Why is the MV-W District leasing long-term some or all of the following school sites: Whisman, Cooper and Slater? For the SPENDING MONEY.

Both of the LASD "Charettes" and all 3 of the "Workshops" for public input at LASD had the stated purpose of where to home the 15 year old charter school when its temporary agreement expires in a year and a half. They weren't about the best use for the new LASD land from Kohl's.

The best use for the new land would be for a neighborhood elementary school to serve 2/3 of the kids living in the overall San Antonio area, not the whole area. The reason is simply that there are too many kids living on both sides of San Antonio Road to have the ALL attend the same LASD school. But if it's just the Kohl's side of San Antonio, it all works numerically. LASD has NEVER laid that down as an option. Think about that. They haven't considered the best use for the new land. They are biased and transparently so.

One issue is that if LASD opens a school at Kohl's, then both Covington and Almond will shrink considerably. Loyola and Oak have already pre shrunk to under 400 students K-6 and they will shrink more. LASD can't keep all 4 of these schools open with a new school serving 2/3 of the area around Kohl's. They can't afford to operate 5 schools with 250-350 students while Santa Rita and the Kohl's school are up closer to 600. To make it worse, they keep dancing with the idea of moving 6th grade out of the elementary schools. This makes them all smaller.

They really have approached this thing backwards.

So accidentally, this could provide an empty site for the charter school.

There is not really any room at the new school for any Los Altos students, because there are 1000 Mountain View students forecasted for the immediate area. The charter school doesn't want to deprive the area of its new school, even though it will only serve part of the kids living there.

One aspect is that in 5 years Egan will be 50% Mountain View kids and 50% kids from LAH an LA, with the few
from Palo Alto. The only reasonable way for the new site to mix cities would be to use it for the new site for Egan. Egan is old and rundown. A new school would be a step up for Egan, even without all the mature trees that
currently surround Egan. Sad not to have trees at a school.

@Leased sites: Whisman and Slater are sites owned since the time of the Whisman District (20TH CENTURY). The sites were leased out after the two local elementary schools were closed [ = no neighborhood K-8 classrooms in the NE Quadrant of MVWSD, 1/4 of the population and 1/4th of the school students: 2010 US Census]

Most of the Lease Money is SPENDING MONEY to pay off the new neighborhood school buildings for Vargas (K-5). Some additional lease revenue money - I like to think Cooper and Theurkauf's Google Preschool - is used to pay off the new District Office building. This is called COP financing. Certificates Of Participation. Not the same as new Bond financing, which raises local property tax rates.