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Theuerkauf Elementary is no longer a majority low-income school. What does that mean for the Mountain View Whisman School District?

Original post made on Feb 24, 2020

In under a year, Mountain View's Theuerkauf Elementary School undergone a dramatic demographic shift and no longer has a majority of its students coming from low-income families.

Read the full story here Web Link posted Monday, February 24, 2020, 2:02 PM

Comments (17)

Posted by Thank you Pres. Trump
a resident of Blossom Valley
on Feb 24, 2020 at 7:33 pm

Post removed due to trolling.


Posted by Not surprised
a resident of Rex Manor
on Feb 24, 2020 at 7:42 pm

The demographics have been shifting in this neighborhood for years. Most kids attend Stevenson or private schools. It makes sense that eventually the neighborhood school would come around.


Posted by Winning
a resident of another community
on Feb 24, 2020 at 8:26 pm

Isn't this in fact a win for the low income students? These title 1 funds are for THEM. In the past they were diluted by being spread across 100% of the students with the majority being non low income. Now the funds are reserved just for the 38% that are actually low income.

It seems like the school district has been virtually cheating for all these years by taking away the low income funding for use by the higher income students.


Posted by MV Mom
a resident of Shoreline West
on Feb 24, 2020 at 8:54 pm

Demographics of the school changed this year due to a major redistricting of the MVWSD school district. Landels lost 1/3 of its student population to Theuerkauf and Slater. This is a super obvious factor!!


Posted by Another MV mom
a resident of Another Mountain View Neighborhood
on Feb 25, 2020 at 11:31 am

I wonder what the percentage of ELL students is. Especially those who don’t reclassify after a year or so (which indicates problems beyond not just knowing English when they started school).
This is a much more accurate measure of the school’s academic achievement/number of disadvantaged families: how many kids cannot reclassify due to either undiagnosed learning differences or to the fact that there is no academic support at home.


Posted by casey
a resident of another community
on Feb 25, 2020 at 2:21 pm

"In under a year, Mountain View's Theuerkauf Elementary School undergone a demographic shift, from being a place where a majority of its students are from low-income families to one where at least one household earning more than $500,000 annually applied for free and reduced-price lunch."

Please rewrite the first paragraph. I don't understand the part about the household earning more than $500,000 annually applying for free and reduced-price lunch.


Posted by One wonders
a resident of Shoreline West
on Feb 25, 2020 at 3:42 pm

This shows how wrong our city can be. These greedy tech workers should be paying 10k/mo. for rent and they ask for a free lunch! There should be income qualifications for rent control. They are taking advantage of the poor landlords. Yes on D!


Posted by Editor Needed
a resident of Another Mountain View Neighborhood
on Feb 25, 2020 at 3:57 pm

This article is poorly written. The first paragraph is impossible to read!


Posted by Thoughts and questions
a resident of another community
on Feb 25, 2020 at 4:08 pm

@Winning
Isn't that the way Title I funding works tho'? That's not specific to MVWSD, that's how all school districts handle different types of Title I funding based on % of students qualifying at a site. Why blame the district for following rules?

@MV Mom
Isn't it interesting that the boundary changes didn't appear in the article at all? Seems like it should have been considered and disclaimed if necessary as a possible factor. A big miss by The Voice / MVWSD.


Posted by Sally
a resident of Monta Loma
on Feb 25, 2020 at 4:20 pm

The neighborhood demographics have changed dramatically. Low income, immigrants have moved out since they could not afford the higher rising rents. One summer, they just seemed to all vanish overnight, no more bikes or walking with strollers observed. Now many older apartment buildings/ bungalows are torn down and big townhouse are being built. Thank goodness I purchased my townhouse 20 years ago, or else I wouldn't be able to afford to purchase now.


Posted by @Voice
a resident of Monta Loma
on Feb 25, 2020 at 5:18 pm

You do now that it is illegal for you to be removing people's respectful comments, your rules are being followed.

Just because you personal do not agree with a comment that supports a politician that you oppose, it is illegal for you to discriminate against people's opinion when you have made this an open public forum.

The courts have ruled on this matter.

It would be best for you to review your actions with your legal advisor.


Posted by Spider-Man
a resident of another community
on Feb 25, 2020 at 6:04 pm

If anyone has been paying attention to the news as reported about housing, homelessness including people who are working full time jobs, you would have noticed that there is no affordable housing in the Greater Bay Area. There are plenty of new developments but not many can afford a million dollar condo or townhouse. Even the lot rent in most mobile home parks have skyrocketed. It’s big investors who are buying the mobile home communities and raising the rent on the mobile home owners. They are responsible for pushing out seniors living on social security and the low income families have no other choice but to leave the area. Local cities have caused a big housing crisis because for many years, they were only interested in attracting high tech companies and giving them incentives and tax breaks..


Posted by I SEE INCOMPETENCE
a resident of Another Mountain View Neighborhood
on Feb 26, 2020 at 6:11 am

MVWSD's school boundary changes took effect this 2019-2020 school year.

Many of the low income students from several MVWSD schools were assigned to the new Vargas Elementary.

There has not been a change in the low income population in the community itself. What changed was the distrition of the low income students among the district schools.

That student distribution shift in MVWSD resulted in the loss of a Title I school, which means that resources destined especifically to low income families do no longer exist at Theuerkauf.

The loss of a Title I school in a school district IS A BIG DEAL and in this case it is the direct result of MVWSD's decisions.

Now, we need to ask if this result was meant to happen (was the elimination of a Title I school intentional?) or it is an honest mistake made by an incompetent superintendent, an incompetent federal programs director, incompetent district leaders, and an incompetent board of trustees.



Posted by @casey
a resident of Willowgate
on Feb 26, 2020 at 7:44 am

When my kids were in the district we were asked to fill out the free and reduced lunch application every year even if we did not actually expect to receive free and reduced lunch. I cannot remember the reasoning but it has something to do with getting an accurate assessment of the percentage of families qualifying. I would assume the $500k per year family filled out the application for a similar reason.

To the writer of the article:
Not mentioning the shift in boundaries in the article seems like journalistic malpractice.


Posted by MV Resident
a resident of Another Mountain View Neighborhood
on Feb 26, 2020 at 11:33 am

@I SEE INCOMPETENCE:

Concerned about what you seem to be suggesting... that when the District updates school boundaries, it should ignore neighborhood factors, and deliberately concentrate low-income families into specific schools in order maximize federal funding?

Not only would that be de facto segregation, it seems like it would be an abuse of the Title I system.

Personally I'd have serious issues with any district staff or school board that condoned that sort of thing.


Posted by LongResident
a resident of another community
on Feb 26, 2020 at 11:42 am

I would say an interesting question revolves around how the school board
can have a discussion about this drop in the fraction of low income kids
at a school and not mention how they changed the make up of the school
the same year. It's not a matter of the coverage. Did they actually
discuss the matter and not bring up the factor of redefining attendance
boundaries? If so, was this a sort of cover up or were they truly unaware
of the cause and effect involved? The actual numbers 2 years ago had
Theuerkauff at 63% and then it dropped last year to 55%, with no change
in boundaries. Some change was inevitable. But to drop all the way down
to 38% must have meant multiple factors were at work. I believe they
were trying to reduce the low income kids at this school by the boundary
changes. They just overshot. But there is the question of how
they can discuss this waiver and not mention this. The purpose of a waiver
has to do with the dip being temporary or transitional. How can they
ask for a waiver when they caused part of the drop?


Posted by LongResident
a resident of another community
on Feb 26, 2020 at 11:51 am

The Middle schools are changing to. Graham has held stable over many years
at around 1/3 low income students. Crittenden though was 57% in 2014-15 and dropped steadily to 42% last year. So what happened at Crittenden this year? It seems like
it well might have dropped below 40% or if not it soon will. Is the board planning for this change?


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