"The biggest sticking point at the meeting, however, wasn't about options A and B, but a broader concern that the attendance boundaries will worsen the sharp socio-economic divides in the district's elementary schools.
...
The concerns were enough to prompt board members Gutierrez and Laura Blakely to ask staff, at the eleventh hour of the lengthy boundary-drafting process, whether some spot changes could be made around the Castro Elementary area to increase diversity."

Valid concerns, but waiting until the end to raise them shows how out of touch you are. Next time around perhaps you should actually pay attention to what's going on?

President Gutierrez should be applauded for voting the truth regarding Castro being the true neighborhood (and safe route) school for Shoreline West.

The problem goes back before this committee when the district rejected all proposals to move the dual immersion program, including rejection of a shared site concept located at the Whisman site that would have created a novel private (German/Chinese) public Spanish collaboration with the potential for crossover instructional collaborations.

Castro expansion was the right thing to do, but it should have been done to house the entire Shoreline West community at Castro.

Boundaries are an incremental processes, progress was made and I hold hope for future moves to make every school a safe route neighborhood school.

Meanwhile, Coladonato is right, continue to commit extra local funds at schools with more poverty, to make all neighborhood schools equally attractive for the future.

If Gutierrez really cared about the issue, he should have gotten involved in the process earlier. Waiting until the SAATF had already narrowed things down to two alternatives doesn't do anyone any good.

You can "applaud" all you want, but nothing was accomplished by Gutierrez's vote.

Which mirrors what you were able to accomplish as Board president -- namely NOTHING!

Why you insist on commenting here after your failed tenure on the Board is beyond me.

think racial and economic diversity in schools is a valid concern. At the beginning of the SAATF process, I was shocked that the Board explicitly chose NOT to make diversity an important goal in the boundary creation process. But the District and SATTF conducted a very open process and I think the new boundaries do an admirable job of solving for the Board's stated objectives to form neighborhood schools and avoid straddling major arteries (with the exception it sounds like the Willowgate neighborhood). The eastern part of the Shoreline West neighborhood (as well as pockets of the Rex Manor neighborhood) is in character and historically part of Old Mountain View so it's not like it is ridiculous to be zoned into Landels.

But As a supporter of more more diversity in schools and housing, I think this was a real missed opportunity. If the Board members who cared about this had the courage to make a case for diversity up front, things could have been very different. But as many folks have mentioned, bringing up diversity as goal at the 11th hour and contradicting original goals is sadly ineffective.

For goodness sakes people. There were no eleventh hour plans to change anything. All the two trustees do was ask questions about what looks like different scenarios about option a. Blakely asked about socio economic options and all Gutierrez did was bring up the issue of neighborhood schools and what that could look like. SAATF did nothing to change option b and the board would not vote against a. All in all, the boundaries won't change diversity in any school. SWAN rep kept talking about keeping their neighborhood together throughout the process regardless of other members trying to actually problem solve. It's all on the videos you can see on district website. Should be interesting to see what happens next. Kevin try and look at the video. Using loaded language doesn't help. The superintendent even clarified the requests and the process for the umpteenth time. Go figure.

Ha, this whole process was ineffective. Talk about diversity all you want, it's just talk. Look at the SAATF videos and you can feel the tension between SWAN and everybody else. It's going to be really funny when the socio economic diversity issues comes back in priorities and people panic again.

If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck . . . Guess what? It's a duck.

Nobody is going to throw their kids under the bus of the Castro school improvement.
As long as there are apartment rows around it with tons of large families where parents have low education and English levels and high levels of poverty, the school will be avoided by middle class families.
Instead of building on North Bayshore, destroying ecology of the area, it would be better to tear down those cheap apartments packed to the brim and build town homes with a number of units specifically targeted at teachers.

Creating diversity within a school may put a feather in your PC cap but it doesn't work academically (oops- the elephant in the room) which is why all the upper income parents oppose it. The low scoring kids bring the high kids down and the low kids don't benefit from mixing with the high kids. Look at the Tinsley project- it's a great example of how creating diversity within a school setting not only doesn't work to help the low income kids, it creates social problems as they get older. In general, the kids from different socioeconomic groups self-segregate and don't mix outside of school for a variety of reason, not because of prejudice but because of practicality (i.e. most poor kids don't take dance, language, music, art, etc lessons after school, play sports, etc.- because it's expensive). Just sayin...

Without fail, out come the local racists (more precisely classists, but there an obvious undercurrent of racism associated with it.)

I want to hear an explanation of the "social problems" the above poster is talking about when the students get older.

@LOL, so which school are your kids at?
Mine are at one of the "underperforming" and it has been a problem to meet up with friends he made at school outside of school.
Academics is not a problem, so far. But social life is. Kids spend time with family and friends from their apartment complexes so why would parents want to have a play date?

But I have to say having middle class families in a school does benefit it as parents start to volunteer and at the same time hold the school admins accountable, but I am not sure about the benefits for the middle class families.

@LOL - without fail, out comes the "progressive" to call others names when he/she doesn't agree with another's opinion. I'm a racist because I think that creating socioeconomic diversity doesn't serve the kids well academically? It's my experience that people start name-calling in lieu of supporting a position with facts. And because they try to elevate themselves by putting others down.

As for the social problems, although a problem with the Tinsley EPA program it probably wouldn't be a problem at Castro because the low-incomes are in the majority. Many EPA kids hated participating in Tinsley as they moved into middle school because (as a minority) they felt isolated,that they under-performed, etc within the high-socioeconomic group. They tend to self-segregate and many of them drop out by middle school.

I think history shows us that "bussing" doesn't work. Not racism, not classism, just a fact.

It looks like "Operation Kick out the Poor Kids" was successful, congratulations Mountain View. You have created a two-tier education system where rich kids get a good education and poor kids get thrown to the wolves.

An absolute disgrace, shame on all involved.

Let's face the truth; Castro is a failed school.

Instead of trying to fix the school they want to mask the failure with higher performing kids from families whose parents care about education and take action to ensure their kids learn. So the test scores will go up, but because of the laws of arithemtic averages and not because the existing kids are learning.

This is how our school board thinks: "Let's not solve the problem of Castro being a terrible school. No, let's spray some perfume on the problem, jerrymander the test scores, call it a success, float our resumes, and cash in on our next adminstraive position."

Hide all you want behind words like "diviserity" and "segregation". By doing so you will continue to fail the kids at Castro. How is sending my child to Castro going to improve the education of the existing students there? Is my child expected to do the homework of other kids? Am I expected to read to the other kids every night? Am I expecetd to help the other kids with their homework every night?

My child is going to learn no matter what school he attends because his education is my responsibility; that's my cultural norm and I will not accept anything less. I will not tollerate him being warehoused at Castro from 8am to 3pm where his mere presence is supposed to somehow wearoff on the kids arounds him and they magically become better students.

I'll take my kid out of public schools before allow him to waste 7 hours a day at Castro.

All evidence for educational policy shows that having a student body and faculty members of varying, diverse backgrounds leads to better educational outcomes for everyone. Unlike your gut instinct that poor kids are going to run your little angel's education, the evidence is clear.

On the other hand, you have people like "SWAN Victim" who would rather pull their kids out of school than have them be anywhere near poor children. Sad, and frankly, bigoted.

LOOK at all these accusation and people thinking they can read other's mind to know the real intent of other's actions.
This is a special kind of discussion made my special kinds of people.

You cannot force parents in Mountain View to go to schools they think will hurt their children. And while it's true that socioeconomically diverse schools can aid the academic growth of a school, it's fairer to families to improve the schools first and then ask them to go, even if it's harder.

Mountain View parents don't fear poverty in their local schools, they fear low academics, and while they commonly happen together, they do not have to.

Send the best staff to Castro, give them extra money and supports and launch the best after school enrichment. Overtime time and the best instructional methods and training, and then revisit the issue of why Shoreline West isn't going to the school that is closest to them.

Gutierrez is right to speak to truth, and Coladonato is right that you don't force this, improve the schools first. And while the execution was greatly flawed, Dr. Rudolph is right that personalized learning is a needed instructional ingredient to get there, as is project based learning being led by some local principals. Without these, kids ahead are waiting for kids behind.

Examples of socioeconomically diverse schools where strong academics draw socioeconomic diversity:

One school that has deeply inspired instructional changes at Stevenson and Huff, High Tech High in San Diego (Elem through HS): Web Link (video link)

Others:
Success Academy in NYC (Elem): Web Link (video link)

Summit Public Schools in Sunnyvale and Redwood City (Middle/HS): Web Link (video link)

KIPP King Collegiate in San Lorenzo (HS): Web Link (video link)

@ Chris Chiang I totally agree with you. Use the LCFF responsibility of 20% more money per Economically Disadvantaged student to actually sent that money (hard cash) to the schools "in proportion" to the Target Students at those schools. (you previously called it "Turn Around School funding)

This is not being done Chris (a bit better though than the first year or two of LCFF (LCAPs). Public Policy, like you state above, would have to be FORCED by a Board Discussion and a VOTE on a change of local Public Policy. Why does LACP money, get spent on RTI personnel, one-per-school, independent of Target Student numbers?

A the failure of the Board, to set the More-Needs = More-Money policies that you (and I incidentally) favor. It is the shame of South of El Camino wealthy, the Stevenson/PACT wealthy, and the majority of the Board
- that will not pay attention to supplemental programs and supplemental (Grant) $,$$$ being spent on each Target Student.

Jose Gutierrez Jr. and Juan of Rex Manor need to get away from the "NO!! the 'S' word" rhetoric, and get down to some real-politic on how to use the new ASSIGNMENT POLICY to effect better INTEGRATION if that is their goal.
(the bulk of education/micro-economic research, and our own district academic achievement DOES NOT SHOW that that is academically effective BTW).

poster who was critical of Chiang's comings or time-on-the-Board,
Chris is a citizen and resident of this District. He is quite free to comment. The community VOTED him into elective office, the top vote of a 5 candidate race in 2012. I believe (absent exit poll surveys) that electoral vote was precisely - because Chris has day-to-day, year-to-year, actual classroom experience. (like Rudolph, he is not prefect either though) Chris brought his own brand and wide experience to this community - in a very public and generally democratic way.

Open & Public is how he ran, how he served, and how he now choses to post on these public commentary spaces.

Chris was singularly effective in bring Turn Around School funding policies to the Board - and helping us force "the direction to the Administration" in getting this in the Budget. Has it been successful? We shall see (if the Administration ever does data taking, statistical analysis and Publishes a Public Report on Turn Around school effort)

The biggest winners are:

1) City officials --- who can return a favor to their campaign money donors
2) Developers -- who can make truckload of money from building the micro apartment
3) The big corporation --- which can keep their employee at workplace for 24/7.

The biggest looser: Mountain View Residence.

• Traffic Nightmare.
• More tax burden on MV residence to fund the new schools.
• The mountain "view" will be blocked by the high-rise micro apartment.
• Children will get less attention in school because of the large class size.

I am not so sure the millennial will enjoy raising the family in the micro apartment when their organ used for thinking is fully developed.

The land filled with smart people should be able to tell what's good or bad. What's wrong with this place?

@LOL, we still don't know which school your kids attend. I bet it is not Castro!
As for additional resources for the lagging schools. It's not all about money. There need to be qualified admin staff and a plethora of parent volunteers to help make use of the money. Principals and teachers are drowning, they have too much as it is. They don't have time to plan for change. Also, not everyone has the motivation. It is very convenient for some people to work at a school where parents don't hold them accountable and are not generally involved.
The area of concentrated poverty around Castro school needs to go.
Also, there are too many kids at MV schools who live elsewhere but are grandfathered, and it's mostly low income students. The policies need to be streamlined.

@ LOL: "All evidence for educational policy shows that having a student body and faculty members of varying, diverse backgrounds leads to better educational outcomes for everyone. Unlike your gut instinct that poor kids are going to run your little angel's education, the evidence is clear."

Really? What studies are those? So bussing did work?

Are you suggesting that a high performing student will come out of Castro with a stronger academic background than if he attends Huff? I don't think so. Have you talked to parents that pulled their kids out of low performing schools because they spent the greater part of their days sitting around waiting for the teacher to deal with the slower kids? Because I have and they hung in there for a long time before finally giving up.

The reality is that one teacher, dealing with a diverse population, has a much more difficult job than one dealing with a homogeneous population. Teaching kids at different levels means that some groups have to wait and the slower kids occupy more of the teacher's time. The only way to solve that problem is to track the kids, thus creating segregation and eliminating the diversity.

Parents volunteering in the classroom is not the answer - it's not the responsibility of the educated parents in the community to educate the kids. Our schools should be fulfilling that role and parents that take it on, especially in a low-income setting where they have low parent participation, eventually burn out.

As I said before, it's a nice feather in your PC cap to profess to support diversity but as Elephant in the Room said, most parents aren't going to throw their kids under the Castro bus to prove a philosophical point. It doesn't make them bigoted (you're still name-calling)- they just want the best education for their kids. Where do your kids go to school? If they're not at Castro I hope you'll transfer them there so that your comments aren't just rhetorical.

Oh and I know for a fact that there is more than one classroom at Castro where the only native speaker is the teacher. And no, ESL students are not kids of international corporations' workers :-)
It is hard to create diversity under such circumstances.

If you are trying to act like this isn't coming from bigotry, you're not helping your case when you start invoking desegregation as a bad thing or talking about ESL children that "are not kids of international corporations' workers :-)" But thanks for laying it all out there for everyone to see.

Which are we to trust, your anecdotal evidence of parents who pulled their kids out of these schools, or the body of academic literature about what helps students perform well? Hm...

@LOL- I guess I was mistaken. I didn't realize that all those merit scholars and Ivy League bound students were mostly products of low scoring, socioeconomically diverse elementary schools. Thanks for enlightening me.

Poor people go to poor schools.

Rich people go to rich schools.

That will never change.. NEVER.

It does not matter where you "diverse" kids go to school if the parents at home don't care. And don't kid yourself, those parents just don't care.

So we dilute the school experience to make up for the parents who could care less.

So smart.

Oh my goodness, y'all can't keep yourselves from putting your feet in your mouths.

According to Feel Good, poor children will never amount to anything, and Otto here has decided that segregation by class is the just and proper way of the world.

You are making my side of the argument so easy.

I think you're taking these comments a little out of context. "Feel good" and "elephant" and "Otto" seem to have had real experiences that have led them to make somments such as above. I have too. My kids went to monta loma and I put in what would amount to daily volunteering for 5 years. What did I get out? Bullied kids with depression that are behind their peers at a neighboring district we had to transfer to.
What needs to be noted is it's not for the sake of "rich kids" or "poor kids" to divide up schools- it's for BOTH equally. Tell me one reason it's helpful for a child who doesn't yet speak English to be glossed over as if he does. There isn't. He needs 1:1. For his benefit. He doesn't need to be asking a kid next to him to translate. That's embarrassing. A teacher with mostly ESL kids can teach what ESL children need and it benefits them!
Now, where do your children go? It's clearly not Castro or you'd have answered the question by now. Bubb? Huff?

My oh my, now you're saying it's for the benefit of the poor kids to be segregated from the rich kids. Come on, people, these are the exact same arguments that are always made for segregation. As I've said before, at least you're being up front and saying "Yes, we need to keep poor kids in their own school, away from my children."

As far as I can tell, none of the posters have revealed where their kids go, although some have alluded to private schools (color me surprised...).

Ok, so I'm going with your argument. Keep everyone together. Do you feel that ESL students benefit from English language classes? I do. But that means pulling them from regular instruction for that class. A kind of "segregation", as you put it, but entirely for their benefit (as I put it). Is that okay by you? I'm being honest, not sassy.

And yes, I shared my kids went to monta loma for 5 years. And it was absolutely terrible. I know 3-4 other families desperate to leave but the Bay Area is so dang expensive it's not easy.

It pains me to see the rancor here when everyone (theoretically) wants to achieve the same goal of getting all the kids educated to reach their maximum potential.

To preface my comments, my kid attended LASD, but assuming that many of the same issues don't exist there is wrong. How do I know? I spent 6 of my child's 9 years in the district volunteering nearly every day.

Everyone here wants their child to do well and have the best education, but I'm not sure that can be said for those NOT commenting here. I fact is, some parents don't really value education as much as others. You don't have to be rich to care if your kid does well and you don't have to be poor to have a kid who can't do as well as the "average" without extra help.

To think the answer lies in forcing kids to attend school with children they won't see outside of school is silly. I grew up being bussed, not because of diversity but because I lived miles from the nearest schools. The result? I gravitated to the kids who lived where I did so we could get together outside of school. Social engineering doesn't work and pretending it does helps nobody.

So what actually helps children succeed? Sadly, the thing that helps the most is having parents committed to helping their child get the best education possible. Those parents don't have to be well-educated, speak English or make a lot of money. However, they have to care. You don't have to have a degree to make sure your kid does his homework. You don't have to be a native speaker to take a language class and practice with your child. You don't have to live in a million-dollar house to make sure your kid attends school every day. You don't have to be any of those things to volunteer to serve lunch or help in the classroom. What the district CAN'T do is force them to care.

As for the attempts to virtue-shame those who don't voice your point of view, that gets us nowhere. Calling people bigots because they don't agree with you shows a lack of care in your thought process. Perhaps you could begin by not assuming those to disagree with you are evil.

Here's psr with their made up "virtue-shame" nonsense, again. Just because something makes you feel bad and you don't what it's shining a light on, doesn't make it incorrect. That you presume people are being called bigots because of disagreement, rather than the logic of the statements themselves, shows just how uncomfortable reality makes you.

Oh ye of little faith. I love how the same group of do nothing people crowd these message boards to talk about all the failures in areas of the city they do nothing to participate in changing. The process of creating boundaries was a solid process that chose to keep neighborhood schools in the schools closest to their homes. As the prices of rents and homeownership continues to rise, the demographics are clearly showing that less affluent people are moving out, no matter what. But I think it's a pointless discussion. The fact is that which ever school is having any issues in our district will receive the resources to compete with all the other schools. That's how it's been that's how it will be. Is it a challenge, yes. Is it easy, no. Will it take money, yes. The thing that most effects a school is the parents who send their kids to that school and their involvement. That's what improves a school. If the community doesn't wish to get behind a school and support it then it's up to the district to do it and that takes money and time. I fully believe that's what's going to happen in our community and I'm going to continue staying involved to help in any way I can.

Cleave Frink
Member, SAATF, Member Boundaries Committee and other district task forces.
(I speak for myself and my public school educated child)

My frustration with this whole process is that dispite the concerns over boundaries that did not meet the #1 stated goal "neighborhood schools" they still voted for it. Neighborhoods adjacent to Castro get to drive across town to the "better" schools, whilst my neighborhood which is 1/2 a mile away on a cycle path, is pushed out and will be driving back across town in the opposite direction. It was stated in the meeting that no decision needed to be made At this time, yet the parents who benefit from the proposed boundaries were there en mass to push for a decision. Parents pushing for a decision because this has been discussed for 2 years ignored the point that neither A or B were fair choices. The basic rule should be distance from the school. You should go to your nearest school and balancing attendance becomes an unbiased decision. It seemed to me that the board listened to the concerns over A and B, has started some discussion on alternatives, then got railroaded into making a decision, simply because it had been discussed for too long.

@cleave frink. You stated that the boundary setting was a solid process to keep children neighborhood schools close to their homes, yet one look at the boundaries around Castro school show that not to be true. Clearly those neighborhoods had enough influence to get themselves in schools that are far from their neighborhood, at the expense of others.

If North Bayshore housing gets built (which could fill demand at Theuerkauf and possibly Monta Loma), I hope the district can re-open its drive for neighborhood schools along safe routes. It may be a long time before we know exactly what happens with North Bayshore, when it happens, I hope we can:
1) Move Willowgate back to closer and safe route Landels rather than further Theuerkauf.
2) Use NB growth to fill Theuerkauf and Monta Loma (along with the incremental addition of micro urban schools as proposed by city staff if needed) before seeking another new traditional school site in NB.

While in an ideal world, it would have made more sense to have more of Shoreline West go to Castro, rather than uproot the 80 or so families of Willowgate from their existing local school of Landels, the policy has been passed, and the boundaries approved were a step in the right direction. The next time around, I hope Shoreline West will see the value of attending their true neighborhood school, Castro. Meanwhile, it's the duty of the school district to invest heavily in Castro and all other schools with high portions of social economic disadvantage and continue to prove that all students can be challenged in diverse schools.