Santa Clara County Office of Education - please revoke the authorization for Bullis Charter.

Hmm, that's actually not quite correct -- there was no vote on the H2 agenda item because no one made a motion to bring it to a vote. all four Trustees present expressed their individual views on the property and it was clear none of them was super excited about it, for a wide variety of reasons, but it's not correct to say they voted 4-0 against it. Personally, I wanted them to vote for the property to open the 60-90 day evaluative period within which they could properly assess the property, and take community input in a more methodical way. Not to mention, it would give district staff an opportunity to assess a piece of land in ways they've not yet had an opportunity, even if the ultimate decision was not to complete a purchase. Splitting hairs? Maybe.

There's a simple solution for this mess.

-Close Covington and move BCS to that campus
-Move 6th grade to Egan/Blach Middle Schools
-Spend the $150M of measure N bond funds to upgrade existing schools

I'm glad the trustees realized that this was a poor option. Candidly, they should not have wasted as much time as they did even considering this one. I originally believed that acquiring additional land was the best path forward, but it's clear that there are no suitable sites at a price the district can afford.

IMHO, at this point, the best solution would be to move the district offices to a commercial site, relocate the Egan footprint of BCS to the greater Covington site (with use of the Rosita space during school hours), retain the BCS presence at Blach, and establish a NEC school at the current BCS location at Egan. This would avoid burdening the Covington neighborhood with the full scale of BCS, but would still maximize the use of existing land. If 6th grade was moved to the middle schools, it would offset some of the pressure on the Covington neighborhood and other sites, and provide capacity for any expected future enrollment growth. Yes, BCS would still be on two sites, but they would be closer together and they could optimize the new site to best suit their needs. The NEC population would have a neighborhood school, and there would still be money left to do necessary renovations. Time to move on from land acquisition and get a plan of action in place that can actually work.

To clarify my post above, the scenario I am advocating would have Covington remain where it is, and share the greater Covington + Rosita site with the part of BCS that is currently at Egan. I'm not suggesting handing over the full Covington site to BCS.

Yes, definitely do that. Revoke the Charter and return around 700 kids to LASD schools. Good idea. Most people realize that wishing the charter school would go away would only create actual over enrollment problems in all the LASD schools. Then the LASD board can deal with spending more money to hire additional staff and find the space for the overflow of kids. Yes, good idea. Goodbye small neighborhood schools that are actually still small today.

Dead Pirate may not be so far off with that idea. It may come down to keeping BCS split and I as a BCS parent could potentially live with that. I think the rational split would be 6-8 at one campus and K-5 at another campus BUT the two campuses would ideally be close to one another since our program really is an integrated K-8 program. The younger kids and middle school kids really do learn from one another. I know the trustees are panicking about putting 900 kids at one site. Use the current land that we have to come up with a two site compromise. Maybe use Covington for one site (K-5?) and continue using Blach for the other site (6-8?). Use the two largest areas of district land that we have. I get it that the Egan area is so crowded. Move LASD 6th graders to Egan and Blach. It's a delicate balance of spreading out students and traffic. I know so many suggestions have been made. I hope the trustees work along side BCS to come up with a solution. I know many parents at BCS would be happy to work something so we can all move on and spend the Measure N money on ALL OF THE schools in the district before another two years are over. Schools are waiting to be repaired and I think it's way overdue and the delay in this is really affecting district children. Not just BCS kids.

Oh and move kids in the most crowded corner of the district around San Antonio and El Camino (may not exactly be NEC'ish) to the BCS space remaining at Egan and make that a 300 or less person school. That would be a nice and small neighborhood school for now in the hubbub of high rises and and so much traffic just down the road. Obviously that would require redoing boundaries but that is inevitable anyway since the trustees mentioned the word "enrollment growth" a few years ago. It has to be done, unfortunately. Maybe one day they could add to it somehow when space is needed, per the trustees' mention about the future. I think that land where BCS now sits at Egan is very rich soil to already own in the district and should be utilized well.

Hmm, you should take a look at the other elementary schools. They really operate
as 3-4 acre neighborhood parks and a 6-7 acre school campus for 550 kids. Some of them
operate a preschool in part of the excess space--e.g. Oak, Loyola and Gardner Bullis do this. Covington is a massive campus used in wasteful ways to provide a nice
district office staff environment with lots of storage for school property strewn
about hither and yon, plus the warehouse.

A 320 student school is not viable. But you don't need more than 6 acres to
do a good fair school site for 550 kids. It's when you try to stretch this
to 900 or 1000 that you have problems.

So after you house 550 NEC kids in a campus at Egan, well, first you have to wait. There are only 480 such kids today. With some growth you can get up to 550 someday
down the road.

Meanwhile, Covington, Almond and Santa Rita are down from 550 to 375-400 kids each. That's bigger than Gardner Bullis, but way less than Loyola and Springer. Again,
lots of growth room. Covington becomes only 375 kids no longer an extra 160 commuting
by car each day rather than walking/biking. Hmm, what else could you put on that 21.5 acre combo site Rosita + LASD land at Covington? I wonder.....

Santa Rita, Almond, and Covington are already operating at capacity, but running well-oiled machines and doing well. Why are we messing with them? They are all 3 very much neighborhood schools, unlike BCS or a NEC school would be.

If GBS and Loyola and Springer are lower capacity then we need to add to them. BCS parent, please don't go advocating for splitting up SR/Almond/Covington families for no reason when they're thriving. Thank you.

I'm new to all this but I don't understand the enmity directed at BCS. I think it is based on some out-of-date assumptions. For one, there are quite a few kids from Mountain View at BCS. Some live in townhouses and apartments, many are from diverse ethnic and economic backgrounds.

It's just nice to have a choice in the approach you want for your child. I have a kid who is very motivated by participating in science and the arts and having more of that is why we put in our time on the waitlist. We don't think we're better than anyone else and I don't get that kind of vibe at the school at all.

The El Camino area in Mountain View would have a neighborhood school too, if it
were just built for them. One thing they also lack is good sized Park with playing
fields for soccer and baseball. Every LASD school provides that to the community.
But the neighborhood around San Antonio and El Camino lacks such parks
completely, for both Los Altos and MV. It's especially bad for MV, because
you have 500 elementary school kids living there and it's only 1/4 of a square mile. So one idea is for LASD to buy 5 or 6 acres of land for $80 MIllion IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD
and then for Mountain View to kick in another $30 MIllion to buy 2 more acres of land
for the park benefit.

Now that would be GOOD. Finally, a neighborhood school for those 500 kids who
are split across Santa Rita, Almond and Covington. None of those subareas
is exactly CLOSE to the assigned school, but especially not The Crossings and The Old Mill Condos. 3 miles away they go to Covington. They might be close to Klein Park but it's an odd shaped park more for walking dogs and adults than for kids. Del Medio Park is for kids, but no soccer field and very very small for the use.

For the Greater San Antonio Area, it's important to realize that there
are a lot of changes coming. Tearing down Mervyn's and that area is next
on the plate, where they will be building office buildings at first,
and creating a lot more traffic, and then eventually housing on that 34 acre
section including WalMart too. Now's the time to set aside some of the land
for a park and a school. The park and school should be along California Avenue,
one of the first thing to replace Mervyn's.

Two benefits. The developers lose some land so the immense increase in office
space is not so great--25% or so less. There is a park and school as an upgrade
to the area.

Such a school is 4 or 5 years away, but it's time to get started. They have only
begun to vision about what will be the future of that 34 acres of land. Eminent domain
may be needed, but it's worth it. They're still left with 24 or 25 acres that
they can develop over time.

I'd happily take away land from the greedy San Antonio area developers for a school and park. I think it's too late, though.

I do agree that MV needs to chip in. I think the number I read was 24% of students in Los Altos schools live in parts on Mountain View, so that percentage should be reflected in purchases and builds. If I recall correctly, recently, when speaking about adding even more housing in MV that was going to be in the Santa Rita boundaries, MV council took a "not our school overcrowding problem" attitude when, it actually is.

Keep in mind that 30% of the district's property tax revenue already
comes from Mountain View properties. 30% of LASD's bond funding comes
from Mountain View properties. Mountain VIew has been kicking in more
than it's fair share for a long time!

BCS Open House the other night was packed - standing room only and parents clamoring for application information. Demand is definitely exceeding supply. It's best that BCS simply run 2 K-8 programs on their existing sites. It's the least disruptive to the masses. It would require Egan and Blach to cede a little more land, but then the BCS student experience would truly be equitable. I would not purchase new land for a new school. Rather, I would compensate Egan and Blach disproportionately for shouldering the burden of sharing with BCS. Make Egan and Blach the state of the art facilities such that any middle schooler would be ecstatic to go there. The rest of the schools (Gardner, Santa Rita, Almond, Covington, etc) should not be equitable recipients of funding b/c they have successfully preserved their small, neighborhood environments that they so coveted. The District needs to think beyond its current detente with BCS b/c that 5 yr clock is counting down and the arbitrary 900 student cap is way too low. BCS could easily be 2 550 student schools for 1100 total. The district should want that b/c it would make the balance of the schools all that much smaller and then they could finally be able to claim that they support school choice.