Parents at Bubb, Huff and it seems Landels need to realize that portables will be around for a LONG time given the way the district has decided to build out the elementary schools. For reasons that make no sense to me, the decision was made by the district to "cookie cutter" all schools to be the same size with three classrooms per grade, or a total of 3x6 = 18 classroom, see Web Link

Like so many things the district does, this makes no sense because K-3 classes are supposed to be held to 24 students (by 2020-21 see Web Link Classes in 4th and 5th grade typically have around 30.

So it makes sense to have four classrooms per grade in K-3 (with about 96 - 100 total students) feeding three classrooms per grade in 4th and 5th (with about 32 - 33 kids per class). Feeding five classrooms in K-2 into four classrooms works even better (5x24 = 120 = 4x30)!

Having three classrooms per grade level just doesn't work that well! And given enrollment levels at the three schools I've mentioned, it won't be enough even with the new enrollment boundaries. What do we do with 111 kindergarten students (as projected)? Of course, some schools in our district aren't even close to the 450 total student limit.

This is not new information. Here's a quote from Web Link:

When board member Greg Coladonato asked if it's possible some schools will continue to have four classrooms at each grade level despite the construction plans, Superintendent Ayinde Rudolph said "anything is possible."

We need a new Superintendent. Rudolph is spending all of the district's resources on contracts and consultants instead of hiring more teachers for the kids. Thank you Alan for presenting data, and resources that makes this apparent. You have a community of parents listening.

To suggest the Task Force is not considering the needs of all kids is one-sided. We are in this predicament because year after year the school district is faced with over-crowding, causing wait lists for neighborhood schools, too large class sizes, limited play space due to portables, and generally over-extended resources (including our teachers), to the detriment of all families. To those who are faced with their children moving - would you feel the same way if instead you were one of the families whose child couldn't go to their neighborhood school because the Task Force didn't move ahead with the new boundaries? No, I doubt it. Let's pull off the bandaid. We can't keep messing around with this nonsense. And yes, I'm of the mindset that kids ARE resilient - let's have faith in them and our educators to handle these changes.

One other alternative could be to start putting the incoming kinder class into their boundary school and continue over the next 6 years until all the kids have transitioned. Otherwise, coming from a District where kids go to neighborhood schools with the exception of choice schools, I would be quite angry if my kids didn't get into a school within walking distance because of "school choice".

Question - are the school sites in Mountain View substantially the same size? If they are not, perhaps the number of classes per level should be adjusted to reflect the amount of space and not just be the same across the district.

I am shocked that the Waverly Park resident above wants to make sure those kids from North of El Camino are cleansed from their elementary school immediately. Who could have predicted such a thing?

Superintendent Rudolph front loads and rigs all decision making processes in the district and plays the school board for fools. He is facilitated by weak board presidents. Last year, Jose Gutierrez, and this year Laura Blakley. They both have little understanding of educational issues and make things up as they go. Gutierrez is woefully unqualified to speak on most topics and blinded by his own arrogance and petty vendettas. Blakley just tries to keep up and gobbles up everything Rudolph throws out as fact. I second the call to remove both Rudolph and the board.

Why is it OK for Huff to have 93 students, Bubb 101 and Landels 158 according to district estimates. That seems disproportionately unfair to Landels students as the campuses seem roughly equal in size.

Seriously, people. This isn't that hard. As a school district, we have been discussing this issue as an official policy for 3 years. Until now, the process hasn't been comprehensive enough to actually complete solid boundaries and enrollment priorities. The only people who are going to be bothered by any changes are parents who will now have to find new friends to gossip about in the parking lots, and earn new positions in new PTA groups. The kids won't be affected by any of these policies in any way. On the first day of school, they're going to walk onto a playground where there will be dozens of other kids, jump in and start playing. In MTV, we have a group of the finest teachers available anywhere. We continue to refine our district administrations. We continue to refine our curriculums and our facilities. It's a good time to be in this district. I love that people are paying attention and voicing opinions. I'll be excited to see some of these same folks at some of our meetings and participating in our task forces. Here, they can see the hard work and thorough debate these fine folks take time away from their families to do on behalf of all students.

People are mostly freaking out about having to get out of their bubble and face “those kids”. Well guess what they are much more polite and appreciative than many of the entitled kids from “good” schools. Time to see for yourselves folks!

Hi Cleave, what was the representation like on the boundaries task force? Was it representative of Mountain View's diversity? Why is it that the new school boundaries are more segregated than before?

How are they more segregated ?

[Post removed due to promoting a website]

Someone please explain to me how it makes such a difference to the Huff and Bubb overcrowding that 3rd and 4th grade children from outside the new zones should be removed from the school they've been attending for multiple years.

Are there really crowds of students zoned for Huff and Bubb in the upper grades who can't get in? Not according to the posted district waitlist. According to that, there are NO third graders and up from the neighborhood waiting to get in to Bubb or Huff. There are only a handful of neighborhood second graders.

So why are we even talking about putting kids through changing schools? This is NOT putting kids first. It's inhumane. Kids' place in their school community is vital to their success and I think it would be a travesty to move them.

@Unequal projections?

The elephant in the room is that the district probably wants to protect Mountain View's higher rated Bubb (8 GreatSchools) and Huff (9 GreatSchools) to justify high property value. Relocating kids from less desirable socioeconomic background is probably seem as easier solution than improving other schools.

I speak for myself, not the EPTF as a whole.

@Makes no sense

"Someone please explain to me how it makes such a difference to the Huff and Bubb overcrowding that 3rd and 4th grade children from outside the new zones should be removed from the school they've been attending for multiple years."

OK, I'll try. It will help if you have some background info.

We have about 1/3rd of K-5 kids not attending the school they are zoned for by the attendance map drawn up in 2006. That map was the result of the prior closure of Whisman Elementary and then in 2006 the closure of Slater Elementary. Since then, the Whisman/Slater area has had no school and their kids got spread all over the district.

The primary driving factor in making a new attendance map and new enrollment rules was to give the Whisman/Slater area a school of their own. Everything else has been a side effect of that.

The result of closing both Whisman and Slater has been that Huff, Bubb, Landels and Castro have been so over crowded that the district "solved" the problem by installing multiple portables on each of the schools play areas. This only provided classrooms, but none of the other supporting structures required for a properly operating school.

In 2009 the district spent 2million to reopen, in mostly portables, the old Stevenson school and sent a few hundred kids there. But again, Stevenson had virtually none of the support facilities that a K-5 school should have.

Each school is supposed to have a certain ratio of play space, administration space, a Multi-Purpose-Room big enough to more than half the population of the school (so that the school can have lunch in 2 shifts rather than 3 shifts) and bathrooms and classrooms and etc. to support the population of kids and teachers.

By just adding portable classrooms these schools lose play space and cannot provide the other facilities to meet the needs of the number of kids attending.

The only school that had extra space was Theuerkauf, but not enough to solve the district-wide problem.

So, yes, by getting all kids moved into the school the new SAATF map from 2017 assigns them to, it will help all the schools and all the neighborhoods.

By the way, those portables we have on almost all of our schools are not free, we pay quite a bit to lease them every year. The portable we own are mostly at or near their expected useful life. If we don't start removing portable soon, then the money to pay for those portables comes right out of the operating budget of all the schools.

So, the longer we delay moving kids to their SAATF assigned schools, the more money will be drained from the budgets of all the schools.

Oh, and let's not forget that by delaying the movement of kids we also make Slater open with only a partial school, but the need for a full staff of administration and a whole 450 kid school to maintain.

If we grandfather kids until we run out of current attendees and siblings, then it will take at least 6 years before the new Whisman/Slater will be up and running for all grades. This too would be very costly and that money too would come directly from the operating budget of all the schools.

Does that help answer your question?

I speak for myself, not the EPTF.

@Alan Wessel

"Parents at Bubb, Huff and it seems Landels need to realize that portables will be around for a LONG time"

Only if we choose to "grandfather" the 1/3rd of kids that attend schools the SAATF boundary map would assign them to. If we move the kids all in the fall of 2019, then these expensive portables we lease can be removed fairly quickly and all that money we pay for leasing them can go back into the classrooms for the kids.

"...given the way the district has decided to build out the elementary schools. For reasons that make no sense to me, the decision was made by the district to "cookie cutter" all schools to be the same size with three classrooms per grade,..."

OK, so let me explain why all the schools are getting built out to enroll 450 kids (3-strands).

Originally, in 2010 the district took great effort and study of all our facilities and properties and determined that we needed the taxpayers to cough up about 420million to bring all of our school sites up to meet modern standards and to have some schools to be able to properly handle 650 kids, while other schools would be 450 kids enrollment.

However, the taxpayers survey showed that the most the taxpayers would vote for was 198million. Far less than half what was needed to build proper 600-650 kid schools.

When the math was eventually done with the understanding of our current facilities and property sizes, it was found that the most cost-effective way to spend the 198million was to build only 450 kid schools. The big cost is not the classrooms, it's all the support facilities. Making a 600 kid school is vastly more expensive when you consider the current facilities which can be refurbished far cheaper than tearing them down to try to build 600-650 facilities.

In the end, it took a great deal of creativity in finances to even figure out a way to pay for all schools to become modern 450 kid schools.

So, we will have 9 schools. All of which can serve at least 450 kids with proper facilities and some schools have some extra room and some schools have expensive portables we have to pay for out of our operating budget only as long as the grandfathering decision requires us to.

If the voters were willing to approve the 420million, then things would be very different in many ways and maybe we woulld never have to worry about moving kid around at all. But, we could not get 420million, all we got was 198million.

So, complain to the voters for where we are now.

I speak for myself, not the EPTF or SAATF as a whole.

@Bubb

A wise person said:
"The future is determined by those who actually show up."

"what was the representation like on the boundaries task force?"

If you mean the SAATF, then the task force was made up of the people who responded to the call from the district for people to come together to work out a new district boundary map. The district sent out notice in several ways to announce the need for volunteers. I seem to recall something like 25 people responded. Many of them had also been on the prior BATF that also tried to get a new map done, but the BATF solution was rejected by the School Board.

The reason why the Board rejected the BATF map was that the BATF had not recommended building a new school for the Whisman/Slater. The Board voted that Slater would get a new school whatever it takes to do that. With that decision, the SAATF and the EPTF were formed with that mandate.

"Was it representative of Mountain View's diversity?"

As always, you need to define your use of the term "diversity".

What I can say is that the map was drawn by the SAATF and the people were those who responded to the call for volunteers. We made efforts to recruit people from all the schools and neighborhoods, but in the end it was those who showed up that did the actual work and came up with a map the Board approved.

As for the EPTF, that one was done in a more deliberate manner. The district put up an application web-site where people could apply for membership on the EPTF. They asked what school your kids went to and what area you lived in and if you're applying as a school rep, or area rep, or as a taxpayer, or school staff, or... and they asked why you wanted to be on the EPTF and what were your qualifications. Then the applications were stripped of their names and placed into groups and they evaluated by a group of staff to select a group that gave representation to all stake holders.

Finally, anyone who applied abut did not get in the EPTF was offered a spot in one of the many "focus groups" that were formed for each school and area to also discuss and provide feedback to the EPTF and Board.


"Why is it that the new school boundaries are more segregated than before?"

Because Huff and Bubb got the bulk of their income level diversity from the kids above ElCaminoReal and from the Whishman/Slater area. With the new SAATF map that was drawn to meet the Board requirement to open a new Whisman/Slater school, there was no way possible to make the 9 schools more economically diverse.

Unless you want half the kids in our school district to be mass bused across town to meet economic diversity goals?

We could choose to use a computer program to determine where to send each child based on income, or ethnicity, or both to force all 9 K-5 schools to be equally "diverse" as the others.

Is that what you want?
Half the kids on buses twice a day going to schools across town?

The property values of housing in the area are very lumpy and no matter how we draw the boundary lines we will always have the low income kids attending the schools near the low cost housing and the higher income kids attending the schools near the higher priced housing.

The school district cannot force people to build low cost housing in the middle of high property value areas, nor can they force high income families to move into in the middle of low cost housing areas.

So, go ask the families of the Castro area if they prefer to have their kids close to home at the Castro school, or if they would prefer to spread out the kids of the Castro area all across the school district?

I hope that helps answer your questions.

@EPTF Member, if this is the attitude of the task force membership, we really shouldn't be surprised with this outcome. I'll take your non-answer with regards to diversity as a concession that it wasn't representative.

Are you arguing that because our city is segregated, our schools should be too? Why was busing not an option? Are you really going to contend that parents would rather send their kids to a 6/10 school rather than a 9/10 school? The entire reason grandfathering is an issue is because plenty of families want to keep their children in Bubb and Huff, so that argument really doesn't hold water.

You are right, though, this was quite clarifying.

@Bubb1,

As I clearly told you: As always, you need to define your use of the term "diversity". When you do I will have your answer.

If you honestly cared about our kids, families or schools, you would have applied to be on the task force or in the focus groups. You have always been free to come to the EPTF meetings and listen for yourself, you are free to write a short speech and tell the Board your thoughts at the Board meeting, instead you just sit and snipe from the side-lines.

The term "diversity" has the shroud of perceived utopian goals, but until you actually define what you meant in the specific instance at question, it's impossible to answer.

Politicians love to use the term diversity, it sounds saintly, but it means nothing until you define it.

"@EPTF Member, if this is the attitude of the task force membership,"

Again, you use an ambiguous term "attitude", could you please define exactly what you meant?

"...we really shouldn't be surprised with this outcome."

What "outcome"?
We only just presented our first rough draft and we have asked to hear from the focus groups directly and have asked for a huge load of data from the demographers to help us in our continuing discussions. We have also asked to have more working meetings trying to more deeply understand the facts.

"I'll take your non-answer with regards to diversity as a concession that it wasn't representative."

I did answer, I also asked you to define what you meant by "diversity" in this case, you have again not answered.

"Are you arguing that because our city is segregated,"

The above is a fact that is true and beyond the control of our school Board and the same is true in just about every school district in the nation.

"... our schools should be too?"

The above part is a value judgement question and I never said "should be.

What I am saying is that there is no way to redraw boundary lines to make any significant increase in diversity no matter how you define "diversity".

"Why was busing not an option?"

Ask the Board of Trustees.
They are the ones who have made it crystal clear that they want to focus on "neighborhood schools" and getting kids the shortest and safest commutes as possible.

"The entire reason grandfathering is an issue is because plenty of families want to keep their children in Bubb and Huff, so that argument really doesn't hold water."

No, it is NOT just the Huff and Bubb families, if you had been to the meetings, you would not have said that.

"You are right, though, this was quite clarifying."

Good, now how about you clarify what you meant by "diversity"?

@Bubb1,
This question deserves it's own separate reply. Thank you for asking it!

"Are you really going to contend that parents would rather send their kids to a 6/10 school rather than a 9/10 school?"

I have 2 answers to that...

First, that is a subjective value judgement.
Personally, I believe the rating system of our schools is junk science and should not be taken as any measure of the quality of our schools. Ask the families at Castro or Theuerkauf and they will tell you how great their school is and how the teachers are doing a wonderful job. Public perceptions are not always factual.

Second, I KNOW that the bulk of the families of Castro love their school and would absolutely choose to stay at Castro even if they could be zoned for a perceived 10/10 school.

A little history lesson to illustrate my certainty.
Back in 2006 when Slater was closed, the PACT school kids were moved to Castro. Many Castro kids joined the PACT school at the Castro site. But the Castro site was so terribly over crowded that the Board spent a mere 2million to reopen the old Stevenson school and moved the PACT school to Stevenson to relieve the overcrowding.

The Castro families were expected to come with PACT to Stevenson, but virtually none of them came along on the move. They chose to stay close to home by staying at the Castro school.

According to the various school rating systems (junk science) and the huge waiting list to get into Stevenson (high demand for alternative educational styles) and the recent evaluations done on all our schools, Stevenson ranks as the top school in the district. Historically, the PACT school has been judged equal or better than Huff or Bubb.

And yet, the Castro families chose not to move with the other PACT families to Stevenson.

I have spoken to dozens of Castro parents I have met at Board meetings over the past 4 years. They consistently say the value of having the kids close to home outweighs the public perception of their neighborhood school.

So, yes, low income parents do value keeping their kids close to home rather highly, but they don't always agree with the value judgements of the general public.

Again, great question! And one that is not ambiguous.

@EPTF member,

The more you post the more deeply troubling these task forces seem. You repeatedly fall back to "well, if you don't like segregation, maybe you should go to the task force," while at the same time are incapable of understanding what economic and racial segregation are.

But, hey, let's rely on the "conversations" that an anonymous task force member has had, where they see, no, actually, parents love this! Low income families prefer things this way? The mind reels that you think this is convincing.

For our edification, which schools did your kids go to?

There's discussion by the district to reduce the special turnaround funding given to Castro and Theuerkauf. Ultimately, redrawing borders won't convince parents to change their perceptions. Targeted investments in Castro and Therakeauf are critical to increase natural draw to both areas over time.

As long as most of Shoreline West is separated from Castro, we still have a partially segregated district. Educators and parents know fair is not equal, so I hope the board does not undue the turnaround funds. With extra support and time, we can one day have safe route neighborhood schools across every parts of the city. A worthy goal for the next round of school boundaries in the future.

@EPTF member

Quoting the article:

District estimates show kindergarten enrollment would decrease to 101 students at Bubb and 93 students at Huff if the new attendance boundaries boundaries were to take effect.

How do you plan to fit 93 to 101 students into three Kinder classrooms with a max of 25 students per room?

As I stated above, even with the new boundaries strictly enforced Bubb and Hiff (and it seems Landels as wel if projections are correct) will have portables for a LONG time.

Also please explain again why it makes sense to have three classrooms per grade when the number of students changes going from K-3 into 4th and 5th grade. The district will just wind up paying for portables, empty classrooms or both!

Web Link This new development with 447 units will definitely influence our school district. Hopefully somebody took notice on Tuesday night.
Also the demographics in Waverly Park have been changing (56 SummerHill Homes, the Enclave) the last couple of years and will change even more with all the new construction (SummerHill again) on Sun Mor. Huff won't be able to handle the next generation of children looking for an education.

@Alan Wessel, @Bubb,

Just FYI, I have no dog in this hunt, my child will be in Crittendon by the 2019-2020 school year, so I am not biased. I am dealing with all this objectively and not for personal gain. I am taking Dr. Rudolph's directive to "evaluate everything based on the whole district, all the kids, all the teachers and the taxpayers too", quite seriously.

I would also suggest that anyone who actually wants to understand all if this should spend some time going back through the Board Meeting agendas, presentations and meeting minutes. All of which are on the MVWSD web-site.

Reading up on why we are where we are will clarify all of these issues.

"How do you plan to fit 93 to 101 students into three Kinder classrooms with a max of 25 students per room?"

I think you have misunderstood and made some assumptions because you have not been in the Board meetings or on any of the committees where these things have been discussed and in detail.

Not all the schools will have a maximum of 450 kids in total capacity.
As I recall, the only schools that will be max at 450 will be Slater, Stevenson, Castro and maybe Mistral too. All the rest will have more than 450 capacity.

I think that failing to include those details is causing confusion.

I think another missed detail is that we don't have to remove all the portables at once, we certainly can keep some, but get rid of the rest. How long we decide to do "grandfathering" will determine how long it will take to get rid of as many as we can. Grandfathering will also determine how much extra money will be spent out of the districts operating budget to pay for the portables.

"even with the new boundaries strictly enforced Bubb and Hiff (and it seems Landels as wel if projections are correct) will have portables for a LONG time."

Some portables probably true. Nobody really thinks we will be able to remove all of them from all schools by 2020. Some will probably remain for a while, but the goal is to eventually get rid of all leased portables and as many owned portables as possible.

The new housing being built all over MTV will also require additional schools and a new boundary map, but there is no telling when that will be needed. Hopefully, the North Bayshore area will have enough land set aside to build more schools.

"Also please explain again why it makes sense to have three classrooms per grade"

That is the MINIMUM all of our schools will be able to serve.
NOT the maximum.

As for building out all schools to a minimum of 450 kids, that was driven by the MONEY provided by the voters.

We could not build new 600 kid schools with the money we were given.
AND the families over in Whisman/Slater wanted a school of their own for their neighborhood and the Board was determined to give it to them.

Fortunately, the money limitation came to the same answer, we needed 9 K-5 schools. Building some of our schools bigger would not have fit into the budget.

Now, I'm no district expert, but I believe Crittenden is a middle school. Which elementary school did your kids attend?

@ Bubb,

I also speak only for myself:


Your question was: "Hi Cleave, what was the representation like on the boundaries task force? Was it representative of Mountain View's diversity? Why is it that the new school boundaries are more segregated than before?"

The representation was parents from around the district. While I don't remember the exact numbers, there wasn't a lot of interest from Mistral, or Castro, or Theuerkauf. All the other schools were represented. Was it representative of Mountain View's diversity? Depends on your view. There was Latino Member, a member of Indian descent, a black member, a lot of women, and a lot of white men. Most folks were gainfully employed at the time, a couple were not, in fact, I was likely the most economically challenged member of the group at the time because I was unemployed.

The answer to your third questions has to do with the mission of the district and it's neighborhood schools. The district prefers that all school boundaries create walkable or bikeable school routes for kids. This means they don't want kids crossing major thoroughfares, or busy surface streets. Since each neighborhood has a school community in it'd midsts, this creates some definitely boundaries that mirror the folks in the surrounding homes. So, for instance, Huff and Bubb become highly affluent school districts, Castro becomes the school with many of the socio-economically challenged students, etc. However, the trade off is safe school routes for all kids at all schools (for the most part, it wasn't perfect). As the other EPTF member notes, the interest in re-opening the Slater site threw a wrench in those boundary lines as we did not recommend re-opening that school given the budgetary challenges and facility challenges of re-opening Slater at the time.

Hope this helps.

Thanks,

I'd say this strict boundary thing has problems. It could be seen as civil rights discrimination to deny the opportunity to switch to a different school, given that they do not all perform equally.

But the discussion in the comments about portable buildings and their cost is missing something big. The buildings don't teach kids by themselves. The portable rents for about $8500 per year. A classroom teacher with benefits has to cost something more like $85,000 per year. In this discussion about K at Bubb and Huff having 93 or 101 students each, consider that the situation will continue in the future, moving to grade 1 the next year and so on. If the max class size is 30, then perhaps 3 kids can be denied enrollment in their closest school. I don't think this will happen so easily with 11 kids. Hard to say. But say they do decide to operate a 4th class. The added cost is not just $8500 for a portable, but it's maybe $90K or so for teacher and classroom together. Really that increment is only serving 11 kids (even if the situation is 4 classes of 25 or so, instead of 3 of 30 each). It all adds up.

The cost incentive is to balance kids across all same-grade classrooms in the district, and not to have more teachers than needed for the number of students.

If there's going to be hard attendance boundaries, there really should be a hard limit of 90 kids per grade. The rest can go to a different school.

@A suggestion

"One other alternative could be to start putting the incoming kinder class into their boundary school..."

The complicating factor is siblings.
What we don't want is to have siblings split between different elementary schools. That is a huge problem for any family.

All parents with multiple kids wont want anything to change for them until all their kids have moved on to middle school.

Grandfathering also means that K-5 kids who live next door to each other will go to different schools. We have already seen how toxic that gets. It is perceived some families "got lucky" by being able to go to the "better" school, while their neighboring families did not.

"and continue over the next 6 years until all the kids have transitioned."

Unfortunately, 6 years wont be nearly enough if we grandfather the way families want. Based on various families I have met in the district, there are quite a few that would end up grandfathered into their current school for the next 20 years!

"...I would be quite angry if my kids didn't get into a school within walking distance..."

As would happen for Huff/Bubb/Landels and probably the new Slater. The district either commits to the old practice to just plop down more portables or to fully enforce the new SAATF boundaries very soon.

"Question - are the school sites in Mountain View substantially the same size?"

No, but that's not really the issue, it's money and population.

I would not expect all schools to have the same number of classes per grade regardless of acreage or capacity.

@ResidentSince1982

"I'd say this strict boundary thing has problems."

Any boundaries and any enrollment rules will have problems, passionate critics, and make some set of families move to a different school.

No set of boundaries would ever make our K-5 schools demographics match the overall demographics of all our K-5 public school kids.
Only mass busing can do that. Any parents want that?

"It could be seen as civil rights discrimination to deny the opportunity to switch to a different school,"

There always needs to be a process for the transfer of a student for special circumstances.

We can't just say we will move any kids to any school because the parents perceive the other school is "better". We'd need a multi-story school at Huff for 3,600 kids.

Allow parents to request to go anywhere but their assigned school and let the district decide where?
Would that make parents happy? Would it avoid discrimination suits?

"...given that they do not all perform equally."

See, now there I have to disagree strongly, especially for our school district.

It's NOT the schools that matter as much as it is the educational background of the parents. Not even income differences track to student performance like the parents educational background does.

It's not about ethnicity, income, native language, where you live, or family size, it's about how well educated the parents are.

Some districts have neglected specific schools, treated them like dumping grounds for difficult kids, terrible teachers and given up on them.
That is a tragedy and those districts should be ashamed and perhaps prosecuted.

That is NOT the MVWSD.
All of our schools are great schools, the difference in testing scores is a reflection of the parents education, not the school quality. There is only so much a school district can do trying to compensate for that.

Cleave, thanks for addressing what I was discussing. Given that Mountain View is roughly 1/4 Hispanic, doesn't that breakdown strike you as a problem? On top of that, Castro and Theuerkauf being underrepresented are worrisome too. Did you attempt to compensate for that, or did you just rely on folks like EBTF above who says "the future is determined by those who show up" i.e. tough luck for those kids.

In some sense I think you recognize the problem I'm raising, and EBTF member pretends not to, when you say "Huff and Bubb become highly affluent school districts, Castro becomes the school with many of the socio-economically challenged students." Why do we accept that outcome? Now EBTF has told us above that it really doesn't even matter which school we send the kids to, the Castro families will just perform poorly regardless, and in fact, like things better this way. Let's say I'm less than convinced of that.

Back to you, EBTF member: which elementary schools did your kids go to?

@Bubb 1 and others asking about proportional representation on the Task Force. This was a Superintendent's administrative committee. As such, it did not even have to meet in public (but, ++ Dr. Rudolph, it has definitely been an open and public process). Second - Dr. Randolph's explanation and discussion of how he operated, to give a well vetted and well representative (across the schools and city neighborhoods) Task Force has been well documented. [your civics homework, not Cleave's, or anyone else's.] No one school or no city neighborhood got a 'disproportionate number' just based on how many 'volunteer's'. So, though I was extremely critical of the Dr. Skelly/McNamee BATF makeup. I personally have no problem whatsoever with the current Task Force composition. This did include ELAC (English Learner Advisory Committee) participation in a formal and open process! [The ELACs /DLAC are 'statutory advisory committees' of the School Board and their minutes are required to be recorded - and archived. Apparently this continues to be haphazard/site Principals?]

I always appreciate the postings of Frink, Chiang and (anonymous to some) EPTF Member. I don't always agree with them on policy, but they usually have the background (IMO) fairly well nailed down.

Mr. Alan Weissel - you bring up 'interesting math' problems. But all life, particularly civic Public Policy, is not totally determined by-the-math. If so, Laura Blakely's pre-swearing-in suggestion of Include Gemello neighborhood to Castro, would have happened, in a much more whole-district, algorithm. (lowest aggregate walking distance)

see the red righthand box for recursive algorithm detail (Belmont-Redwood Shores)
Web Link

@EPTF member, you contradict yourself as much as our Superintendent (and sadly and most recently our Board).

My original statement was:

"Parents at Bubb, Huff and it seems Landels need to realize that portables will be around for a LONG time given the way the district has decided to build out the elementary schools."

You first responded:

"Only if we choose to "grandfather" the 1/3rd of kids that attend schools the SAATF boundary map would assign them to. If we move the kids all in the fall of 2019, then these expensive portables we lease can be removed fairly quickly and all that money we pay for leasing them can go back into the classrooms for the kids."

When I pointed out that even with strict implementation of the new boundaries there would still be a need for portables, you first tell me to read up on the issues and then admit:

"Some portables probably true. Nobody really thinks we will be able to remove all of them from all schools by 2020. Some will probably remain for a while, but the goal is to eventually get rid of all leased portables and as many owned portables as possible."

So *now* you admit the portables won't be going away anytime soon! Indeed, they will be needed in any school with filled 4th and 5th grade classrooms (like Bubb, Huff and Landels) to add a fourth classroom to K-3 so the numbers works out!

Thus we will be paying for portables for a LONG time and they won't be "removed quickly" as you first claimed.

At the same time, unless the district gets smart about attracting kids to less popular schools, those schools will have empty classrooms. (And if we ever fill those 4th and 5th grade classrooms, we'll need portables there too!)

And here's one bit of advice in terms of attracting more students to our less popular schools: Create special choice programs at these schools, for example STEM and ARTS magnet schools. Need another one? Add a FOREIGN LANGUAGE program. The oversubscribed PACT program demonstrates that parents are interested in having creative educational opportunities.

I believe parents (and taxpayers) will support and also be willing to pay more when they see their funds are being used in an effective and innovative manner. It's not helpful when people see the district doing REALLY STUPID things like getting rid of some of our most loved and effective principals and wasting money on programs like Teach to One and no-bid sketchy consultants.

Which is not to say the district hasn't done anything well. I commend the district for doing some things well such as increasing salaries for our teachers, implementing the year-round lunch program and implementing RTI in elementary schools.