Schools

Los Altos School District Letter to Bullis Charter School, Oct. 16, 2013

This is the complete text of the Los Altos School District letter to Bullis Charter School.


October 16, 2013

Dear BCS Board of Directors-

Thank you for your letter of October 10, 2013. In particular, we are pleased to see you commit publicly that “[the BCS Board] agree[s] there is a need for additional public dollars to improve our schools.” This common understanding can be the foundation that we need in order to win the community’s support for such an undertaking.

Your letter raises a number of other issues that we have not previously discussed such as BCS’s request to share in parcel tax revenues and the basic aid benefit. Some of the items you have asked are governed by the will of our local voters, and others are determined at the State legislative level. Perhaps those may be topics we can take up at a future time. In the meantime, though, we would very much like to focus our efforts and make progress on the existing short term requests BCS has made, and on the steps necessary to pass a bond to build those additional facilities. By developing this partnership, we can then consider a wide range of possible topics of mutual interest. Our first mutual step, though, needs to be completing the agreement at hand.

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Mayor Gary Waldeck informs me that October 30th looks like a workable date for a follow-on discussion of the long term negotiating team. If BCS is prepared to engage in the dialogue, the District stands ready to reconvene those discussions. On the short term discussions, Trustee Mark Goines informed our Board that he has not yet heard from your short term team on a number of outstanding data requests, nor has the third short term meeting been rescheduled. I would urge the BCS short term team to engage with the LASD short term team to arrange this third meeting and wrap up any remaining short term requests.

At the long term negotiating meetings (and in subsequent emails) the District has laid out a proposed framework to provide to BCS nearly all of the enhancements BCS requested to the current facilities for the 2013-14 school year, as well as steps needed to pass a bond. We have not yet received a substantive response to that offer. As we stated previously, we expect that there would need to be some discussion and fine tuning of the language. Certainly we can agree that in order to reach an agreement, we’ll need to engage in meaningful dialogue. We are hopeful that BCS will be available for further meetings, and might come prepared with a redline document or at least a willingness to discuss the terms necessary to passing a bond.

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I must also include in this letter a word of caution. The existing Facilities Use Agreement signed by both parties stipulates that the terms of that agreement will be honored until any changes are mutually agreed. We have no such mutual agreement, as the District has always conditioned any modification on the achievement of a longer term deal as well as the shorter term requests from BCS. In spite of this, we have become aware of a number of violations of the Facilities Use Agreement by the Bullis Charter School. This includes, but is not limited to: use of facilities at both sites by more students than are provided for in the agreement; use of the facilities at Blach by students in grades K-3; violations of the sharing schedule for PE facilities; BCS start times outside of the times provided for in the agreement. BCS’s continued violations of the terms of this agreement are making it increasingly difficult to believe that your teams are negotiating in good faith. Indeed, how can we expect that BCS will honor a future agreement when you are not honoring the current agreements already signed by both parties? The District has received multiple complaints from neighbors and community members about these violations. We are compelled to enforce the agreements we enter into, and cannot simply turn a blind eye. By violating the agreement, BCS opens itself, the Board of Directors, it’s chartering authority, and it’s parents to legal exposure. We would urge BCS to immediately come into compliance with the Facilities Use Agreement and remain in compliance until such time as a different agreement is mutually reached.

Our differences notwithstanding, the two boards are as close to an agreement as we have ever been. There is ground yet to cover, but we can work together to accomplish our mutual goals- increasing the school facilities available in our community, and securing a long term site for BCS. We look forward to receiving your reply, and to scheduling the next meetings to reach a workable agreement.

Best wishes,

Douglas J. Smith
President, LASD Board of Trustees 


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