Simple solution - eliminate the 20% target for affordable housing. Then there will be less students and existing schools will be adequate.

There is no room at the existing public schools for more students - not just students from so-called "affordable" units. The issue is whether Mountain View should be a company town run and exploited by Google, Inc. to the severe detriment of existing residents. The current City Council says YES.

@Stan

Mountain View isn't a gated community. The solution here is to invest in infrastructure and services.

There is only so much developers will pay for community benefits like school construction. To build new schools most likely the Districts would need to pass a bond measure like the 2012 Measure G. That's going to be a big challenge considering so many existing residents do not support the huge growth in North Bayshore and I believe a bond measure requires a 55% supermajority team pass.

I would absolutely not support a bond measure that would mean I have to pay money to build schools for housing I don't want anyway. I've been pro housing in Mountain View and I've voted yes for all school bonds since I moved here, but 10,000 new housing units is ridiculous, even abusive to current residents. And you want current homeowners to pay to build new schools to support all these new people? Forget it.

If developers can't afford to build services for people in these new houses then they shouldn't be building these new houses at all.

Am I reading this right? 80 acres of housing for 105 acres of residence? Isn't this crazy high? What am I missing?

The land requested is a state guideline for school facilities and presumably what would be required to provide a similar experience that current students enjoy. In the article Superintendent of MVLA high school District says:

"Mathiesen said the acreage suggested in the letter comes directly from state guidelines, and would give the district enough room to build a traditional campus similar to Mountain View or Los Altos high schools. But he said district officials understand they may have to build a more compact campus with a more urban, multi-story layout, because of the huge cost of land."

Not to worry, just dump even more challenging students from newly built affordable housing on already struggling MV schools north of Central, all the middle class kids are going to go private anyway.
How about a better plan. Tear down the apartment rows on California and Latham, build housing there to attract middle class with kids. Ok I can live with 20% affordable units in these new buildings ;)

What could fix this, easily, simply, quickly? Why a massive downturn in the tech industry. We're building apartments like mad and the community (communities) are already overloaded with people. The idea that we have to build more is a bit over the top - certainly in terms of long distance thinking.

As far as schools go, to permit a developer to build houses and NOT provide land for schooling is terribly, terribly short sighted. In fact, the City of Mountain View could demand the developers themselves build schools.

If school district fees paid by developers cover only 10% of the cost of building or expanding schools for the residents of the new construction, then the fees are far too low and should be raised. What am I missing?

Developers are already paying BIG FEES that lower the land sales price (or what they are willing to pay for the land). Fees (soft costs) are just like construction costs (hard costs) and are accounted for in the pro forma. If you want to kill the competitiveness in development, just tack on more fees to where only government can afford to do anything.

Is anybody asking the question, how is it those in "affordable housing units" are having multitude of children that the rest of us are paying for?

Also, exactly how much does a teach make after ten years and what do those in administration make?

The new 10K houses will be generating upward of 50M a year in estate taxes for years to come, why can't some part of it flow towards school
construction.

Also schools: school district owns a bunch of school sites that it is not using, there is one right in the middle of north whisman.

And as someone pointed 80 acres for school? What are these guys smoking??
This article just doesn't add up.

80 acres for 5 schools. The middle school and high school use more space because of having a lot more students than elementary schools, and of course sports facilities.

@@Ed & James: The developers will be fine. All developers everywhere moan about fees because developers are businesses, and businesses prefer to pay less rather than more to produce whatever they're selling. They will continue to moan while they line up to build in North Bayshore, as long as they can resell the properties at a high enough price or charge enough rent over time to turn a profit. In the Bay Area, of all places, there's no evidence that developers' profit margins are currently anywhere close to imperiled by something like a hike in school impact fees collected up front. (Unlike, say, rent control, which if it were foolishly applied to new properties would cap their long-term income potential and really kill interest in new development.)

As for kids in affordable housing: would society be better off leaving them uneducated?

There are worse implications than even those mentioned in the article. The percent of kids from low-income families in our schools will rise from a little under 50 percent to way over 50 percent. We can currently afford art, music and other programs that make kids happy to go to school because the higher-income families pay double so low-income kids can have those programs as well. I don't know if those programs can survive if higher-income families have to pay that much more. At some point the system breaks.

Also what happens to the Beyond the Bell after school program and other programs we currently provide for low-income students? Who pays for those when the demand for them explodes? I'm glad my kids graduate before this hits because it sounds like a disaster. School quality declines, property value declines, taxes rise. Time to hit the pause button on the 10,000 housing units in N Bayshore.

It may be unrealistic to find a traditional size school lot in North Bayshore paid for by developers, but North Bayshore would be an ideal community to try public micro schools in micro space 100% paid by developers, for more info on micro schools, see AltSchool: Web Link (disclosure: I did past contract teacher work for AltSchool)

Palo Alto's AltSchool was built on a former car repair shop. Those future NB families who want a traditional campus have under enrolled Theuerkauf not far away.

New local schools in new housing developments in Fremont and Dublin are proof of concept that developer fees can be used to paid for the cost of new schools. School bonds should be reserved for improvements that touch the entire district.

marknn of North Whisman (obviously)

"The new 10K houses will be generating upward of 50M a year in estate taxes for years to come, why can't some part of it flow towards school construction."

If you mean property taxes, those are used to OPERATE our schools, NOT to build a bunch of new ones. For that we need to pass a School Bond measure for probably another $200 million, if not $400m. The $50 million you suggest wont even cover the operating costs of all those new schools the MVWSD will need to run.

"school district owns a bunch of school sites that it is not using, there is one right in the middle of north whisman.

Since I know you're talking about the old Whisman school, you are incorrect, the MVWSD is in deed making great "use" of both the old Whisman and old Slater by getting millions from the German school and Google. If those Whisman was taken back, then those millions would go away and MVWSD would need to get an even higher parcel tax passed to make up the lost revenue.

Besides, the Board members already lost out on getting the German government spending tens of millions on a major modernization and expansion of the Whisman site and the greatly increased rental we would get for that and all the new buildings.

The new 10K housing units wont need the old Whisman school revived from the dead, they will need several new schools built in the new neighborhoods.

@Christopher Chiang

The precise plan calls for lower densities near North Bayshore's edges; so a "traditional" campus might actually fit very well. The City also owns quite a bit of land in North Bayshore; maybe a school might be a better use than leasing public land for office space, parking or a golf course even.

@ST Parent

You are correct that property taxes/parcel taxes are used to run schools not to build them. Also, because of the Shoreline special tax district, school districts will probably never see the hypothetical 50M.
Building schools can be funded by school bonds. However, school districts are limited in what they can borrow and it's unclear how much more each district could borrow (if anything).

Thanks @ Christopher Chiang. This is another area where, like micro-apartments (recent City study session and demo unit), multi-story classroom buildings could easily work. Like Blauck Construction's 10 unit, two story classroom DSA-pre-approved unit or Los Altos SD Fisher Middle School unit.

However - there is a very strong misconception Chris - in the minds of some school teachers and administrators (and parents like Patrick N.) that THREE TRACK SCHOOLS (450-600 or larger K-5) are more academically effective. In spite of the evidence of years and years of educational and economic research on the subject! While Craig Goldman was fine opening a Huff Elementary with 250 students, and opening a Stevenson PACT at 250 (with 350 as the size to grow to) the district administrators apparently DO NOT BUY THE RESEARCH that you and I have read and studied.

A 250 student school, on 3-4 AC with multi-story buildings can work quite well in many ways, including academic + choice programs. Let us see if the current Board, which sets public policy (not the Administrators of that Policy), can 'do their independent homework' on school size and academic performance. If Board members only 'copy the homework' of the administrators - so much for the icon of Data Driven Public Policy decision making.

The letter from the Superintendent is not the Policy of the MVWSD. I do not believe there was a Board Vote on that!
(political-public-press-pressure is a great tool though, good for Rudolph!)

sorry Blach Construction up at San Carlos SD, Central Middle School. Standard building-shell component construction.

Web Link

Web Link


The Los Gatos SD modularized permanent two story building are written about here. Kramer Project Development was the project architect here as with our own recent MVLA High Schools projects.
1st, earthquake and "liquefaction zone" school construction concerns. Shoreline (NBS) is in such a zone.

Web Link

One of the permanent-modularized construction firms. 2 story buildings with pre-approved (DSA) designs available.

Web Link

The current MVWSD preliminary designs on two-story modularized permanent classrooms are explained in Slater concept docs.

First agree on the need for more schools, then have the philosophical debate about size. Much hinges on effectiveness of personalized learning & the District's commitment to RTI investment regardless of number of strands.

It strikes me that scale might be a factor in school planning, simply from a space perspective... would 3 200-student schools have the same footprint as one 600-student school, once fields and playgrounds and supporting infrastructure are taken into account? Which is the lowest capital cost? What best serves a high-density neighborhood? What leads to critical mass for the PTA, the Chess Club, after-school care, and other programs? What's "too big?"

Regardless, the latest school boundaries mean we'll have plenty of room at Monta Loma and Theuerkauf for new North Bayshore students before any groundbreaking happens. Perhaps a Sylvan Park sort of arrangement makes sense in the interim.

So the current residents of Mountain View are eventually going to be expected to fund $100's of millions to build & pay ongoing operating costs for three new elementary schools, two new middle schools and one new high school?

How many of those 9,850 units are expected to be ownership units?

And, this is an honest question...how is developing 9,850 units going to benefit the current residents of Mountain View going forward, as opposed costing residents dearly, not only in loss of quality of life (in many, many ways) but also in terms of actual physical costs that will be foisted upon residents of Mountain View in terms of fees, taxes, bonds, etc. in order to fund what is essentially a new city being constructed FOR google/Alphabet in North Bayshore.

Another option is to remember that we have three schools in our district currently being rented to others. Those schools could be redeveloped for district needs as well as micro schools. And in the development of micro schools, fields, etc, are not necessary. These schools operate on the bare necessities which is classrooms and multipurpose spaces. Play fields are typically nearby public parks that the schools can walk children to for exercise and activities. Lots of charter schools in urban areas do this kind of thing and it works well. Additionally, with some modifications, a small school could be built at Rengstorff park community center. This would likely provide more than enough locations for all new students...we'd still need the money though...

There are 2000 or more low income students in the elementary school district as of 2015-2016 and another 600 in the high school district. Both are down 10% or so from 2 years before. Before that it had been relatively stable.

Isn't the point of these new affordable units that it would help families who would otherwise be forced to LEAVE the area? I'm not seeing why this would lead to an increase in low income students in the schools. It's more a matter of trying to remain even.

In many of the formerly cheaper apartments being remodeled, it's single people without children who are moving in. Check the numbers. How many kids live in Carmel the Village or the new Montrose Apartments on El Camino Real. For that matter, there's the older Park Place on Castro Street. Very rare to see kids there.

These older apartment complexes are charging more rent but they're having less kids. Look all along California Avenue. It's back to the future. Originally, this was single people housing. Now it's turning back that way once again, after superficial cosmetic renovations and the nudging out of the families that had become their normal tenants.

So relax everyone. There's a good chance this will just be a matter of relocating students within the district in which they already reside.

"What we have here is a basic failure to communicate", to quote the movie Cool Hand Luke.

For many years, Mountain View's City Council has been authorizing housing construction willy nilly (irresponsibly IMHO) without coordinating it with the school districts affected. MV City Council really needs to add prior authorization from local school districts to its housing construction approval & change of zoning process. This means that MV needs to meet with school boards and their legal & financial representatives to make sure that the school districts are not unduly burdened by construction and operation costs for the necessity to expand existing schools or add new ones. If necessary, Mountain View must share the financial burdens for construction costs (including finding suitable locations) and also possibly sharing operating costs temporarily while the schools find new sources of funding.

As for locations for new schools, I agree with SRB. N Bayshore is where I would look first to construct a new school or schools for the additional burdens of N Bayshore housing. "

"What happens N of Bayshore must stay N of Bayshore."

@ Patrick N. As usual, you seem to get the problems inherent in this public policy process. I think - if you get the chance to serve again (like Measure B, Facilities Task Force) with Mr. Tod Lee, there would likely be a reasonable committee output. The capital costs - need to be rationally and hard-nosed balanced - against pie-in-the-sky wishes.

Mr. Frink, like our (newish) CAO and CBO you need to realize, in this community, over the past half century at least, the provision of park-lands, play-fields lands has been a very nice City-Elementary District cooperation. The City (IMO) does not owe the schools provision of play fields. It is a joint (governmental) community effort. In the past, it has been designed Land from Schools, maintenance and equipment from City. It is a very Californian balance of "school facilities bond revenue success" - vs - city facility bond revenue vote successes. Plus ... (Patrick and Tod and the CFO and the City Manager/ City Finance Manager can fill you in). California is the only state in the nation that uses local property tax school revenue bonds to fund most facilities. Unique !

Several people have written - we need an accounting (I prefer a clear written and "published" governmental Report) of the land assets that the MVWSD owns that are not currently used directly for school purposes. I know where they are (some SFIP and contract documents) but there is not a high level, concise and published version. = Slater - Google use section, Sylvan Park 10 AC Public School reserve, large Whisman School site (adjacent 2 AC small Whisman City Parklands), Cooper School 10 AC site (adjacent 5 AC Cooper City Parklands).

What an amazing transformation has taken place!

When the city of MV built huge apartments within the LASD boundaries, they claimed that there would be no strain placed on the school district. They take no responsibility to the crowding that their actions have caused. Now, miraculously, adding hundreds of new residences is going to cause school crowding - since it is Mountain View.

This is just another in a long line of bad decisions made by the city government. The most recent before this was selling the rights - permanently - to water access to East Palo Alto for the paltry sum of $15M. They saw no irony in immediately raising the cost of water for the residents after this foolish move. I can only imagine the cost of water when these buildings are built. The final insult? No doubt those "affordable" units will have unlimited water while those of us who foot the bill get to shower with buckets.

One cost saving measure would be to eliminate the position of "City Planner", since they clearly don't consider the need for infrastructure BEFORE they commit to more building. When you are planning, you are supposed to think the steps through and figure out those things in advance rather than at the last minute. The result of their folly? We get to pay more for less. A lot more.

The Mountain View city council has no vision for the future - unless you consider the dollar signs before their eyes.

To be clear, the development being considered in North Bayshore is potentially 9,850 units, not simply "hundreds of residences". Also, the city of Mountain View agreed to sell 1MM gallons of water daily, in perpetuity, to East Palo Alto for a one time fee of $5MM, not $15MM.

It is important to note that with the sale of the water rights and if the intense build out of North Bayshore occurs, then the projection for when Mountain View will will hit it's max/cap water limit (run out of water is projected to be in 2037...thats just 20 years from now.

@James Thurber is right - we're building an expensive metropolis consisting of basically corporate spaceships and Googleplexes along with apartment complexes, all created around one single industry - high tech.

Eventually the iPhone will lose its lustre, advertisers will wise up and stop paying Google billions for advertising, and people will wonder why they wasted so many hours on Facebook. Then we have a downturn. Layoffs, and housing prices plummet. That's what they call a "correction", and it will happen.

Not enough water (brown is the new green and do not wash you car), not enough fresh air (spare the air), not enough space on roads, not enough parking, now not enough classrooms.
It is time to stop seeing how many sardines we can fit into this can!

Just curious: isn't this at sea level and land subject to potential liquefaction in case of earthquake?

I agree with those who are wary of Google. Very powerful corporation. The City of Mountain View should be run for the benefit of its residents. Stay on top of developments.

Hmmmm, maybe our city leaders are reconsidering the far reaching impacts 9,850 units would have on the residents of Mountain View...financial, quality of life, water, etc.

Look what the Mercury News is reporting...

Web Link

"A plan for 10,000 new housing units in the North Bayshore development set to feature a huge new Google campus has been slashed to include as few as 1,500 units."...snip ... "But a review of the North Bayshore project by City Council members and Mountain View’s Environmental Planning Commission found that even with transportation improvements including a new Highway 101 offramp, the development could only support 1,500 to 3,000 housing units, according to a city staff memo to the mayor and council that was released June 22. However, the memo noted that the proposal for greatly reduced housing numbers does not prevent the City Council from approving the earlier plan for nearly 10,000 units." ... more

Look to the Mercury News for the latest news on Google and San Jose.

Mountain View is home to some of the wealthy and most successful companies in the world, they should be helping to fund local schools. Every elementary school in MV except Castro is over 500 kids, not a size where you can add a lot of students with the proposed housing. Funding is an issue. Palo Alto contributes $9,400 per student at the elementary level, Mountain is about $4500 per student (varies slightly by school for both based on Federal $$). The Zuckerberg/Chan family has pledged over $120 million to low income schools in the Bay area, perhaps its time for the founders of companies that are in Mountain View to do the same.

Whoooa. MVWSD gets a lot more than $4500 in state funding! See the report on the CDE web site, available here: Web Link

(it's quite a long link).

Note that this is just what counts as state funding. The Shoreline money that goes to the district is extra as is local parcel tax funding and federal funding.

It's well above $10,000 per student in total, but the main point is that the money on the above report is state funding that increases in proportion to the number of students. Get 200 more students and get another $2 Million or so. It has gone up per student each year lately, and it is slated to increase next year as well.

@school funding and size

"Mountain View is home to some of the wealthy and most successful companies in the world,"

As is every city in the Santa Clara County area and indeed, the entire SF to SJ bay area. This has been true for the past 5 decades.

"they should be helping to fund local schools."

They ARE, they pay many types of taxes and provide JOBS for people who pay other taxes and BUY homes and spend money locally. All of which adds up to pay for our schools.

"Every elementary school in MV except Castro is over 500 kids,"

NO, the MVWSD has 8 elementary schools and 2 Middle-schools.
Huff, Bubb & Landels elementary schools are currently over 500
and of course, Crittendon and Graham middle schools are also over 500.

However, Castro, Mistral, Monta Loma, Theuerkauf and Stevenson are all 300-400 enrolled.
The new Slater (our 9th elementary school) to open in 2019 will be 450 capacity, but nobody knows how many kids will enroll.

"not a size where you can add a lot of students with the proposed housing."

Actually, Theuerkauf can handle at least 600 kids, but now only has 300, Monta Loma can handle 500, bit now only has about 400. Stevenson and Mistral will be able to handle 450 but now only have 400.
Castro will be able to handle 450, but now only has 300.

Once Slater opens with the new boundaries, we will have a significant amount of empty classrooms spread around the district to accommodate the early increases in K-5 kids and will buy us time to plan for the new schools we will need to add north of hiway 101.

Just keep building and find someone to pay for more schools and staff and pensions and medical insurance and infrastructure. More traffic? So what? More burden on city services? More pollution? Nothing to worry about. How abaut naming some new schools after a famous resident: Google elementary. Google Middle. Google High. And we should change who can vote. It should not be limited to American citizens or even humans. "Corporations are people too" according to Willard Mittens Romney, 2012 Republican candidate for President. One corporation, one vote. Or one vote for each $100,000 paid to local governments in Mountain View.

Thank you ST Parent for paying attention to all those school Board meetings you attended and all the information on facilities and attendance that you have read. Your posting above seems to get most of the current state of MVWSD building/capacity affairs essentially correct!

@Facts the facts in MVWSD's case are unfortunately a little more complicated. Review - MVWSD is a "community funded" district that has it's upper limit of revenue dependent on the total property tax (General Fund filled by general property tax). Ed100 lesson 8.3
Web Link

Shoreline companies DO NOT PAY MOST OF THEIR SCHOOL PROPERTY TAX to schools. It goes to the city controlled "quasi-RDA" (quoting the county tax collector and the state Controller). Only a small fraction of the Shoreline collected property tax, actually goes to schools (Joint Powers Authority multi-year limited contract).

"Community funded" means, we get relatively more $ revenue per student, but when new students come or leave, there is no change in the operating revenue to the MVWSD. The same is true of MVLA high school district. (and Los Altos elementary district)
Is this enough $?
Web Link

SN is a retired Trustee of the MVWSD