The sponsors of this movement, the Greater San Antonio Community Association is a farce. There hasn't been a membership meeting in years! The website hasn't been updated since 2013! Actually there has never been a general membership meeting since it was founded in 2012, only a few ice cream or food truck socials years ago. It's a small group of people (no more than 10 people) claiming to represent a large neighborhood and population who have never bothered to poll or gather consensus about what the neighborhood wants! It would take very little effort by the city and the school district to discover this fact. Just ask for meeting minutes, required by the association's bylaw! They won't get any because they don't exist because they've never had any real meetings! Totally anti-democratic. Total fraud claiming to represent a neighborhood without doing the hard work of holding meetings and building consensus. And half of the sponsors of the petition, are Bullis Charter School parents, so this really about putting a Bullis campus in the old Safeway location. The truth of the matter is that many people in our neighborhood want to see more office space mixed with retail and business go into the old Safeway site. The GSACA is nothing more than an attempt to shield this fact.

If think that it's hard to imagine that residents in our area would en masse prefer _even more_ high rise apartments and offices to a school and park - you are correct! The number of LASD kids in the area North of El Camino Real would more than fill a neighborhood school. Historically, this area has been under served, and adding more units will increase the number of kids. Smart planning will create amenities (like a park) to serve those who live here and residents city wide.

And, there was an informal poll done in 2014 asking residents about their thoughts about a school in the area. This report was shared with the LASD Facilities Master Plan Committee.

Poll Report: Web Link

Poll Questions: Web Link

The question of which public school program would occupy such a site is to be answered by LASD. I encourage the school board to come up with a clear, comprehensive plan to shed light on their decision-making process.

@bikerchick

Wow! Your linked data shows 74 respondents to your poll produced by the Greater San Antonio Community Association! That's a staggeringly low number and hauntingly familiar manipulation of data, particularly when it's produced by the GSACA. How many of those respondents (40 of the 74 from the Crossings) were double-dipping from the same household (both parents voting?). We've seen that a lot at the Crossings. Once again if the source of the data is the GSACA, then hopefully the GSACA can cough up the meeting minutes that moved to generate the poll! But we in the San Antonio neighborhood know they can't because we know the GSACA never has neighborhood meetings with notices and agendas put out in advance! They spam our email accounts and rule by fiat and decree and send "official" neighborhood association letters to the city councils and school boards pretending their is a chorus of wide spread neighborhood approval behind everything GSACA Board members. But their isn't. It's pure fraud and demagoguery. City council and school board members, or even a Voice journalist, should be prepared to ask any one who trumpets themselves as a member or representative of the GSACA to provide proof of their mandate to represent the community. That's easily achieved by the presentation of meeting minutes. Otherwise they should be shown the door. GSACA Board member claims to represent a group of people's interests and opinions on a position that they have never taken the time to meet and get to know is just plain unethical. I challenge them to prove they have done their due diligence to represent anyone!

The old Safeway site is a TERRIBLE place for a school. Have you seen how bad the traffic is already? Nothing is going to be good but a school in the middle of 20 intersections and right by a train track? I'm sorry, this is just shady.

Concerns are not for an increased number drivers, but rather a dangerous area for kids to walk/cycle as well as massive delays to commuters due to school time kids comute. That's a real impact for everyone. Kids can walk or bike to most all of our schools, but there are still big delays around the schools due to the coming and goings of kids and their parent using all forms of transportation. People avoid school zone to avoid the long slow backups around the schools. A school at the Safeway site places that situation on one of the biggest commute corridors around. Accept the flaws in your plan and move on...or rant on the corner, no big deal either way.

@ "Major swear word" Nice name.

The best idea? A park there. Will it happen? No, but it's still not a good school site. You'd have students crossing San Antonio, California Avenue, and Rengstorff on bikes and on foot. With the new construction and developments, along with increased traffic, I would sincerely fear for my child's safety. Wouldn't you?

Things aren't perfect as they are. Crossings residents driving to Covington doesn't seem like the best idea. But that doesn't mean a school site on California and San Antonio is our only other option!

What happened to buying the church site next to Covington and better utilizing that space? That sounds preferable.

Also- 240 signatures? 120 households? This is not overwhelmingly impressive. I'm very interested to know what your motivating factors are for this school site. Is it for BCS to take Covington? Can we share?

@ "Except..." - I agree.

@ "Major swear word"

Just because 230 people have responded to the only option the GSACA has presented in it's survey and accompanying petition, that falsely claim to represent the San Antonio neighborhood, regarding the option to put a school and a park on the old Safeway site, does not mean it's a valid survey. Only one option was presented! Neither the survey or the petition presents a choice of any other options such as retail, housing, office space or a combination of two or all options! But this is a great example of the unethical way the GSACA conducts itself! A few self-selected individuals decide the one option that is best for the neighborhood based on their own interests and motives, without any general membership meeting, and then proceed to sell it to the city council and school board as the only option and officially agreed upon and officially sanctioned GSACA solution! How does the GSACA truly know that the San Antonio neighborhood is against mixed use retail, office and housing if there is no such option presented on any poll or petition??? How do they know what the community wants if they don't have membership meetings? Moreover, if you look at many of the signers of the petition, many don't even live in the San Antonio neighborhood.

And it's quite interesting how no one from the GSACA has piped in with an explanation about the GSACA's total lack of transparency and general membership meetings, properly posted with agendas, per the GSACA's very own Bylaws that appear on its website!

Furthermore, why doesn't the GSACA ever seek to address other current, real and pressing neighborhood concerns, like the lack of public garbage cans around the trains station that leads to trash being deposited all over the neighborhood along pathways to and from the station? Why doesn't GSACA ever campaign against the city to clean up our traffic medians with actual landscaping and plants, rather than dead trees, like everywhere else throughout the city where neighborhood associations are active? What about all the cracked and lifting sidewalks in the community? Why doesn't GSACA campaign for more police traffic enforcement along Showers Drive and Pacchetti Circle where cars are constantly throttling through and around the neighborhood? Is it because, as mentioned previously, that the GSACA is nothing more than a front for a very few self-serving or Bullis Charter School interests?

All you will ever hear from the GSACA when you ask such questions is crickets as a few of its members continually try to shove their agendas down the community's throat. And then name calling and smearing campaigns kick in behind the scenes. If you speak out on their online forums with alternative opinions you get shouted down or kicked off. And still they will never hold a general membership meeting.

The city council and school board should take note. The GSACA is a fraudulent neighborhood association operating outside of its own published bylaws.

According to the 2014 San Antonio Precise Plan for this area, creating a school is an established policy. Here is the text:

LU-1.7: Support creative public-private partnerships
to facilitate development of a public school in the
Plan Area.

Here is a link to the plan: Web Link

With some creative pedestrian pathways near CSMA, hundreds of kids from the Del Medio and Monroe Park neighborhoods could also walk to this school without crossing a major roadway. There is a nice sidewalk under the overpass just across from the train station. This old Safeway site is really the best location for a school and park in the San Antonio Precise Plan Area.

LASD needs to get on the plan. Leaders from Mountain View and Los Altos Hills are encouraging LASD to get the real planning done. Read about that here: Web Link

What a great idea. There are 200 kids in the Crossings and the Old Mill Condos
alone! You have other kids right nearby in California Avenue Apartments
past Showers Drive. No where else does LASD have a school with 300 kids as
immediate neighbors.

I don't think this is a case where their parents will drive them to school.

I'm not understanding the outrage.

What would be so terrible about having a Bullis Charter School campus there and why is promoting that idea so terrible? Talk about a boon for your property values. It's one of the best schools in the state. The area is fast becoming a tunnel of high-rises and I think a park and school would be a fantastic solution. We have PLENTY of office space and retail all around already.

Pros and cons of using Safeway for a school:

Pros: None

Cons:
1. The intersection is way too busy already. It's not a safe place for kids to walk, bike or be dropped off
2. The additional school traffic would create major congestion in an already over-congested area.
3. That's an incredibly expensive parcel of land. LASD can't afford it (the bond money isn't nearly enough to purchase primo land, construct a building and do the improvements needed at the existing elementaries).
4. If you put BCS there the NEC neighborhood kids still wouldn't have a neighborhood school to attend. Only the small percentage that won the BCS lottery spots could go.
5. If you used the school for NEC kids then you'd have to construct another new school for BCS. There's no money and no land for that.
6. Most of the kids attending BCS live in Los Altos so locating the school outside their local area (or even their city) would create increased traffic.

In summary, it's a dumb idea...

I support the city council's effort to ensure low income students are equally distributed between all the school districts in the city.

The problem is that the Safeway site is only 3.7 acres. Typical LASD school sites
are 10 acres, with Santa Rita being 11.4 acres and serving the area of Mountain View on the Palo Alto side of San Antonio Road. Talk about a park. Those kids have their
own forest at school.

Now, some people get crazy and say, so build a 4 story building on the 3.7 acres
and it could work, but I don't think that's reasonable. The kids in that school would have a substandard school compared to anywhere else in Mountain View, with no need.

What you could hope for would be some flexibility on the part of LASD. The Mountain View area North of El Camino Real is only 3/8 square mile in size and then there's
a little bit (1/8 sq mile) of Palo Alto that is in LASD over by Monroe Drive. Those kids currently go to Santa Rita such that around 180 kids from the north side of El Camino Real are assigned to Santa Rita, which is closer than Almond and Covington for the kids on the other side of San Antonio.

So, if LASD goes ahead with plans to have elementary school be K-5 instead of K-6,
you could use the 3.7 acres for a school just for 350 kids from the immediate area,
just 1/4 square mile all on one side of San Antonio Road. That would work, because fewer kids require less space. There is precedent for this because LASD already operates Gardner Bullis with less than 350 kids even though it is K-6. That school has fewer 6th graders than any other grade, so it's a reasonable facsimile of a K-5 school. It's also 10 acres in size with a private preschool on-site (which also doubles as an after school care program for elementary school students). However, it is very hilly and most of the buildings are down toward the front of the school, making it more like a 6 acres site, all one story.

So, I think talk of using this 3.7 acres for Bullis Charter is absurd, because that is 800 kids now and growing, and they come from all over LASD, even clear out near Grant Road and Fremont Avenue in south Los Altos. The travel involved in having them so off-center within LASD is significant, and 800+ kids is way more than 350.

About the comment on low income. I don't know where this is coming from. LASD has way fewer low income students than Mountain View Whisman. The peak in LASD is at Santa Rita with 11% followed by Almond with 10%. Those school serve Mountain View (about 1/3 of their students). Springer servers almost all MV students and they have a total of only 11 low income students. Covington serves 1/3 MV kids as well, and it has about 3% low income. Contrast that to Mountain View Whisman where the LOWEST proportion of low income students is at Huff, which is about 10%.

The split of kids between districts is not affected by where LASD locates its schools.

@School Considerations

Read the fact sheet on the petition page. The combined area of the parcels is 8.6 acres.

If I lived at the Crossings i would take a page from the playbook of the folks who got their way with opening Slater. If they got their neighborhood school where's yours? Why should Crossings kids have to cross dangerous intersections to get to a faraway school? They should open up a 350 kid school there, with a park. Most kids would walk and it would be a far far better thing for our city than more office space!

Replace yet another planned set of high rise apartment buildings with a school for the neighborhood and a park? Sign me up!

I believe that there is a plan already in the mill for the site of the old Safeway on California near San Antonio. The proposal I saw was to have 644 residences and 20,000 of commercial space. As I remember it was 5 stories and three buildings. There would be a little park at less than a half acre. As I remember it included the Old Mill office building and the strip mall that includes Planned Parenthood.

Although I live far from San Antonio, I agree a school is needed there and I like the idea of a combined school and park. I understand that, at 8.6 acres, the proposed site is small but I still think it could work. As for the traffic problems, the descriptions of traffic horrors at other schools make it clear to me that any site will have a traffic mess. That is unfortunate but not a reason to reject the site. On balance, I like this site.

You're right- schools definitely create traffic jams. The problem is, San Antonio @ California already is a standstill so the issue would be Current Problem + Added Problem = Disaster.

I'd say drive by sometime to get an idea, but you don't want to, trust me! You'd be promising yourself a move to Georgia just to get out of Silicon Valley after one afternoon in the area.

Why do people assume that a neighborhood school in a high-density area with multi-family dwellings and townhouses will produce horrendous traffic? I don't see it. Most kids will walk or bike. There are a lot of kids right here and the traffic created by the ones who do drive will be confined to a few points of the day. Not a problem compared with the choice programs we allow to exist despite the traffic they create.