Bill Lambert's comment in article is that there's acceptance in MV that a Bullis MV would grow very rapidly if they open a school. We should ask ourselves why? One of the Spanish speaking parents from Mistral spoke through a translator on behalf of Mistral, but at the same time lamented on programs that have been removed and lacking... perhaps that's an indication?

Bullis will deny it like Trump denies his taxes are shady, but their enrollment has always been VERY suspect wrt who can pay the "Suggested" $ they need. Fully transparent enrollment via a 100% blind lottery best suits the community.

The debate about this seems to have a lot of blind faith in a dogma that charter schools are all the same and they are bad. The people from Marin County were particularly bad. They are in an area which short changes the low income non-English speaking population extensively. The charter school formed there has succeeded in enrolling a population with 3 times the number of such students as in the district as a whole. Yet they travel miles away to hawk their dogma in a different city in a different county with its own unique situation. With a straight face, they say the charter should not be approved because it's ok to ignore efforts for special programs for the underserved. They cite problems in their area, which are in their minds only. Perhaps these problems stem from the
local board having listened to them before and having that charter gain approval
directly from Sacramento. Maybe their formula is a recipe to create problems. Maybe it's important that the local board approve the charter.

“Jennifer Anderson-Rosse, head of school for Bullis Mountain View,”

Sounds like they’re planning on their school!

Which they should be considering the county won’t deny their charter. I’m so sorry, MVWSD.

-LA parent

Did anyone notice that, yesterday, at the board meeting, BMV had only 1 MV resident supporter? Everyone else was Bullis Los Altos staff, teachers, students, advisors, students. They don't seem to have any MV support. But they don't care. they can open a school in MV and continue to teach affluent Los Altos students (see enrollment policy. Charters don't have to enroll local kids). Then, after the County grants them whatever they want in Los Altos, they'll close BMV. Assets will revert back to Los Altos charter, the teachers will go back to working at 1 location only (notice their evasiveness when responding to Blakeley).
BMV is a temporary scam to comply with County's diversity demands.

That’s a fascinating observation and I don’t think far from the truth. Why else would many from Los Altos show up? What stake do they have in any of this?
It’s been obvious it’s a scam from the beginning but I was thinking for 2 reasons: to get in with the rich families of MV and also now to pull in diversity to please the county. The thing is I don’t think they’ll pull the poorer kids from MV. They won’t be interested.

@ Tonyjacobs

Tony, could you be a bit more clear on exactly what you are asking?

"Why are they doing it?"

Who "they" and what are they doing you don't get?

"I still have a hard time understanding the nature of this issue."

Then you have not been reading the news items and the resulting comments because it's been pretty well covered.

"What's so bad about a charter school?"

It's not about about charter schools in general, nor is it about the teaching methods of Bullis, but there is a huge issue with the way the state of California wrote their prop 39 to give so much power to charters to force themselves into school districts that don't want or need them.

This specific charter school, Bullis, has a long and continuing history of being in a counter-productive relationship with the district they have chosen to reside in.

When Bullis decided they wanted to force their way into the Mountain View Whisman School District, the behavior of their leadership has alienated pretty much everyone in the district. This COULD have been avoided by Bullis!

Bullis leadership could have engaged with the families, schools, district office and Board long in advance and had an open and honest dialog, instead, they chose to brush everyone aside and use the full force of the state laws and push the process to the fastest pace legally possible.

Bullis produced a 645 page document as it's charter petition. I'm sure they spent years developing this document. It was densely filled with legal and marketing jargon and gave it to the district at the last legally permitted minute. At which point, the district had less than 60 calendar days (that included holidays) to read/digest/discuss/understand and TRY to negotiate changes and finally to come up with a written set of change requirements for the Board to vote on.

The main thing the MVWSD families and staff were asking for is that Bullis get their approval now and then delay the actual opening of Bullis Mountain View until fall of 2020 so we all could prepare and coordinate and engage with BMV leadership to get to know them and they us and so we could all be properly ready to open a new school, but BMV flatly refuse.

Those who have been paying attention will know that MVWSD has gone through a huge series of difficult changes in recent years and the last major installment of those changes will be settled in 2019-2020 school year. That is the worst possible year for Bullis to force it's way into the district and that is when Bullis has chosen to do so.

"I thought that the parents would care more about their children's education."

We do, that is exactly why we wanted Bullis to fully engage with the district and get to know our city and how things work here BEFORE they came barging in on their single-minded "mission".

BMV leadership claims they are all about focusing on raising up the educational performance of the low-income kids in our district, but they then did NOT bother to actually get to know those families nor find out what those families valued nor what would entice those families to take the leap of faith to join BMV.

Low-income families are not "early-adopters", they tend to be very risk-averse and they trust the standard traditional public school system rather than any form of alternative schools. Meaning, it's going to be virtually impossible for BMV to attract any significant percentage of low-income families.

Are you beginning to get the picture yet Tony?