Where will this school be located?

This is welcome news indeed! Will preference be given to Mountain View residents? Given the high demand and waitlist for Stevenson, I have no doubt that many parents in Mountain View would be interested in this school. I wish Bullis had come to Mountain View earlier as it seems my kids will likely be to old to enroll in this school.

One interesting vein floating around out there is that if LASD and BCS are unable to come to terms for the next set of facilities discussions, then as part of expanding into the MV area, BCS would offer its current LASD-based students the opportunity to "transfer" to its new campuses in MV. The discussion w/ MV is not only about 1 site but potentially many sites where there would be 1 site for MV only kids and 2 other super sites for LASD expats. This way BCS would not have to rely on LASD anymore. The ramifications could be huge: 1) BCS families in the LASD zone could opt out of staying in the BCS program and flood back into the LASD schools (is there capacity to absorb hundreds of new kids from a teacher and classroom perspective), or 2) should most BCS families stay with program and commute to the new MV super sites, the traffic in both LA and MV would increase at least 3-5x during rush hours.

This is a fascinating development as MV has been in talks w/ BCS for months and is far more receptive to siting BCS programs and facilities in its district and continue to make MV the magnet of Silicon Valley

BCS should form a private school, and remove the public from its drama. They have been a plague on LASD, are sued the district multiple times. Go private and have at it BCS! Mountain View and Los Altos already have well performing and highly ranked schools. There is no need for a charter school in these districts, as most California parents would LOVE to send their children to a standard school in either district. Stop trying to impose your curriculum on the public and just simply do the good work you do on your own.

Considering how easy and how continuously BCS (unelected) Board keeps the public in-the-dark about their plans- I do not trust BCS. And I'm not even involved in the long running BCS LASD spats. (Millions of public dollars waisted on lawyers & court costs). The LASD is also not run openly enough, In My Opinion as a MV resident/citizen.

The city of Mountain view "has been in talks w/ BCS for months" - what is that? Where has this been publicly reported? What public open meetings have been held in MV?

Someone needs to unify these high level discussions, LASD and the city of Mountain View are discussing moving existing Bullis to MV, and Bullis on the other hand is discussing starting a second campus serving a more diverse population in MV, yet these two plans involving MV aren't in sync.

Perhaps if Bullis would commit to transforming its existing Bullis community to be a truly integrated community, reflective of the full diversity of this region, both serving its existing largely affluent families in one setting with added socioeconomically disadvantaged families proportional to our MV public schools, it would then be a worthy investment of MV, and present a better vision for the Silicon Valley. All schools in this region from Palo Alto to Sunnyvale strive to eliminate the achievement gap in a truly diverse setting that serves all students at all achievement levels. This has been a hard task for most public schools, leading to either low performance or flight, or both.

If Bullis could commit to creating one truly diverse and successful school, then welcome to MV. Yet, if just another charter that segregates socioeconomically disadvantaged students without a proven track record at justifying that segregation, I hope MV will pass on that outdated approach.

The real reason for the antagonism between Bullis and the education establishment is that they receive tax money but their personnel do not belong to the government unions. The LASD board were elected with huge funding of their campaigns by the unions and did their bidding by trying to screw Bullis--hence the lawsuits in which Bullis ultimately prevailed.

The reason charter schools exist is that they are responsive to the needs of their students and not the unions. They do a much better job than the government schools and parents who care about their kids' education clamor to get into them. So it is really good news that Bullis is opening a campus here in Mountain View giving parents here an opportunity for a better education for their children.

Thanks Christopher Chiang for raising that issue. BCS board members appeared before the City Council under general "oral communications" and addressed the idea of a new charter school in Mountain View. It appears that the school district bigwigs and the movers-and-skakers involved with BCS do not talk to each other much. But for now (tentatively set for hearing before the Mountain View City Council on October 16), the question is whether the City Council majority will vote to hand the LASD $100 million to use to purchase the site for a 10th campus WITHOUT ANY LIMITATION ON THE SCHOOL DISTRICT'S USING THE SITE TO UNLOAD BCS (currently at Blach and Egan) and not for the sufficient benefit of Mountain View residents. Without the business tenant of the LASD (Councilmember John McAlister dba through a corporation as "Stepping Stones Preschool and Daycare") voting (if he doesn't), the school district only has 3 of 6 City Councilmembers that have supported the bad deal for Mountain View. And maybe by October 16 even some of the male members of the City Council will no longer favor trusting the LASD to decide whether to use the site for BCS. The school district has decided already. The cat is out of the bag.
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The plan to develop a new, separate school to serve a diverse student population emerged from BCS's strategic planning process in 2016. This is not a way to funnel overflow BCS students from LASD and this is not a way to deal with site issues in LASD. A new and separate charter would allow BCS to bring their highly successful model to a new and separate school providing priority to students in the Mountain View Whisman School District.

If Bullis wants to open a new school, it needs to take petition to the MV School District. Has this happened? Going to the City Council sounds like a way to try to buy influence on the LASD site decision, especially given this timing.
Will they give a preference to low income or Spanish-speaking children? They could ask the County Board to allow this in the existing school, but instead are fighting against relocating to Mountain View.

Bingo. If the idea is truly altruistic then it’s pretty fishy timing and they are barking up the wrong tree.

Bingo. If the idea is truly altruistic then it’s pretty fishy timing and they are barking up the wrong tree. + 1

BCS should just close for good. It has ripped apart the LA community and now is coming to pollute MV. I'm Just so sick of reading/hearing the dramas it created.

Good luck Mountain View school district. I hope you have plenty of facilities available for bcs or you can plan to spend the next decade in litigation!

Let’s imagine BCS closes for good as one commenter suggested. Where would those 900 students go? My guess is that 90% of them would go back to their neighborhood schools causing LASD to essentially implode. The $4.5mn of donations from BCS parents would go away so LASD would now have to absorb at least $10mn of additional expenses to absorb these students. Have you heard about the teacher shortage in the Bay Area? LASD students would bear the brunt of the chaos, school ratings would go down, and property values would plummet. Maybe BCS should close for one year just to teach LASD families and evil Randy a lesson.

@LASDparent, is your name RIP van winkle? Unlike LASD, MVWSD actually has plenty of space. Several schools have excess capacity and MVWSD owns several school sites that are essentially empty. How do you think they were able to open Slater so quickly? Unlike LASD, there is plenty of empty land in MV. Ever heard of Moffet Field or North Bayshore? Go take a look - you’ll be shocked at what’s going on over there. Unlike LASD, enrollment is exploding, not shrinking. MV is the opposite of Los Altos. Instead of prohibiting commercial development, MV is the other extreme with insane high density housing exploding everywhere.

Unlike LASD which barely has 250 low income students district-wide, with some in the most affluent areas of the district, Mountain View Whisman had 1800 low income students in 2016-2017 school year.

If an established nonprofit provider of one local charter school wants to take the task of serving 200-300 of the low income population, it seems like that can only help. MVWSD has stretched resources to serve the low income population. Very different in LASD where there are only 5% low income students.

Facilities aren't a problem if a sane school district is willing to share existing buildings and classrooms on the same site. The problem in LASD is that the parents at Covington think they are too good to allow a 2nd program to operate on the same location as their school, even if it is 20 acres of land with only 580 students. The charter has been split for many years between 2 widely separated plots of land, 7 acres at Egan Jr High and 2 acres at Blach Jr High. How much simpler it would be to make that split instead 7 acres at each of Covington and Egan. There's plenty of land available in LASD, the issue is an artificial scarcity.

I totally agree with Chris Chiang's comments. Given there is a current discussion to move Bullis to Mtn View, a) Why are we talking about another Bullis school in MV? Why can't they prioritize low-income kids into the existing school? b) Why are more people not offended by their approach to create this second school to segregate low-income kids from their high income kids? 'If' Bullis is so great in their curriculum and given the new school would start with the youngest kids (pre-K to 2nd) wouldn't it be true that these low-income students should do just fine in classrooms with their high-income counterparts. I'm actually sad for the kids of these parents pushing for this segregated model. I'm sad that your children won't have the gift of being friends with kids from different socio economic backgrounds. Given the comments I've read from you on these boards and read in the articles, I'm sad that your kids likely hear you speaking in these 'lesser than' ways as you're talking to your spouse at home and parent friends at school. Call it what it is, you're taking flak for not having enough low income students at BCS and your answer is to put these kids anywhere but with your kids.

Its not segregation its a priority. Say 20% of applicants are low income and twice as many people apply as can fit in. The school could end up with 30% low income. All the low income get in but only 40% of others.

Bullis isn't here for disadvantaged kids. This is about the privatization of our public schools. The conservative billionaires are funding this push to turn our schools into a business venture. Once they take root in MV ALL our public schools will suffer.

This is not about taking over all the schools in Mountain View. This program is designed for low income kids and there are only 43% of the MVWSD kids who need such help. So it would be about taking over 43% of MVWSD students, if anything. However, one would hope that if this program works well, MVWSD would adopt some of its features in its own programs. It's about being an example of a better way to run schools for disadvantaged kids. There's no profit motive. MVWSD still gets all the benefit of its parcel tax and all the benefit of its renting out legacy land at great rates to private operations. Google rents a whole campus just to run "Daycare in the Woods" at Slater. There's a whole campus rented to two large private schools next to Whisman Park. MVWSD gets a lot of cash from that. None of it support this new charter school. MVWSD also keeps all the money from its revenue sharing deal with the Shoreline Park district. The charter school isn't tapping into any of these riches.

This is a longer school day with supplemental activities after school included free of charge for the low income kids. It's a longer school year. It's not clear that the non low income kids would even be interested in such changes.

So it's targeted by a non profit group organized specifically for the purpose to provide a different type of education to kids who are disadvantaged and need that support.