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Schools

Hope—And Civility—Stir For LASD and Bullis

Bullis Charter School still needs "reasonably equivalent' facilities. No one's got a great solution and no one's declaring an end to hostilities, but Monday's Los Altos School Board meeting had some people hoping it was a 'step in the right direction.'

 

These are interesting times in Los Altos and Los Altos Hills.

Flame wars rage on news sites carrying coverage of the Bullis Charter School - Los Altos School District conundrum. Accusations fly robustly and freely.

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But Monday night, with nearly 160 people in the audience at the Egan Jr. High School multipurpose room, and about as many people on Los Altos Patch and Mountain View Patch, civility broke out.

Nineteen speakers addressed a new alternative to the Feb. 1 offer for school space made to the Bullis Charter School. Many expressed serious practical concerns, some opposed it. Some pledged cooperation to make it work. No one accused anyone of ill intentions. 

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“I think the entire community appreciates the civil atmosphere at the meeting  last night,” Ken Moore, chairman of the Bullis Charter School (BCS) board of directors, Tuesday.

Moore made a rare appearance at the meeting that had such high interest it had to be moved to the junior high school gymnasium in order to accommodate the large crowd.

It was so rare that LASD vice president Doug Smith, who has sat on the opposite side of an adversarial table from Moore for more than a year, publicly recognized and thanked the BCS chairman—and BCS parents—for coming.

“I think it’s really impressive," Smith said later Monday night. "If you look at the comments from the community tonight, they are mostly 95 percent positive.”

The topic eliciting this response, in the middle of a regular agenda filled with math program presentations and enthusiastic PTA reports, was a new idea that might fulfill the district's perennial obligation to provide "reasonably equivalent" facilities to BCS, as mandated by the state.

The district announced last week it was : Sharing the Covington Elementary School campus with BCS grades K-6, and keeping the remaining BCS 7-8 grades at the Egan campus. In this option, each school would have its own classrooms, its own portables and share the remaining facilities.

In contrast, called for Bullis' K-6 grades to continue at the Egan Jr. High School campus, and placing the 7th and 8th grade students at Blach Jr. High School. It was an offer that “arrogant” and “defiant,” given the against the LASD by the Sixth District Court of Appeal.

Moore used none of those adjectives Tuesday.

"LASD’s facilities offer is still a work in progress, as I think everyone recognizes that there are some tangible issues to resolve regarding student safety, traffic, and sharing school resources," Moore said.

"We remain hopeful that LASD will provide a legally compliant facilities offer for 2012-13 that keeps BCS’s integrated K-8 program on a single campus.”

From the bond measure discussion that immediately followed the charter school alternative idea, it was clear that the LASD board hoped Covington could be a temporary measure.

“The fact is we have ten schools and nine sites. We just don’t have enough space to successfully fit ten campuses," said LASD Board President Mark Goines.  “I encourage everyone here to help us think about a long-term solution. We want a 10- or 20-year outlook that makes everyone happy.”

Parents on Monday night had wasted no time in pointing out that the Covington idea was an imperfect solution, however temporary, to an already challenging  situation.

There was a wealth of deep concerns—about already-"terrible" traffic, parking, and sharing facilities on a "super campus" of BCS and Covington schools—expressed by speaker after speaker. 

Steve McGuigan, a Covington parent, asked how the combined ‘super campus’ would be controlled, and schedules, noise, after-school activities and signage managed.

There were comments on the live blog marveling at the positive and cooperative deportment of Covington parents, some of whom said they would support the combined campus if it meant that a district school would not be closed down.

“With regard to the co-location, we are impressed the board acknowledges and understands the importance of keeping our schools open,” said Chad Starkey, a district parent and Covington PTA president, who spoke on behalf of the PTA executive board.

“Ultimately, it is our hope and goal that a long-term solution is worked out with the charter school that satisfies everyone. As you have heard, we do have some concerns with the development of this super campus, like traffic safety, noise on campus and for the neighborhood, resolving conflicts between the schools and so on. These are all things I think the board should consider.

"In the end, it comes down to the fact that Covington is prepared to work with BCS.”

There's plenty of work to do. Staff needs to go back now and address the questions and concerns posed at the meeting before next week’s special meeting, which will probably be scheduled March 26. The LASD board must make a final offer to BCS by April 1, Smith said, so discussion on the Covington proposal and the original proposal would likely be voted on at that meeting. 

"As a BCS parent, I just want to thank the parents from Covington who went out of their way to remain open to sharing with BCS," wrote Courtenay C. Corrigan in the comments under . "They demonstrated extreme grace under pressure, generosity, open-mindedness and the civility that has for a long-time been missing in discussions that include BCS."

A traffic study would need to be done, Goines said. And, as some speakers mentioned, numerous traffic studies had been done in the past that would suggest a significant challenge.

“I think that our parent community did as it always does. They rose to the occasion,” Smith said.

Some expressed that rarest of emotions in these parts, hope. 

"We need to begin healing," said Millie Gong, a parent of a BCS kindergartener.  "We need to not make it be an ‘us’ versus ‘them’ battle.

"Let's be the model, you and me, and her and him. Let's. Let's be the model school district in the United States where we as public school district can collaborate ... be the most cutting edge innovative school district in the country."

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