5150 El Camino is a terrible site for a school. There is no pedestrian or bicycle access via the adjacent neighborhood. Every student will need to be dropped off and picked up by car. Can you imagine a line of 800 cars queueing on El Camino for morning drop offs and afternoon pick ups? Nightmare!

That school board is smoking something. They are talking about building a 3 or 4 story school building with underground parking after tearing down the office building. They think they can buy the property and build this monster building for $100 Million in bond money. This story says they want Mountain View to pay part of the cost, more or less, through some new tax or fee to be imposed. Well, this would be illegal. They could create a School Facilities Improvement District but this has nothing to do with the city and would require a 55% vote of the voters in the area. That's not going to happen so they can use it for the charter school.

Then there's the matter of the secret meetings they are having about this. They are keeping a concept drawing for use of the site a secret, which is strange. There's no way this is required to do their negotiation optimally with TA Realty on the purchase.

This is a way to convert bond money to operating cash. They will buy this site and realize they don't have the capital to build the school. So they will start leasing it out to tenants and getting operating revenue.

Beautiful scheme.

Maybe this is all about replacing the Los Altos Bus Barn at the community center site. There is a fund raising effort to build a new theater in downtown Los Altos. Maybe they are tapping into that money, and building a joint use facility on El Camino Real (in Los Altos, bordering Mountain View). Maybe that's where $30 Million of the funding is coming from!

A lot of speculation, but no one here has a clue...

Stop building new housing! Don't need to cram
more people in Mt View, we will look like NYC soon. Rosenberg so wrong about reducing traffic, more people equal mkre traffic period. Why? Because they think they get people 'closer to their jobs' Maybe 50 years ago when people stayed at one job their whole life, but a large % of people change every 1-2 years now. Stop lining your pockets with developer money, focus on real quality of life improves for people who want to live in a beautiful city. The monstrosity on San Antonio going in is only the beginning....

Um, be reassured, last poster. The big example they cite about the 2560 units is a ways out. That housing that Federal Realty has proposed to develop when WalMart moves out in 45 years. So, a few things might change by then.

Pulling in numbers like this is a dis-service. The LASD doesn't play 5 years ahead,
let alone 45. They did it first, but the story doesn't note their deception. There are other projects which will add smaller amounts of housing before then, mostly for Google workers. It all remains to be seen how much turnover there is in Google workers and if they start to have kids. If they leave the ares and are replaced by more recent graduates from colleges around the world, well, that won't add to the kids in schools, not anywhere around here anyway. The google alumni tend to leave the area.

Umm as I drive down El Camino with walls of units towering over each side, and pass the giant Prometheus monstrosity that will block out the sun on San Antonio, those will be in place in less than a year... That's a couple thousand more right there. That's a couple thousand more cars on the streets and a few hundred more students... This is now not 45 years from now...

Here's my concern. There seems to be massive expansion going on in our community with little (or no) long term planning. The City leaders / councils in both Los Altos and Mountain View appear happy to let businesses and developers build like mad but little (or no) thought is going into transportation, schools, and other vital community services.

But for goodness sake, to build a school site along El Camino Real is probably the most hair brained scheme I've ever heard of. It makes many of Trump's insane proposals sound almost reasonable. Board members Luther, Peruri and Ivanovic, please do not throw your community's money down the drain. For $50 million you could purchase the Fenwick place free and clear and still have $100 million to build a hilltop luxury school. I believe the charter school would love it.

But do you really need a new school site? Are there other solutions? What will happen when the anticipated bunch of new students have moved through the Los Altos School District and onto high school / college?

Tammy Logan, one of the most intelligent people I've ever worked with has decided to leave the School Board two years ahead of time. Perhaps she sees the writing on the wall.

"Although more than a quarter of the district's students live in Mountain View, none of the district's nine schools is located here."

Springer Elementary is located in Mountain View - maybe the intent was to point out that none of the LASD schools are located in the North of El Camino area of Mountain View.

27% of LASD students come from Mountain view, or about 1260. Fewer than 600 live in the MV area north of El Camino. Another 30 or so live in Palo Alto north of El Camino and are districted in LASD. The school district predates the existence of cityhood for a lot of the land involved. The district bought a site on E. Portola when it needed to expand schools in the 1950's, and this site served the north of El Camino Area. Around 1980, LASD sold this site, which was a mistake. The taxpayers of Mountain View PAID for the purchase of the Portola Elementary School site and it was not their decision to close the school that served their area. Notice how Portola Elementary was near to El Camino, but not right on that highway. Who puts a school on a state highway in an area with lots of other roads?

And yes, Springer Elementary School serves mostly Mountain View residents, but some form Los Altos, and it is in the city of Mountain View.

Oak Avenue Elementary School serves a lot of Mountain View residents as well, and it is near the border between the two cities with it being just an accident what city it is located in. Nearby Mountain View High School is in Mountain View. Big deal as to what school lies in which city. LASD crosses the boundaries of 4 cities.

It is questionable whether new land needs to be acquired given that the former Hillview Elementary School site (free public land) was kept by the City of Los Altos originally for that purpose and given the ample size of both the Covington and Egan campuses. However, the 5150 El Camino site is an ideal location given that it is adjacent to an existing Mountain View Kinder Care facility and a Sylavan Learning Center, one block from the MVLA Montesori School also on the El Camino, and yet further down the road from Palo Alto Pre School and Palo Alto High School. Also situated on another major arterial, San Antonio Road, are other schools such as the Gideon Hausner Jewish Day School, Athena Academy, and the former San Antonio School site.

1000 students. Every day. Monday through Friday. 8AM through 4PM. All converging
on 5150 El Camino Real.

Sure, that's the same thing as the Sylvan Learning Center. It's just like Palo Alto High School. Except there's no side streets as alternate access to the location. That's the problem. All this traffic is going to run down S. Clark and Jordan Avenue and turn into 5150 at the same time of day, into a site layout without adequate drop off buffering.


It would be worse than an In N Out Burger drive through!

Simple three step solution to this mess:

Step 1 - Close Covington and give that campus to BCS
Step 2 - Move 6th grade to Egan/Blach and re-draw school attendance boundaries
Step 3 - Spend the $150M of Measure N bond funds to upgrade existing schools

Done!

Web Link">Web Link

The LASD Board is meeting again Monday the 25th to discuss in closed session two options for land purchase to create a new school. The two choices are (1) St William Church adjacent to Covington School and (2) 5150 El Camino Real on the very edge of the district and behind the homes on Casita Way. See Web Link">Web Link . Both parcels are just under 4 acres, but note that Covington is a 16 acre district property currently housing just one 500 student elementary school and also district office functions which are not necessarily colocated at a school site. The flexibility of St William property added onto Covington and with 6.5 acre Rosita Park on the other side is amazing. The session is closed but public comments are accepted at 6pm.