Mountain View Whisman Board Member Jose Gutierrez has been telling supporters that both Fiona Walter and Margaret Abe-Koga are coaching him and endorse and support him for a City Council run. I am interested in the political dynamics that are at play when all three are big fans of taxing the community through measures such as this. It all seems more about how they spin things rather than what their true agenda really is. In the end it seems like a very small group of people are attempting to run this town..

Over $1 million dollars to build a basic room. No bathroom, no kitchen, no high-end finishes (right???). Just a floor, 4 walls, a roof, and some wiring. They already own the land.

Wow. Just wow.

Think of the house you could build with that kind of money if you already had the land.

And there is only a vague promise that they *might* choose to build those classrooms with the money.

Somebody is sure enough getting rich off us taxpayers. Or, given the way the officials seem to view us, should I say "tax cattle"?

Commenting on the increase of students. With the abundant new condos and apartment complexes being built, I thought the builders were required to budget monies into their projects for the overcrowding of schools that would occur.
Anyone know if this is true?

No more taxes!! With a house around here typically valued at more than 1.5 million you are talking a $500 + tax bill. No thanks!!

Measure E fails to address the simple fact that another MVLA high school campus is needed closer to the area where all the new students are located, i.e. north of El Camino Real. Traffic near existing high school campuses is already bad, without adding more student commuters from clear across town. Vote "no" on this misguided measure.

Measure E would authorize use of the $295 million borrowed for the "types of projects" listed - which includes most everything such as buying real estate. It is a BLANK CHECK with regard to how the money may be spent.

I have 2 kids who will be going to High School in 6 years and on. So while I am all for improving the schools, $295 million hardly seems "austere". The proposal to tax additional $300 per $1 M appraised house value for 20 years (or $6,000) should require more details on how the money would be spent.

We are paying so much in property taxes as it is.

30 years of repaying not just the $295 million principal but also a currently unknown amount in interest. The amount of interest depends on the interest rate(s) when bonds are sold. The measure does not control when the bonds are sold. The school district will decide - rightly or wrongly.

We’ve kids who have attended, are attending, and will attend MVLA high schools.

We, like all parents, want the best for our children. But WOW! Well over a quarter BILLION dollars on new facilities (and that’s just building costs as we already own the land)??

Is $295,000,000 (not including the debt service costs) on facilities going to meaningfully better our children’s learning experience? Are they going to get better grades? Get better SAT scores? Get into better colleges?

My goodness, for that money you could fund about 3,000,000 hours of private tutoring at $100 an hour. That would be an hour of really good tutoring every school day for every student over three years. That would certainly help with the learning experience!

Or, better yet, and at a tiny fraction of $295,000,000, hire, say 30 full time tutors at $100,000 per year. And build say 5,000 square foot tutoring center at $300 a square foot. That would be an upfront cost of $1,500,000 and $3,000,000 a year thereafter. A lot more bang for our buck.

The point is, there are many different ways and at a tiny fraction of a $295,000,000 price tag, to meaningfully enhance our children’s learning experience.

OK, but we need new facilities to accommodate 500 new students. According to the California Department of Education, in 2006, on average, 167 square feet of total building space (classrooms, libraries, gym, etc) are needed for each high school student. So, the district may need approximately 83,000 additional square feet to accommodate 500 extra students. If you assume $300 per square foot for construction costs (which is about the residential construction costs in the area, so probably high to build classrooms, etc) that would be $25,000,000. Maybe there are some additional costs for a few other projects, but we should be WAY under $295,000,000!

There are additional concerns. If the majority of the student body growth is from a high density development in Mountain View, then the developer (or city of MV) should bear at least some of the costs required to expand school facilities. We are astounded that the MVLA administration did not get way ahead of this issue by working with MV toward a fair cost sharing arrangement. Before we moved back to the Bay Area, the developer where we lived paid for a new K-8 school and contributed to the cost of expanding the local high school.

Has the administration considered holding early and late classes (like period 0 and period 8) to maximize facility usage? How about more on-line offerings to supplement/augment classroom teaching to free up some space? Have we thought about partnering with some of the the local high tech companies to sponsor, say, the STEM centers at our MVLA high schools? And how about selling naming rights to our buildings and athletic facilities?

But again, well over a quarter BILLION dollars for facilities (before debt service cost)? Is this really the best way to spend our money to better our children?

The last failed bond vote for MVLA high school district resulted in the district realizing, "We were asking TOO MUCH!" So they trimmed their desires, submitted a more reasonable request to the voters, and the voters responded by approving their second attempt.

I am on the fence on this measure. I could use some additional information to help decide which way to vote. I looked at the 2010 MVLA Bond Measure [Web Link where a $41.3M bond was issued.

The language there is (perhaps not surprisingly) similar to the current Measure E on the ballot. A few things that caught my attention:

1. In the arguments that supported Measure A, the 2010 funds were being sought for an anticipated increase in enrollment of 25% over the next 10 years (2009-2019 presumably). I looked at the current (2016) demographic data published by the MVLA district [Web Link The 2009 enrollment was 3654 students and projected high enrollment in 2021-22 is 4576. After 2022 enrollment falls off. Guess what, that is 25% increase to peak enrollment. So the old measure A funds and project execution should cover the enrollment increases. Am I missing something? I ask because this is one of the main points of argument for this new Measure E?

2. Perhaps another argument maybe we have deteriorating facilities. I also looked at the facilities assessment report [Web Link from October 2016, published at the MVLA site. This is a lengthy report but has a lot of great details. My net takeaway is our facilities are fair to good - some areas are in excellent condition and some needs work. In particular the portables need work/replacement. So the upkeep work, while maybe needed, isn't extensive. Do we need $295M for upkeep?

3. There was mention of matching state and federal funds from the 2010 bond measure. Do we know how much we received from state and federal sources? Did we not get that and is the Measure E bond at least in part to cover that? If so, the Measure E language also talks about matching funds, how confident are we that we will get the matching funds this time?

4. Measure A made a promise on no net tax increase (which was at $14.50 per $100,000 assessed). Now it is increasing to $30 per $100,000 assessed and now for 20+ years. Feels to me that this is a bit disingenuous 8 years later. I am also not clear if the $14.50 has expired?

All of this leads me to wonder if $295M is the right amount or maybe too high? Should it be a lower amount that the bond measure should ask for?

I have a daughter who will start at LAHS in 2019 and a son in 2022. While I would like to support the initiative, I also want to make sure all of our tax dollars are spent wisely. Any insight/answers to the questions above would certainly help me and I suspect many others reading this too.

I took some time to go over the master plan in detail and compare with current construction at MVWSD as well as the Measure A construction at MVLA 3-4 years ago. I created a simple spreadsheet [Web Link with each line item in the master plan and did my own research on each of them to form an opinion. I understand my opinion is not nearly as researched as what was done over 18 months by professionals. However, a few things stood out for me

- It seemed to me that out of $295M, less than half is planned for increasing capacity. Over $65M in the plan spend will actually decrease classroom capacity

- I felt that costs stated for some of the projects were significantly higher than what was spent for other similar projects (e.g., Crittenden track, Innovation Center, Auditorium or even MVLA own buildings like Bldg 600 at MVHS built in 2015 and Bldg 900 at LAHS built in 2014). Sometimes the costs in the master plan were double. The line by line rationale are explained in the sheet

- I also felt that the $30M ear-marked as "for future classrooms in case it is needed" shouldn't be there. I feel that as most capital projects go, this will also be over-budget and the monies will be used for the current projects because it is there.

- After doing this exercise for my own benefit, I feel $295M is too much and we can achieve most of the objectives at almost half the cost (~$150M)

This was a bottom's up look at the plan. I also looked at school construction top down (source: Web Link pp 32). This is very similar to what "Concerned parent" said earlier

For an additional 500 new students entering the district, at $300/sq. ft at 200 sq. ft/student - the total cost comes out to $30M. Even if you double that (for higher than anticipated enrollment growth and higher costs) it is $60M for the additional influx of capacity over the next 7-10 years. Add to that another $60M for repairs and fixes to existing buildings/facilities. This is still a bond measure for $120M and not $295M

I didn't want to do this top down only because it might miss some fine points which was why I triangulated with my bottoms-up analysis. The fact that this came to similar answers tells me that $295M maybe too much.

Also does anyone know what is plan B if the measure fails?

"We are paying so much in property taxes as it is."

Not unless you bought in the past 6 years.

A couple of additional thoughts:

A bond measure is a tax. The $300 per annum tax per $1,000,000 of assessed value means about, on average, $1,000 of additional taxes per year per household and, so, around $20,000 over the 20 year term.

The $295,000,000 principal amount (which can be as much as $325,000,000 at the district’s unilateral discretion) will be paid back, I believe, over 15 years. At an interest rate of 4%, the total cost will be $433,000,000... that’s approaching HALF A BILLION DOLLARS!!!

And by the way, the additional $30,000,000 is for 20 additional class rooms. That’s $1,500,000 per classroom. Assuming a 50ft by 50ft class size, that would be 2,500 square feet. That’s a big class room. And a big price tag of $600 a square foot, which is about twice the price tag per square foot of our house built less than a decade ago. And I don’t think these classrooms have all of the fancy extras new houses in our area typically have.

I asked my child who’s attending LAHS (as well as a few of his friends), “what do you think of the facilities?” They all said they’re fine. When we’ve visited on back to school night, the facilities looked fine to us. We don’t need to build an Apple spaceship to create an optimal learning environment.

It’s also important to follow the $$$. The Measure E campaign kicked off in March with a big contribution of $40,000 from Kramer Project Development Company, Inc., a San Jose-based construction management firm that has a long history with Mountain View-Los Altos. The company has managed projects for the district since 2008, including Measure A projects, and helped the district put together the Facilities Master Plan and the forecast costs of each project.So who’s really benefiting?

The annual MVLA operating budget should take into account capital maintenance/improvement. That is, there should be some $$$ set aside every year for this inevitable expenditure. The fact that they don’t plan for this and rely on bond measures is fiscally irresponsible.

The district should publish an independently verified set of performance metrics (aka a scorecard). Like, administrative costs as a percentage of teacher costs (I would bet they’ve never been higher), and our public school yield (kids attending our public schools as a percentage of all kids attending public/private/home schools), etc, etc

Again, we should explore offering period 0/8 classes to maximize faculty usage, as well as offering more on-line classes to augment/supplement the learning experience. We should also explore selling naming rights to our buildings, athletic facilities, and programs to companies and individuals (not dissimilar to a university!)

Every dollar we spend we should ask ourselves if this is best to provide a healthy learning environment for our kids. I don’t think that spending close to HALF A BILLION DOLLARS on facilities is the best way to spend OUR $$$ to meet that objective.

Classrooms are normally about 1000 sq ft. Cost to build is normally about $800 per square foot. The construction standards are much tougher for public buildings than they are for homes.


It really does seem like to much money to me. The suspicions are raised when they look into just how big they can get without regard to need. They are inventing needs to use up the funding.

I'm voting no because they need to take more time to plan and get a better idea of actual need before spending money like this. So far it has been a joke effort.

Acoording to the “school planning & management’s 20th annual school construction report”, the average cost to construct a high school building is $235 a square foot... even if you assume (likely correctly), that the cost per square foot in the Bay Area is higher, I’m not sure how you get to $800 a square foot to build rectangular boxes. If that is indeed the case, something ridiculous is going on...