Charter schools are meant for underprivileged children. But BCS takes free ride of public school campus and resources, to serve highly privileged, extremely rich children. This is wrong.

Recently, I received multiple, multiple rounds of solicitation from BCS troops for enrolling my children at BCS. It is no secret that BCS wants to use the expanded enrollment as a weapon against LASD.

Recently, BCS abruptly announced a plan for an isolated campus at MV specifically for low-income kids. With this, BCS hopes to justify its existence at Los Altos providing free private education for rich kids.

Really, BCS at Los Altos should be private school.

BCS is a public school that serves 900 students at at time now, and has served thousands over the past 15 years. Why can't the public schools be privatized? Public education allows society to share the burden of raising children. BCS is an excellent public school. 1000 students are on its waiting list currently. Enrollment is almost entirely by residents of LASD, regardless of city, parts of Palo Alto, Mountain View, Los Altos and Los Altos Hills.

Charter schools are a way to AVOID privatizing public schools but still allow alternative programs to thrive. This is a very successful alternative program that is chosen by a very large fraction of LASD. Students can switch back to their LASD school if they want, and a very low percentage do so. This is a really good feature. It's not as easy to switch back from a private school to a public school but switching between public schools is easy. There is no tuition paid. LASD attempts to raise about $1500 per child in contributions from parents in the district. $500 goes to the PTA at the school and $1000 goes to the LAEF. BCS requires no contribution and still charges no tuition. Privatizing it makes no sense, because while LASD spends $15,600 per child at its schools, BCS received under $8000 on average for the children it educates, out of public funds. It's much more cost efficient with public dollars to have kids go to BCS, so it should be EXPANDED and not privatized.

@Enough BCS

"Charter schools are meant for underprivileged children."
Who says so? Where is that written in the tenets of charter schools?

"But BCS takes free ride of public school campus and resources, to serve highly privileged, extremely rich children."
Um, those would be the kids that reside within the LASD. As the children of taxpaying residents within LASD the BCS kids have just as much right to public education (including their campuses and resources) as though who choose to attend the more traditional programs at LASD.

You can't blame the Los Altos School District for trying to get a place to dump BCS in Mountain View and save the $150 million for improvements at the other district schools. Smart thinking. The dummies are on the Mountain View City Council.