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LIVE BLOG: Joint City - Schools Meeting

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You can follow the City - Schools meeting on May 29 here, or follow the webstreaming at http://www.losaltosca.gov/citycouncil/online/index.html

Penny Lave May 30, 2012 at 03:07 am
I don't think the school board members have ever been to Hillview during the day to see that the parking lots are full most days with users of Hillview. That site is the center of activity for all ages and is already impacted beyond its capacity
David May 30, 2012 at 05:01 am
Yes, I too am concerned by the talk of using Hillview as if it would be no real problem to relocate everything there. It's not just the school board but apparently also the city council to a lesser extent. For example, the previous proposal to rebuild the whole site was very costly and the city council dropped it due to cost. Now they were saying if they could get a pool on a school site elsewhere that would be compensation for giving up Hillview.... non sequitur in that it doesn't look at the whole picture.
L.A. Chung (Editor) May 30, 2012 at 12:54 pm
Some of the parents who spoke last night in favor of using the Hillview site said their children attend programs at Hillview after school, seemed to believe that some co-usage could occur; but it's probably not clear to everyone what usage goes on at different times of the day.
Recreation Director Bev Tucker wants Patch to take a tour.
Joan J. Strong May 30, 2012 at 01:24 pm
In concert with that, however, you should interview community members who are very smart (like Jennifer Carlstrom) and understand the plan for each of those components and where they can be moved. I bet we can come up with a great plan for all of them.
We need to make it clear that there is absolutely NO talk of taking ANYTHING away from ANYBODY. Quite the contrary, this win/win deal will IMPROVE the services the city is already offering by giving them better locations for those services and money to improve them. Unlike a school, which must necessarily be contiguous and large, all of the services at Hillview can be spread out to smaller facilities which may arguably be BETTER locations than the they have now. This is a much more efficient use of taxpayer dollars and a solution for the crisis which has been visited upon us by Bullis Charter School.
David May 30, 2012 at 06:55 pm
Excellent idea on the picture tour of Hillview for Patch! Genius!

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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.
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.