Let's be honest and call these cost over-runs Slater costs, not Stevenson costs. The big increases come from the need to move the Slater preschool onto the Stevenson campus--because the Board has caved in to local pressure groups and has agreed to open a ninth school at Slater that the district doesn't need and can't afford. Get ready to pay and pay!

When will the Board realize that new buildings don't make good schools, only excellent teachers make good schools? But while we fritter away millions over bricks and mortar (or sheetrock and paint), the district is hemorrhaging wonderful, experienced teachers, more every year.

This Board has terrible priorities.

Lets be more detailed while we're being honest. Some critical details were again left out of the Voice report.
First, the budget for Stevenson was always the LOWEST priced school in the district.

In the official presentation they poured all the projects at the campus into one bucket at $40.5million and gave no details on how that was divided.

Todd Lee was asked to provide a break-out verbally and here are the numbers:

Stevenson rebuild $12.9 million (less than any other school)
Theuerkauf modernization $13.2
District Office rebuild $6.3
Slater Preschool $2.0
You might want to know why the Slater preschool move is so cheap?
Simple, it will be put into the existing portables currently used by Stevenson. So, no new constructions, just renovation of those portable to meet preschool standards.

General Site improvement $6.1

Remember, the cost of the Stevenson rebuild is still the lowest priced school upgrade in the district, even lower than those schools that merely needed refresh while Stevenson needs a massive re-build to meet the official district standards.

I really wish the Voice had included the costs break-out in the above article. The $40.5million "price tag" keeps getting blamed exclusively on Stevenson alone when in fact Theuerkauf gets the lions share and the bulk of the over-budget is due to the Slater decision and the District Office re-build.

I do want to be clear that I support the new plan and the idea of getting rid of the old D.O. and the Slater decision.
I just wish people would tell the whole story.

Weren't there two fewer schools when the bond was approved? The board has added Mistral and Slater since then. No wonder they're way over the $198M budget.

@Jackie of Jackson...

It depends on how you count "schools".

What we now call "Mistral" has been operated at the Castro school site as a separate "program" at least since before 2008 and was officially split off from Castro in 2014?

The original Slater was closed in 2006 for highly questionable reasons and that closure caused massive negative (and predicted) ripple effects ever since and will continue to do so for years to come.

Interestingly, Slater got closed when it had about 400 kids, which is the same as Stevenson has these days and Mistral has too. Castro and Theuerkauf have even fewer kids than that.

@Nora S.

I agree that excellent teachers make good schools, as evidenced by the great performance of Stevenson while being 100% in portables. I'm curious if you have any stats around the hemorrhaging experienced teachers. I haven't heard of this before and I'd like to know more if you wouldn't mind sharing.

However, I don't think calling these over-runs Slater costs would be honest at all. These aren't Slater costs, nor Stevenson costs, nor even Mistral costs. They are just the costs of running a reasonable school system in one of the most expensive cities in the world.

I understand that while it may not seem like we need a 9th school, here are some facts:

* Huff, Bubb and Landels all have waiting lists and are overcrowded.
* Traffic continues to get worse in the city.
* The NE quadrant has the highest growth rates and the most new kids going into school.
* While 2 schools have been closed in the NE quadrants, 2 new schools have been opened in other quadrants *right next to existing schools*.
* One of these closed schools in the NE quadrant is bringing in well over 60M dollars for the rest of the city.
* Mountain View residents pay significantly less tax than Palo Alto, Cupertino or Los Altos residents.
* Housing values in Mountain View continue to go up, so your new neighbors will be contributing more tax dollars to the school system.

So, if MV residents aren't willing to pay what our neighboring cities pay, then we should really think hard about the results. As they say, you get what you pay for.

Do we really need to build a new district office? It's just an office with desks and chairs, right?

Is there some reason they couldn't lease office space somewhere like everyone else does?

Then they could use the district building to host the preschool temporarily.

Unfortunately, s big part of the problem are the landlords of the older crappy apartment buildings. These multi-unit properties pay the same school bond tax as a single family home, yet can contain many school-aged kids! Do the math and it's obvious where the problem is.

If landlords are not required to pay their fair share of tax, then at least they should be under rent control. Otherwise, they get every advantage over single family homes without any community benefits!

Worse, these properties are seldom re-assessed, so they pay very little property tax overall.

@Mike Laursen

The current Distircf office building is not in good enough shape to be reused for the preschool. The current District Board Room is slated to be repurposed as the new Stevenson library. The DO is last on the list but it is my opinion that District staff deserve reasonable facilities to work in too.

@Nora S.

Blaming the over-runs on Slater is like blaming your 4th and last child for all of your financial woes.

Let's say you have 3 children. Your oldest, Missy, suddenly needs her own room, which costs your family $41 million out of the $200 million that you have. Then, you have twins, Steven and Therry, and they refuse to share a room, so you need to build an addition for an extra room which is another $35 million.

Suddenly you have a new baby, and your house is full. "Oh no," you say, "our family is over budget and it's all the fault of this new baby."

Saying that this is all the fault of Slater is pretty much saying that all people in Mountain View do not deserve to be treated equally.

@Greedy landlords

You don't seem to be aware of the long standing laws (prop 13) nor the more recent court decisions about "parcel" taxes. You also seem to have some other agenda going on.

"Unfortunately, s big part of the problem are the landlords of the older crappy apartment buildings."

Sounds like a very specific personal grudge there.

"These multi-unit properties pay the same school bond tax as a single family home,"

Not currently in the Mountain View Whisman School District.
The current parcel tax, which will expire next year, taxes land owners based on value.

Recent state court decisions have declared this to be illegal.
The courts now say that each parcel, regardless of value or size, must be taxed on a per parcel basis equally for each registered parcel.

"yet can contain many school-aged kids! Do the math and it's obvious where the problem is.

"If landlords are not required to pay their fair share of tax, then at least they should be under rent control."

Ah, now we see your true agenda with this off-topic post.

"Otherwise, they get every advantage over single family homes without any community benefits!"

So, providing rental units is of no benefit to the community, interesting opinion there.

"Worse, these properties are seldom re-assessed, so they pay very little property tax overall."

Again, like all property owners of any sort, they are assessed yearly and the tax increase is limited by prop 13, just as single-family home taxes are.

Once again, the single-minded PACT parents are doing everything to support PACT over legitimate neighborhood schools. Just because something is "legal", does not make it right. Why should a 25 unit apartment complex contribute the same amount of dollars to schools as a single family home? No argument that the court has sided with the greedy apartment owners and commercial property--based businesses, but this "flat tax" nonsense has been rammed down our throats by political conservatives.

It is illuminating to see how a PACT advocate would defend this practice. It demonstrates how PACT doesn't seem to have the interests of the school district in mind. Fighting the re-opening of Slater? Pathetic.

@Abhigail, to stick to discussing my main point, is there something unreasonable about office facilities leased from an office building somewhere in the area, rather than a custom-built building?

A few things:
*The Dual Immersion program, now Mistral, has been at Castro since 1996
*i have not heard PACT parents as a group being negative about Slater
*there have been many legitimate concerns raised about Slater being reopened. I totally support a school in this neighborhood. And I, living in the neighborhood, have serious concerns- parking ad traffic, district task force conclusions that it will not fill, limited field space.
* The Stevenson remodel is less than the work at other schools, and it is far and away the site in poorest condition. It was not Stevenson folk who insisted they get a new site.
*i am troubled by the fact that it just now had come to light that the plan voted on is not viable. Is the board doing their homework?
* I do remember the architect being so insulted by a board member that he walked out. Doesn't inspire a lot of confidence.
*that said, elections are coming up, and, we, as voters, need to do our research on the candidates and vote wisely.

"Huff, Bubb and Landels all have waiting lists and are overcrowded."

There is plenty of room for overflow kids from Huff, Bubb and Landels to attend Theuerkauf or Monta Loma. Attendance lines can be redrawn so that the commutes to your new schools are not so bad. I believe Theuerkauf and Monta Loma even have room for North Whisman kids. There is no urgent need for a school in the North Whisman neighborhood. It's debatable if there will be a need 10-15 years from now. But the school district doesn't have the you-know-what to force all you over-entitled parents to suck it up and attend an existing, perfectly fine school, so we waste more money to appease you, instead of investing in making all our schools great.

@Mik Laursen

Well, I hear about how expensive it is to lease office space. Would that really be cheaper in the long run?

Also, their building isn't designed out at all. I suspect they will propose modular construction like they are doing at Stevenson rather than stick-built to save money.

@Nora S (aka @Steve Bell)

I find it ridiculous that anyone would think it fair for elementary students to be forced to commute to their FOURTH closest school. The two closest schools are being rented out to fund the rest of the district and the third, Landels, is overcrowded. You want to deprive these kids of a neighborhood school so that your own school can take even more money from the pot? Now WHO is over-entitled?

@ ST Parent of Rex Manor. $ matter It must not be much of a hungry lion (Therurkof Elementary) if less than 1/3 of "the meat" is going to that lion! 13/40

NONODY who buys or rents in the bubb or huff area wants to drive their child to Monta Loma. Sorry guys, that's just crazy talk. A) it's a 7/10 on greatschools.org and bubb and huff are 10s, B) their peers would go to different middle and high schools, and C) can we talk about traffic? While the idea of throwing in Slater costs is crazy, there is a reason we need another school there and it's growth.

- a mom in Monta Loma, so I'm not biased and I don't go to pact.

The pact would serve MVWSD if they simulated and stop this entitlement mentality of wanting a library, multipurpose room. All at the cost of taxpayers money.
This district. gets a F for failing to handle funds and letting a group of parents call the shots that effect all students across the district.

Hey Cuesta Park
on Aug 20, 2016 at 11:11 pm

I have no idea what "practice" you claim I was "defending", I was not defending anything.
I was educating the prior poster about Prop 13, which was passed by 57% of the voters in 1978.
I was not yet a California voter then, but I knew about Prop13 and I knew it was a popular idea, but it would do more harm than good.

I also did NOT "defend" the recent court decisions about the laws for "parcel taxes".
I do understand the logic of the ruling. Logically, if you're going to call something a "parcel tax" then it only makes legal sense to charge a flat rate per parcel. Parcels by their nature are not equal and I don't think it's realistic to expect any sense of "fairness" from anything like a "parcel tax".

No version of a parcel tax can be "fair", it's just a bad concept.

If you want the school districts to tax people on some other criteria, that's fine, but this is what the lawmakers made available to school districts.
Taxing people based on square footage is also unfair because of the wild variations in the value of a square foot. Taxing based on "fair market value" is also unfair because the market value of a property is pretty irrelevant if you're not selling it and does not have any relation to your finances and ability to pay the tax.

With the Parcel Tax Law, at first, school districts asked for the intended flat-tax per parcel, but then districts started passing various schemes that did not treat all parcels equally. This is what the courts eventually found was illegal under the existing laws.
Again, I never "defended" this, I simply explained it.

"Once again, the single-minded PACT parents are doing everything to support PACT over legitimate neighborhood schools."

Again, it's you who are passing value-judgements, I never said anything against building Slater or any other no-choice neighborhood schools. YOU are the one being judgmental and negative wanting to destroy something other people value highly because you want to be given something new.

I have repeatedly stated I was always in support of getting Whisman/Slater a school for the exclusive use of their own neighborhoods. I only said it should not be done by sacrificing any other existing schools.

"Just because something is "legal", does not make it right."

I never claimed it did, I could list you 20,000 laws that are NOT right and the governor signed 7 more into law recently which are costly and unfair and which will do no good for anyone but the politicians careers.

"Why should a 25 unit apartment complex contribute the same amount of dollars to schools as a single family home?"

Because in 1978 57% of the VOTERS passed prop13 and that has been the law ever since. Again, I did not and would not have voted for it, but I accept that it is the law.

"No argument that the court has sided with the greedy apartment owners and commercial property--based businesses, but this "flat tax" nonsense has been rammed down our throats by political conservatives."

In 1978, not last week or last year, but in 1978. And everyone living in California since 1978 has lived with this law and the VOTERS have not (yet) repealed it.

"It is illuminating to see how a PACT advocate would defend this practice."

What "practice" do you think I "defended"?????

"Fighting the re-opening of Slater?"

Again, WHERE did I "fight" the re-opening of Slater??????

I have consistently and openly stated I WANTED Whisman or Slater to be opened as long as no other schools got closed to do so. I was ecstatic when the Board voted to reopen Slater as art of the whole refurb projects on all the other schools. I ALWAYS said that Stevenson was only going to be safe if Whisman/Slater got their school as well.

The huge vast majority of the Stevenson Community was always openly supportive of opening a new school in the Whisman/Slater area as long as no other school got closed to do so.

Many people from every school have been concerned how to pay for Slater, since it will be by far the most expensive K-5 school the district has ever built. The Board says they can pay for Slater, so I must trust they will do so. I do not object to their current plans.

@Sam

"The pact would serve MVWSD if they simulated"

I don't understand that, did you mean some other word there?

"and stop this entitlement mentality of wanting a library, multipurpose room."

The Stevenson Community simply wanted to continue to exist, to NOT have Stevenson closed-down.

It was the MVWSD Board of Trustees that INSISTED that the ONLY options they would allow was either to close Stevenson to give it all to Whisman/Slater OR to rebuild Stevenson to meet the District Standard for Schools the Board approved for all schools. NO OTHER OPTION was allowed by the Board.

It was repeatedly suggested that Stevenson could be just fine if left alone or only given a few upgrades to the worst facilities problems, but the Board flatly rejected any such ideas. The Board said it was all or nothing for Stevenson.

"All at the cost of taxpayers money."

Mistral and Stevenson are public schools which serve public school students from all over the entire MVWSD district, as such, they are run by public money like the other public schools.

"This district. gets a F for failing to handle funds"

AGREED! The Board allowed HALF of the Measure G money to be spent on the middle schools BEFORE they had any idea how much would be left for the K-5 schools or how it would be allocated. Steven Nelson also said there should have been an overall planned allocation of funds to cover ALL schools before the money-faucet got opened.

"and letting a group of parents call the shots that effect all students across the district."

YES, the Board gave the Whisman/Slater advocates literally dozens of official special time-slots in Board meeting for them to give presentations advocating the closure of Stevenson to pay for the opening of a school in Whisman/Slater. The Whisman/Slater advocates had a lock on 2 Board members and got preferential treatment for years to push their agenda.
They made sure nothing of significance was allowed to proceed until they finally got their approval vote on Dec 10th.

All the Stevenson Community wanted was to continue to exist. Stevenson parents were supportive of giving a school to Whisman/Slater as long as it could be done WITHOUT closing any other school to do it.

For Stevenson, it was always self-defense and always seeking the "win-win-win" solution to make EVERYONE happy.

For the Whisman/Slater advocates, it was always about destroying Stevenson to get what they wanted regardless of the cost to others.

When the Slater Now people finally figured out that attacking Stevenson was not working for them, they finally stopped demanding Stevenson to be closed and instead started saying that all the schools can be happy and a 9th school was needed.

At that point, when Slater Now accepted Stevenson's continued existence, then progress was made rapidly, because Stevenson was ALWAYS supportive of finding a way to open a school in Whisman/Slater, as long as no other school was closed to do so.

The Whisman/Slater advocates have dominated the agenda for the district for years and only when they decided to live and let live did things actually move forwards.

To be clear, I have always supported building a new school over in the Whisman/Slater area, in-spite of the fact that a school over there will unavoidably be the most expensive of all our K-5 schools.

As a follow-up to my previous comments, I went to a medical office building in Cupertino yesterday, and discovered that Cupertino's school district offices are simply occupying a couple of suites there.

@Sam of Jackson Park

History lesson for Sam of Jackson Park:
"The pact would serve MVWSD if they simulated and stop this entitlement mentality of wanting a library, multipurpose room. All at the cost of taxpayers money."

Sam, I guess you are not aware that Stevenson was built new in 1965 and consisted of 3 buildings. A northern and a southern octagon building and a rectangular combination administration/Library building set in-between the octagons.

Stevenson was dedicated to the the recently deceased Adlai Stevenson, a well-respected Democrat who had suddenly died in July 1965 in the UK.

The WHISMAN district operated Stevenson as an elementary school from 1965 until 1989 when the WHISMAN district Board decided to take over 2 of the buildings belonging to Stevenson and then rent-out the third Stevenson building to the YMCA to make money. The kids of Stevenson were kicked-out and sent to Theuerkauf.

When Stevenson was reopened by the merged Mountain View Whisman district in 2009, Stevenson was not given any library at all. No other elementary school in the district was left without a library. The staff had to get creative and cram as many books as possible into a tiny portable classroom which could otherwise have a teacher and class of kids.

Getting the original Stevenson Library building back after 25 years is simply restoring what every elementary school needs and deserves.