The more I hear about MVWSD school board meetings, the more it seems they spend an inordinate amount of time dealing with Steve Nelson as a distracting, unprofessional representative of the organization. When is his term up? I hope it is before my oldest enters kindergarten so we can have a functional school board by then.

So glad that this man, Steven Nelson, decided not to run for re-election. He's done incredible damage duringhis tenure on the Board that, luckily for everyone, ends in November!!

"Emotions ran high at the Mountain View Whisman School District board meeting Thursday night ..."

Unfortunately this could apply to any of their meetings.

I am glad that Mr. Nelson took the initiative and started an inquiry. If each of the Board members did the same, they would have a good knowledge-base for continuing the discussion.
I know Mr. Nelson has been over the line a few times, however, he does have good ideas and and at times, thinks outside the box but you cannot continue to do business in the same manner year after year and expect different results.
Lighten up and Move along School Board! We are now in 2016.

stuff like this seems to happen a lot. You see the agenda, and somehow a lot of time is spent on different issues, and the item on the agenda is unresolved.

"To expect pre-approval by a mayor, city manager, board president or superintendent is ludicrous, stupid, dumb and entirely inappropriate," Nelson said.

I would tend to agree with Nelson on this one. What's the big deal? Waiting for any mayor, city manager, board president or superintendent around here to do anything is a proven waste of time.

Sounds like an argument of 2 wrongs trying to claim that makes it right.
Mr. Nelson should not be holding public meetings AS A SCHOOL BOARD MEMBER for something that has not been sanctioned by the board - if he did these as a neighbor, it would be fine.
Dr. Rudolf should not be signing his employment title to petitions or making public endorsements of them.
But the biggest problem is that they wasted everyone's time arguing over this instead of DOING THEIR JOB.
Glad we'll have the majority of the board up for re-election in November.

First of all Nelson was not holding official board meetings but soliciting input from Cooper park neighbors. The comments by Wheeler and Rudolph are completely out of line. I fact they contradict themselves by saying coffee meetings are ok but somehow sending out a survey crosses the line. How ridiculous. Elected officials should always reach out and get input from neighbors.

Rudolpf is also showed his true colors by signing on to measure V as a superintendent.

I'm not a fan of Nelson, but on this issue he is on the right side

Wow.....interesting topics. I'm not sure it makes a lot of sense for any particular board member to craft research on an issue not currently facing the board. Further, it might have made sense if Nelson had just mentioned the idea before starting it, even informally, to the other Trustees and the Superintendent. That might have headed off any potential problems.

But separately, one of the things that our School Board has inadvertently done in a few instances (in good faith, of course), is put one particular neighborhood or one particular interest, over the interest of the district. The reality is that if the district as a whole needs any of these properties for any of these purposes, then we should act in the best interests of our children and the district as a whole, not just one neighborhood. Everyone is never going to be happy with every decision. As long as we work hard to make sure our actions are in the best interests of the children and the district's educational goals on the whole, we'll never go wrong.

One starts to get the feeling that the Superintendent and the rest of the board use Nelson's foibles to distract everyone from the real screw ups the district has made and their inability to solve things like the achievement gap or the ever changing or stalled or over-budget construction projects. Wheeler has been on the board for how long? Some of there problems go way back, long before Nelson's time.

Nailed it!

To answer your question- hard to find online. Since she was 50, but don't know current age.

I know he has fans but I'm just not a big fan, *personally speaking* of the superintendent and feel that everyone is bringing issues to the table and blaming them all on one person just as you implied, I believe.

@Hogwash of Rex Manor

"I've had a whole new school added to my neighborhood (Stevenson)..."

NO you didn't see that unless you remember the 1960's really well.
Stevenson has been an active site for kids since it was built, decades ago. I think in the mid 1960's judging by the person it was named after.

Stevenson was a normal public school for decades. Until after the big expansion of Theuerkauf after which Stevenson continued to serve kids as a YMCA child care center. Then in 2008, when the Castro school was desperately over-crowded because Slater got closed in 2006, the district took back Stevenson from the YMCA and reopened Stevenson as a public school again for 2009.

Unless you were around in the 1960's you did NOT see Stevenson "added" to the neighborhood.

"...and now they are bringing over a preschool too..."

True, because the MVWSD Board voted to build the Slater neighborhood a school of their own. The Slater site now holds a pre-school which must be kicked out of Slater to make room to build the new Slater K-5. The Stevenson site is the only one big enough to accommodate a new preschool.

"...without asking anyone in our neighborhood if that would be ok,..."

NO, the neighborhood has been told about this for quite some time. There have been many meetings in the past few years where it has been mentioned and the plans have been publicly available. Ask parents at Theuerkauf or Stevenson or even Whisman/Slater area parents.

"...but you haven't heard us complain about it."

WRONG again!
The plans for the new version of Stevenson had Stevenson being built along side of Monticito and have it's drop-off and parking along Monticito.

However, that plan had to be scrapped exactly because the people who lived along that one block of Monticito were opposed to such a change and their objections would have tied up the district for about a year dealing with the paperwork required. So, the district caved-in to the people on that one block and decided to keep Stevenson where it is now and rebuild it in place.

Which is fine by me, I actually prefer the new plans.

The pre-school that bothers you so much will not be a big deal in constructions since they will be placed into existing portable classrooms already on the Stevenson site. I grant there may be some traffic increase, but not to Monticito. Also, day-care/pre-school parents have a wide range of times they may drop-off and pick-up kids, so there is not a big wave of traffic all at the same time, like there is for K-5 schools for all kids to be there by 8:30 sharp.

It would help to do a little research before complaining.

@Ed of Cuernavaca

"One starts to get the feeling that the Superintendent and the rest of the board use Nelson's foibles to distract everyone..."

I get the feeling like you've never been to a MVWSD Board meeting since Nelson was took office. I've been to many.

Also, it's not just the current Super or Board members who have these issues with Nelson, so did the prior 2 Superintendents and Board President Chris Chang who resigned because of Nelson.

Not to mention the censure Nelson earned for his behavior in 2013.

"...from the real screw ups the district has made and their inability to solve things like the achievement gap..."

Virtually every school district in the entire USA shows nearly the same "gap" and the only district which don't have such a "gap" are the districts where almost all the kids are failing about the same. This "gap" has been around since they kept records on such things and as yet NO school district has found a reliable solution to eliminate the gap except by pushing DOWN on the better performing students until they are also failing.

I seriously doubt our dysfunctional district can devise a solution. At best MVWSD will make some small incremental improvements year to year, which is a step in the right direction ONLY if we don't sabotage the higher achievers to reduce the "gap".

Any real solution would be about finding ways that allow all children to achieve the very best they can as individuals.

"...or the ever changing or stalled or over-budget construction projects."

The cost over-runs are largely driven by delays, the delays are driven by a dysfunctional Board and a large portion of that has been caused by Nelson.

"Wheeler has been on the board for how long?"

I think over 13 years now?

"...Some of there problems go way back, long before Nelson's time."

Indeed, and some of the problems are not due to Nelson, some are not due to other Board members or any of the superintendents, BUT some ARE due to other board members, some ARE due to past superintendents, many are due to the voters and parents.

But giving credit where credit is due, some are directly due to Nelson and Nelson alone.

@ST Parent

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I'm not complaining about Stevenson or the preschool. I'm fine with it. (But BTW - Stevenson IS new to our neighborhood. It has not been here since the 1960's). I'm complaining that people in the Cooper neighborhood are complaining that they might have to live next to the same people who care for and teacher their children 5 days a week. That is my complaint.

And with regards to the Stevenson reconstruction, the district made the change because they would have been required by the city of Mountain View to do a traffic study. When it was just the neighbors expressing concerns about the increased traffic (not even saying no to building a new school, just asking that the district brainstorm ways to minimize traffic in the neighborhood now that we have 3 schools here when we used to just have 1 - an entirely reasonable request) the answer was no. In fact, the cheery CBO told us "If you buy a house near school property, expect changes and lots of traffic." So there's your answer Waverly Park! There's no reason you should get a different answer than we did.

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Reading between the lines, I would guess that the reason Nelson's impromptu outreach was specifically censured is related to this: "After the trustees received a letter from a Waverly Park resident voicing "extreme opposition" to plans for a below-market rate housing development..." Nelson has such an abrasive, aggressive, off-putting communication style that any outreach he does is more likely to make people opposed to his ideas.

I totally agree with you. Also, it is hard to feel sympathy for Nelson in moments like these when earlier in the same meeting he was using terms like "White guy families like mine" and saying that "Dr. Rudolph's kid are probably not too disadvantaged even though he looks like the president of the united states."

Video here: Web Link

I think his point was that we should not stop trying to raise up the subgroups of students who are doing less well than average but, as usual, his method of trying to get that across makes any message of his hard to hear, no matter how well-intentioned. I don't live in Waverly Park so I don't know the details of what he said at meetings or in his survey but it is not at all hard to believe that the way he delivered his message and/or asked his questions was easy to take in a negative way.

@Hogwash of Rex Manor
FALSELY claimed:
"(But BTW - Stevenson IS new to our neighborhood. It has not been here since the 1960's)."

Stevenson was built and dedicated in 1965. I found these facts & photo proof archived by the Mountain View Historical Society:

Newspaper article dated Sept. 24 1965 starts:
"WHISMAN School District Trustees in Mountain View Thursday night named their newest school the Adlai Stevenson School."

Originally called the "Monticito site" school, when Adlai Stevenson suddenly died in July the WHISMAN Trustees chose to name the school after the highly respected moderate liberal Democrat who had run for president 3 times and nominated twice, been a governor and ambassador to the UK.

Stevenson opened in 1965 with grades 1-6 while Theuerkauf (built in 1953) had grades K-6.
Stevenson consisted of the Southern and Northern "octagon" flexible classrooms buildings and the rectangular Office/Library building sitting in-between. All 3 buildings still exist and are in use on the site.

From 1969 until 1989 Theuerkauf had grades K-3 and Stevenson had grades 4-6.

In 1989 Theuerkauf had a major expansion to hold K-6 again and absorbed the Stevenson students.(Meaning, the Stevenson students got evicted from their school, a pattern repeated in 2006 & 2008.)

The District staff took over the Southern Stevenson octagon building for office space and the Stevenson rectangular Office/Library building as a Boardroom, tech-support and meeting rooms.

From 1989 until 2009 the Northern Stevenson octagon building was on a month to month lease to YMCA for it's child care program.

In 2004 the District decided it wanted to close the 400 student Slater school, which included 160 kids in the progressive PACT school.
(Many considered this closure a huge mistake at the time and ever since.)
Organized, vocal and repeated protests from Slater&PACT parents and teachers couldn't save Slater, which was closed in 2006.

By 2008, the Castro School was desperately over crowded because of the Slater closure. (Which was predicted by Slater advocates.)

In 2009, the District ended the lease to the YMCA and quickly added a bunch of portable buildings around the Northern octagon building. These portables cost a total of $2million and were only needed because the District wanted to continue using the Southern octagon and the rectangular building for District staff.

The district did not provide the newly reopened Stevenson with a library, the school staff had to get creative to compensate. Stevenson was reopened for K-5 with about 200 kids moved from Castro who had been in the PACT alternative school there.

So, when people claim Stevenson is a "new" school, they don't know what they are talking about.

Stevenson was opened in 1965 and PACT@Slater began in 1996 patterned after a similar but older school in Sunnyvale.

To put it simply:
Stevenson public school was dedicated to the recently deceased Adlai Stevenson on Sept 23 1965 for grades 1-6.
From 1969-1989 Stevenson had 4-6 while Theuerkauf had K-3.
From 1989-2009 2 of the 3 Stevenson buildings were taken over by District staff and the last Stevenson building rented out to YMCA.
In 2009 the district took back the last Stevenson building from the YMCA and spent $2mil for portables and then moved 200 kids from PACT@Castro into Stevenson to fix the over crowding at Castro.

Stevenson will now finally get it's original Library/Office building back again! Not exactly a "new" building since it was built in 1965 too.

Only five more meeting with Trustee Nelson. December can't come soon enough. He has cost this district enough money already.