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Los Altos Patch Celebrates Its 1st Year!

We reported our way through falling fire trucks, downtown construction, our first Pathways Run, a fabulous Arts & Wine Festival, a delayed Pet Parade, two Festivals of Light and much much more.

Los Altos Patch was so busy trying to stay on top of the Bullis Charter School facilities offer Monday night that we almost forgot to report on our own bit of news: We celebrated our first birthday!

provided the venue, and we added a few green and white balloons, some great food and drink, and voila, Patch Party!

Los Altos Mayor Val Carpenter surprised us when read her proclamation congratulating Los Altos Patch for its first year. Los Altos Hills Mayor Rich Larsen observed that the communities already had a widely read publication in the Town Crier with a long history—and that there was always room for more.

Patch West Coast Editorial Director Marcia Parker answered questions about Patch and put out a call for ordinary residents to blog about the things that matter to them in Los Altos and Los Altos Hills, whether it's about their organizations or their lives, or the things that interest them the most.

About 55 people came out to enjoy the convivial company, sip wine and sample the offerings of Los Altos caterer, A Savory Bite. Among them: Los Altos City Council members Ron Packard and David Casas, and Mayor Pro Tem Jarrett Fishpaw, Los Altos Hills Town Council members Jean Mordo and Ginger Summit, Los Altos Chamber President Dave Bergman, Los Altos Community Foundation executive director Roy Lave, Penny Lave, members of the Los Altos and Los Altos Hills Senior Committee, members of GreenTown Los Altos and Los Altos Forward. Patch contributors Rob Klindt, Pam Marino, Avni Nijhawan, Crystal Tai, James Tensuan and Pam Walatka were present. Blogger Maureen Jones and members of her team from All Horizons Travel also came out. Passarelle Co. co-founder Taylor Robinson was on hand, along with Brooke Ray, also from Passarelle.

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randy albin February 1, 2012 at 06:21 pm
the village of los altos is pretty good over the years. don't forget to issue free library cards like it used to be. we deserve a free library card
Jeremy Barousse February 1, 2012 at 10:22 pm
Congratulations Los Altos Patch on your one-year anniversary! You have done a great job giving local and regional residents outstanding community news coverage and great real-time reporting!
L.A. Chung (Editor) February 2, 2012 at 03:03 am
Thanks, @Jeremy Barousse! There's nothing like running a Patch site in the town I grew up in.
@randy albin, you always make me laugh. But don't hold your breath waiting for that free library card. It looks like a non-starter (unless you become a regular library volunteer -- or attend a school in Los Altos district (I suspect you're past that point).
Aaron Selverston February 2, 2012 at 01:42 pm
Congrats on the mayor's proclamation!
Rachel Stern February 2, 2012 at 06:27 pm
Thanks Los Altos Patch for hosting a great party, and more importantly continuing to stay a reliable hub of local news, opinions and events!
Note Article
Just a short thought to get the word out quickly about anything in your neighborhood.
Share something with your neighbors. Write a new post... What's up? Make an announcement, speak your mind, or sell something
Nancy Morimoto June 11, 2013 at 05:26 pm
For all skill levels. (I got cut off.) Kids' hear athlete's inspiring stories and sing fun songsRead More too. See www.unionpc.org for details and registration forms.
Another shot of the Kinder Area
David June 16, 2013 at 03:04 pm
You can calculate the interest rate from the chart of the next page (page 31 in PDF). The principalRead More is shown as dropping each year, for 2012 $151,303. The interest paid also drops, in this case by $7303 for an effective interest rate of 4.826% I am wondering if LASD owns some other property in LAH, since the lease to Waldorf would have to go for more than 30 years in order for the lease-leaseback lease to end before it is up.
David June 16, 2013 at 03:53 pm
Happy Father's Day everyone. Enjoy the day with your kids. Since that doesn't apply to me, I'mRead More going to keep digging up minute facts about how the district manages its facilities. I'm sure I'll dig up something to spin around out of context, distraction, or to ramble. So stay tuned!
David June 16, 2013 at 05:59 pm
Now that Raynor specifically has been ruled out, I am re-posting this article which had previouslyRead More included many images of the Raynor site. The thoughts it contains are still applicable, as Raynor was just an attempt at saving money on a new site, purportedly one of the lease costly ideas LASD Board members could locate. The new home of the article is here: http://losaltos.patch.com/groups/lasd-faciliites-growth-issues-discussion/p/lasds-plan-for-new-campuses_8265249b
David June 7, 2013 at 11:58 pm
Oh and they also take a spelling of "its" and put [sic] after it because they think theRead More possessive pronoun is spelled it's which is a common mistake. :) Since they cannot spell, they must be wrong.
David June 8, 2013 at 12:05 am
LASD wasn't faced with spending $20M on lawyers vs $200M on real estate. They think they can useRead More Raynor and keep the cost for one school down to $50M or so, but that will never be used by BCS. It will end up being either ruled illegal or it will be an albatross around the district's finances for years to come. They'll blame BCS for the stupid move. But what is really important is that ongoing legal battles or not, BCS had agreed to accept the split if only $500K more were spent on getting Blach into shape. While the only firm committment was for 1 year, it was obvious that LASD could have come back and gotten that agreement set for 3 years, by which time all sorts of dust would have settled. That was a wise option, and by far the cheaper one. There can always be new lawsuits. What you need to worry about is this years, just like the facilities process for charter schools.
Joan J. Strong June 8, 2013 at 12:35 am
Just because there is no rule requiring something doesn't mean there's necessarily a rule forbiddingRead More something. Otherwise walking with shoes on would be illegal. BCS has never, ever, ever agreed to "accept the split". That is a lie that the BCS regime and their sycophants repeat ad nauseum, but it's still a lie. Earlier this year they crafted a counter-offer over which they ALL BUT PROMISED TO SUE over. They carefully worded it in such a way that would be 100% consistent with a lawsuit over their very own counter-offer. In other words, BCS said, "if you don't accept this counter-offer that goes above and beyond the legally necessary facilities... we'll sue.... if you accept it... we'll sue anyhow". They think we're stupid. We're not.
David May 31, 2013 at 12:57 pm
Are you talking about having an associate teacher at each grade level or about the provision of aRead More special education aide for each grade level? Either one is very different from LASD but if you mean both that's very interesting. The aides are compensated at lower hourly rates than the teachers, but in LASD there is not even 1 full aide per school aside from SDC aides. Egan has no aides and Blach only has 0.80 FTE of aide time.
David May 31, 2013 at 01:12 pm
Oh, there are different kinds of aides. I referred to the 1-1 personal aides above. The resourcesRead More specialist certificated teachers at the LASD schools also work with aides and there are generally between 1 and 2 FTE of that kind of aide time at a school. Interestingly in this category Egan has 1 RSP and 0.8 classified time whereas Blach which has all the Jr High SDC classes not only has the staffing for that, but in the RSP area has 1.6 RSP teachers and 4.1 classified time as well. so more than SDC classes are concentrated at Blach.
Philip Aaronson May 31, 2013 at 01:51 pm
Sorry, yes, associate teachers. These are fully credentialed teachers. It's excellent as thereRead More appears to be much more natural coverage for teacher absences (vs. substitute teachers), maternity leaves, and they can work as aides for 1-1 time as well as an excellent training opportunity for less experienced teachers - all rolled into one.