Schools

Bullis Charter School Outlined Needs In Press Release

The press release, prepared for the Feb. 13 meeting between representatives of both BCS and Los Altos School District, stated the differences the BCS board saw between what it wants and what was in the preliminary faciilties offer.

 

Editor's Note: The following is a news release that was given to Los Altos Patch Feb. 13, the night that subcommittees or representatives of the Los Altos School District Board and Bullis Charter School Board (BCS) met to raise questions and seek clarification about aspects of the preliminary facilities offer. Patch is providing this news release in response to reader requests, and this is not a news article. The release is a snapshot of the situation at that time. During the meeting, Los Altos School Board President Doug Smith said the answers would be supplied after the winter break and asked that BCS respond to the offer with specific requests for changes. That response date is Friday, Mar. 1, and Patch will post the response when it is made available. 

Press Release

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Bullis Charter School (BCS) board members Joe Hurd and Peter Evans have agreed to meet with members of the Los Altos School District board to begin discussing BCS's differences with LASD's preliminary facilities offer. The meeting, scheduled for Feb. 13, will hopefully be the first series working to modify the District's preliminary offer to meet the parameters BCS laid out for a split BCS campus compromise. 

On January 23, Chairman of the BCS Board Ken Moore, announced that BCS had agreeed to an Egan / Blach campus split alternative that LASD was proposing, as long as certain parameters were agreed to. Since that time, LASD has made its preliminary offer for facilities to BCS.

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"We appreciate LASD's willingness to sit down and discuss space and facilities requirements for BCS students, said Moore. "The BCS board firmly believes its students deserve the same treatment as other students in the district. We will continue to ensure their learning experience meets the expectations that the school has demonstrated in its nine year history."

As part of this process, board members Hurd and Evans communicated several of the points of differences between what LASD offered and what BCS students, parents and faculty expect.

"No district school site has ever been configured in a gerrymandering (sic) way as that LASD has proposed for BCS to use at Blach," said Hurd. "All District sites have rectangular functional footprints. BCS students should not be given a disproportionate amount of the unused less desirable portions of the campus connected by thin corridors if at all."

Another difference that Evans and Hurd explained was that LASD's preliminary offer did not account for the inefficiencies and hardships on students and staff of a split campus in its allocation. Instead it simply appears designed to split the facilities it would have offered on a single site between Egan and Blach.

"Each site must have all standard facilities available onsite on an exclusive shared basis," said Evans. "Each site should have a library, a computer lab, nursing station, separate flex rooms for science, art and music, school office."

To further impress upon the importance of what's lacking in LASD's preliminary offer, Evans explained to the board (sic) that when Gardner Bullis opened with just under 200 students, the school was not given half the space of the other District schools with 400 students. Rather, the school had roughly 32,000 square feet of building space with full-size standard District facilities. Students did not have to leave the site to access standard facilities.

"The exclusive building space being offered to BCS at Blach is roughly 11,000 square feet or just one-third of what was originally provided Gardner Bullis," said Evans. "It simply is not a self-contained site."

Evans and Hurd outlined other major differences BCS had with the LASD preliminary offer including:

  • Facilities that are suppose to serve multiple uses but cannot do so
  • Absence of specialized teaching space and non-teaching space for 6th graders
  • Faulty enrollment projections resulting in no facilities allocation for some students
  • Improper efforts to control BCS' grade configurations and
  • Insufficient outdoor playfield and blacktop allocations

"Our announcement on January 23 was a first step by BCS to lay out a compromise framework that works for both LASD and BCS," said Moore. "Our willingness to consider a split Egan/Blach campus as a short term solution addresses the key concerns raised by the District and community members but requires consideration of BCS students as well. The parameters that are essential to our students are reasonable and we hope LASD will seek to meet them."


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