living tightly together and collectively paying a portion of the bills they can afford, then they get to stay.

if low-income people inherited a paid-for home from their parents who bought the home several decades before. They would not need much income to stay here.

There are many programs to provide the poor with goods and services that are off limits to anyone else. These programs will allow many to remain while the middle class don't qualify for any help.

Thus the achievement gap. The poorly educated low-income parents get dug in one was or other and they stay. The wealthy can come and go as they please and those of us in the middle get nothing but pushed out.

The free lunch people can have free breakfast & lunch being served all summer at various schools, like Theuerkauf and Stevenson.

@ST parent:
I see. I was thinking most of the lower educated free lunch people live in apartments that are being upgraded or demolished in favor of townhouses.
If most of them own housing, there is not much anyone (let alone a school board) can do. They can re-zone the school's any way they like, what would happen is there will be 6 mediocre schools instead of 2 good, 1 mediocre, and 3 bad schools. Well I mean the bad schools are not as bad as parents from good schools think, but still.
Achievement gap is a huge thing for which there are no hard and fast rules on how to close it. Redrawing the boundaries has never been effective.

@Realist
a resident of Another Mountain View Neighborhood
10 hours ago

"@ST parent:"
"I was thinking most of the lower educated free lunch people live in apartments that are being upgraded or demolished in favor of townhouses."

That process has been going on for decades, we got priced out of our rental in MV decades ago. It was only luck and really hard work that allowed us to buy a small old home here. Today the rents are still going up and yes, conversions too drive out people.

"If most of them own housing, there is not much anyone (let alone a school board) can do."

The school board can barely do it's own business, lrt alone do anything meaningful on housing prices or the job market. Nor should they.

"They can re-zone the school's any way they like,"

Which just moves kids around, but wont reduce rental prices.

"what would happen is there will be 6 mediocre schools instead of 2 good, 1 mediocre, and 3 bad schools."

That's pure speculation. Even the data you may be relying on is from 2012.

The schools quality does not change, just the aggregate scores of the kids by school, but the whole-district score does not change anyway.

"Well I mean the bad schools are not as bad as parents from good schools think, but still."

Our "worst" school is only "worst" by comparing the aggregate scores of the kids, which has more to do with the educational background of the mothers than any other factor.

"Achievement gap is a huge thing for which there are no hard and fast rules on how to close it."

Only one, educate the parents better, but nobody wants to hear that.

"Redrawing the boundaries has never been effective."

Of course not, "achievement gap" is a political term specifically designed to be per-district. By that measure, there is by definition almost nothing the district can do to reduce the "gap" except by driving the district score to the BOTTOM so that everyone will be failing together, thus no "gap".

Boundaries have nothing to do with improving the education of the kids nor the quality of the schools. No boundary lines will make any school be better at teaching kids. Boundary lines are for political agendas and for fiscal considerations, sometimes commute safety, but not educational improvement.

Realist- no, they're not being priced out. I was assuming this would begin happening over the last 3-5 years but it hasn't. More people move in with each other, families or otherwise, or perhaps they did move but never updated their addresses.

ST parent- you're starting to get a bit snappy in the last few comments. Condescending to say the least. Keep it nice? It's easier than you might think. No need to say "I'll keep it simple...at least it'll seem simple to me, you have to do your part..." That's just rude. I could throw in a comment about rude and your school but I'll try that nice road :).