Photo of Sept. 12 in Los Altos HIlls. From left to right, Tamara Logan, Doug Smith, Gary Waldeck, Geoff Ball standing, Peter Evans, Francis LaPoll. The next “long-term solution” meeting is Monday, Sept. 16, 7pm, also in LAH City Council Chambers.
BCS and the Los Altos School District discussion quickly converged on the outline of an agreement for a joint long-term bond at this Los Altos Hills meeting. Trustees Doug Smith and Tamara Logan represented Los Altos School District. Trustees Peter Evans and Francis LaPoll represented Bullis Charter School. Doug Smith said that LASD would like to prepare for a $150M Prop 39 bond measure for the June 2014 primary election. He said that the measure would include language saying one purpose of the bond was to acquire a separate site for BCS and to construct a school to accommodate the charter for perhaps 10 to 15 years. BCS said if the bond included a guarantee that a BCS project was included, and that there was an agreement for stable transitional accommodations, BCS could agree to “site certainty” for 10 to 15 years. That means its growth would not require that a neighborhood district-run school would be closed.
the outline –$150M bond, June 2014, 55% majority vote, Measure language includes BCS separate site..halt all litigation, a stable BCS facilities for BCS in the interim period…
Both sides agreed they would dismiss or halt all litigation if a final joint bond deal were concluded. BCS would halt all the facilities related lawsuits it has initiated. Los Altos School District would halt all the lawsuits it has initiated for investigating charter school processes it believes deviate from district-run school norms.
Sound too good to be true? It is.
Lalahpolitico: Doug Smith said that to pass such a bond he will need the help of the most activist parents at LASD. Quite a few of the most active have “concerns” about the “transparency” of BCS. They say things like BCS does not behave the way “voters expect a public agency” to behave. [Prop 39 requires BCS to behave like a charter school, not like public agency.] They accuse BCS of not being “inclusive” enough in its admissions. They say that donations are tuition. Of course, you’ve probably heard all these allegations before. This is the corrosive rhetoric and war drum beat of press releases and trustee quotes that have been repeated uncritically by our media for quite a few years. You’ve heard that BCS is at best a “semi-private” school. Who cares what the law says, or the spirit of the law. Does a semi-private school “deserve” public facilities at all?
Los Altos School District constantly claims it considers the “community.” All parents, and all voters? Really? By listening too attentively to its most activist parents, it is listening to a small minority. To rise in the ranks at the local PTAs today, it probably is helpful to be very aggressive when it comes to BCS. The most aggressive parents are selecting for other aggressive parents.
What to expect Monday, Sept. 16, 7pm – A BCS inquisition?
So this past Thursday Doug Smith and Tamara Logan, wheeled in the “gift” of a plausible bond in less than a year! Woo hoo! Let’s celebrate.
But they seemed to be massing the troops to unleash all their activist parents’ “concerns” about BCS’s lack of “transparency” and their “non-inclusiveness” at the next meeting in the series. Doug Smith and Tamara Logan could unpack all the lawsuits LASD has filed right there on the floor of Los Altos Hills City Council Chamber, Monday Sept. 16, 7pm. And they will possibly be ably assisted by a slew of activist parents this coming Monday.
This Particular Bond Proposal – a No-win Proposition for BCS?
It is too small. As BCS trustee Francis LaPoll pointed out, the current needs estimate is over $200 million and that doesn’t include any wiggle room for cost overruns. Lalahpolitico: So with the too small bond BCS gets to be the bad guy, squeezing out other projects like an 11th site for the North of El Camino (NEC) area? BCS should play the villain role? I think not.
June 2014 is too soon. There is not enough time to reverse all the negative rhetoric directed at BCS by the LASD board and by “activist parents” over the past ten years. My elderly neighbors call BCS a private school. Other elderly have not heard that the population of students across LASD, but especially in NEC, is way up. My neighbors think the student population is holding steady. The April 2012 survey showed that if even one dollar of the bond money is for BCS, there is not enough support to reach 55%.
So let’s go down this path with this $150M proposal… say in January, 2014 the LASD trustees will conduct a survey about the Measure, and lo and behold, once again as in the survey of April 2012, the results will be less than 55% supporting a bond. Folks, there will be only 2 or 3 months of PR effort to try to reverse the years of poisoned allegations against BCS. Telling the whole truth can’t be done that fast. Lalahpolitico advises BCS and Los Altos School District to go for a $300M bond with a 66% vote in 2015 at the earliest. Ask for enough money to deal with the North of El Camino (NEC) enrollment growth issue (an 11th site), and to improve each and every school campus, as well as a permanent site for BCS. The $300M bond path provides time for BCS and Los Altos School District to demonstrate genuine kumbaya, not this phony crocodile smile, silly Trojan horse maneuver.
Doug Smith LASD and Gary Waldeck, Los Altos Hill City Council, in front of flip charts with top issues/objectives…
THE TRANSCRIPT
This transcript omits nothing of consequence. I maintain the conversational style. However, I do remove false starts and other redundancies. Some things are not too audible. I am familiar with most of the participant’s voice, however the exact speaker may be misidentified in places. (I worked from an audio recording, not a video recording.) However, it is always clear when BCS or LASD is speaking. As editor I have inserted clarifying remarks,
Participants in this “long-term” solution public discussion meeting
Geoff Ball – professional facilitator, mainly took flip board notes at this meeting
Gary Waldeck – LAH city council member, acted as moderator
Doug Smith LASD – President, Los Altos School District board
Tamara Logan LASD – Los Altos School District board member
Francis LaPoll BCS – former LA City Council member, BCS trustee
Peter Evans BCS – BCS trustee
My audio recording is available on request. There were two video cameras running in the back. I assume both sides were recording in order to review the play by plays “post-game.” I estimate about 35 to 45 persons in the audience.
The meeting on Sept. 12 began at 7pm in the Council Chambers of Los Altos Hills. There were 2 minute public remarks taken at the beginning.
BEGINNING PUBLIC COMMENT PERIOD
Noah Messel: [Lives on Higgins. Is part of the Huttlinger Education Alliance leadership team.] I think the issues of long-term and short-term planning are integrally related. The critical issues is how is the long term going to get paid for…today based on polling data suggests that 55% bond support doesn’t exist. And as long as the parties continue to fight over whether Bullis Charter School will release critical information, that every public agency in California is obligated to produce, we are going to be sitting here a year from now, 5 years from now with no solution. Voters will not approve a bond unless we see the kind of transparency from a public agency that voters expect in California. That means disclosing records under California Records Act requests. A number of those are pending and have been for months. We would like to see every public school in Los Altos, BCS included, treat all public school students the same way, regardless of their socioeconomic status, regardless of whether they are English Language Learners, regardless of whether they have special needs. Today we don’t see that. That’s the subject of pending litigation. All of these issues and many more need to be addressed before the voters will support a bond. I encourage you to work toward that goal, so we can support a final long-term solution for BCS.
[Lalahpolitico: So Mr. Messel represents a minority who will oppose the bond and reasonably equivalent facilities UNLESS BCS can produce reams of data and documents about itself to prove beyond a doubt that all his accusations are false. [Lalahpolitico has researched all these charges and does not see a smoking gun. See www.losaltospolitico.com menu items, BCS vs. Los Altos School District, and Schools Data.] Interesting that this HAE founder said nothing about Los Altos School District growth in NEC area and the need for an 11th site, or remodeling on existing schools to reduce the portables throughout the system. It’s true he only had 2 to 3 minutes.]
PaulK: Santa Rita, Egan, LAH. I don’t believe that a BCS blessing should be needed to move ahead on a tenth site now. We can get to an 11th site for BCS further down the road. You can see the storm clouds forming now for a whole new round of lawsuits about what Prop 39 says about who can tell whom how many kids you can put somewhere or another. The electorate is well conditioned to this long-term dispute. It is smart enough to realize that the growth in high-density housing development is driving the need for the 10th campus, not BCS. The need for the 10th site arises regardless of the status or location of BCS. Both sides extoll the nature of the neighborhood school. BCS wants one, or is it two now. And no one wants to give theirs up. Right now there is entirely elementary school’s worth of children in the fast growing northernmost tip of the district. These children have no neighborhood school to call their own. A decade ago when this problem was first identified, some of these neighborhoods were redlined out in district boundary maps and forced to travel past Almond and Santa Rita to distant campuses. With SR and Almond now full, children in these expanding neighborhoods where everything is supposed to be walkable and bikeable, find they don’t have that. These are the most disenfranchised families in the district, not the BCS community. These people deserve the 10th campus. Let’s get going on that now.
Kim Albright, 8th grade a t Egan. Much worse traffic this year. It’s extremely unsafe. Kids walk in the street. When BCS has its full enrollment on their campus everything is backed up. Our schools were designed to be small. Narrow streets, limited sidewalks, no street lights. It was not designed to house a mega campus of over 1100 student now at the Egan site. To allow more on there is irresponsible and is in violation of the April 2013 CEQA. It has been 13 years that the Egan community has tolerated this environment [sic 3 years of temporary camp with 550 students, and 10 years of BCS which started with about 200 students]. We need the BCS board to become a better citizen to the Egan community. What are you willing to give back? Work to find a site that is acceptable and work for a bond. Stop putting more students on the Egan site. Put student safety above growth.
S. Krisnan: I live opposite BCS. My kids bike to the neighborhood schools. There is lots of illegal parking. There is just not enough capacity to drop kids off. The site has reached its max capacity and it is really impacting the neighborhood.
Carol Nakomoto: I live behind Egan. I do support a bond measure. We need to move forward on that for 10th and 11th site. Here is history of the bike path, which is closed. Kids would loiter there and cause trouble. The police chief recommended closing it, and it was closed in 1972 and is closed. It 110 feet long, 10 feet wide between two homes. Please don’t open it again to relieve the temporary crowding. The Berkeley ITS study recommended not opening it. Don’t trade a problem on Portola for a the back of the campus traffic problem.
Rosanne Park: Lives on Portola. Traffic is worse. It’s so unsafe. People are parked everywhere. You have to go into the street. There is traffic madness. I would also support a 10th site.
Gracie: Lives 2 blocks from Egan campus. Congestion is terrible. Thanks for the increased number of crossing guards. I do remember asking last spring to please site more BCS kids on the Blach location. I know this board has been very set on limiting the kids on BCS [Bullis at Blach]. Maybe next year the board may want to reconsider that. I think the congestion is a problem there too. However, there is a demand in this community for BCS. My neighbor had her 4th grader accepted for admission at BCS, and on day before the first day of school she changed her mind. Within 20 minutes that BCS seat was filled. You have to have ask yourselves, Why is there this demand. What are we doing to make our Los Altos School District students want to go to that school. That’s a question everyone should be asking.
As for the bond, I support it. But I need to have trust in the LASD board, that you are also going to take care of the needs of BCS students.
END OF PUBLIC COMMENTS
Gary Waldeck, Los Altos Hills Council member acting as moderator, Geoff Ball, professional facilitator, and Peter Evans, BCS trustee
BCS and LASD DISCUSSION
Participants in this “long-term” solution public discussion meeting
- Geoff Ball – professional facilitator, mainly took flip board notes at this meeting
- Gary Waldeck – LAH city council member, acted as moderator
- Doug Smith LASD – President, Los Altos School District board
- Tamara Logan LASD – Los Altos School District board member
- Francis LaPoll BCS – former LA City Council member, BCS trustee
- Peter Evans BCS – BCS trustee
Gary Waldeck LAH: What are your top three issues?
Each side took 5 minutes to prepare for it.
LASD Single Issue: “Address Community Concerns in a way that allows us to pass a bond to solve facilities issues.”
Doug Smith LASD: I support charter schools. They can do something different than the traditional district schools. We are going to have some conversation through these meetings about transparency, because that is the only way the experiment works. I want to understand more about your program. What’s going one. I know there have been times when you guys have felt I was inserting myself in your process. I’d be interested in What is going on? How does it work? What do I want to learn from that? What do I want to do different?
There is this myth that the board wants to shut down the charter school. The goal is how do we peacefully coexist.
BCS Three Issues, Francis LaPoll. 1) Serve any district child who wishes to attend BCS. No caps. No grade level restrictions. 2)Interim solutions on the way to any bond measure which would contain assurances with regard to the project list. 3) Stable, reasonably equivalent facilities.
Gary Waldeck: Pick something to start.
Doug LASD: A lot of things need to come together for a community bond. My first question to you guys, do you support one? Would the board be willing to pass a resolution right away? “ We know that we need more land?”
Francis BCS: Last year, we did agree to support a bond measure. We’ve already shown that. [sic. BCS Support of a bond measure was part of the stillborn, Negotiated Mediated Agreement of April 2012. ]
Doug LASD: Well, there has been a lot of water under the bridge since then. There’s been more litigation back and forth since then. We need to state support for it right away.
Francis BCS: Things did happen between then and now. I have the points here. We would still agree upon them. Los Altos School District needs to figure out what it can to do.
Peter BCS: I’m totally prepared to work with you to get a bond passed. Apart from any discussion we have, there is a need for facilities to serve the North of El Camino (NEC) area. It still requires the same bond. The bond as it relates to BCS potentially is just a means to an end. Not an end in itself. Will a bond really resolve things? My aims are higher than to just “peacefully coexist.” Let’s say mutually thrive.
Doug LASD: Do you have something in mind besides a bond?
Peter BCS: No, I don’t. A bond might pass, it might not pass. There might be additional sites or not. We want to believe that is the bond does succeed, it will also change things and that there are benefits.
Gary: Can you be more specific about “benefits?” I am at a loss. Some time ago, people came together to look for sites. Hopefully this will be beneficial and it will stop the lawsuits. Every legal dollar should have gone to our kids. I did this moderating role to get a dialog going between both sides. So specifically what did you have in mind, Peter and Francis?
Peter BCS: Assume the money. Then you have find site(s). It has to exist. You have to acquire it. You have to succeed in building a school.
Doug LASD: The concern is that assuming the money is a big leap. To get the 55% of the vote, we have to figure out what it takes to get there. When we floated this last year. People came out of the woodwork with concerns. The issues they raised, they wanted to see addressed before they would support
Tamara LASD: It seems to me that you want a guarantee that…you have a stand alone site even if a bond does not pass. That’s what the deal was last year that you mentioned.
You want assurance. We have to take risks. We all have to make compromises
Doug LASD: I did not hear them say separate site certainty without a bond. [correcting Tamara]
Peter BCS: You correctly didn’t hear it.
Francis BCS: Should a bond pass, we DO want a guarantee
Doug LASD: [laughter in the room] God, yeah! Assume that will be in the language of the bond. This is to build a site that would accommodate the charter school enrollment growth. We work with you and pollster on what that language would look like. If we build another school site, we will be reallocating facilities. If you did not wind up with your own facilities, I would expect a judge would step in pretty quickly at that point. I have no interest in trying anything stupid.
Tamara LASD: Our area is blessed with having the number 1 charter school in the state and the number 4 district in the state. We’re thriving. How can we get along so we can focus on thriving even more, instead off fighting.
Doug LASD: Let me pursue your goal number 1. If we ask the public to tax themselves for 30 years, we have to be able to say that the new facility will serve BCS for x years, a reasonable amount of time. We have to go projections to give the community, this will build space that will last for x number of years. For at least 15 years or so, we’d like to know that that facility will be adequate for BCS. What if BCS comes back in 3 years and says we need more space. Then we are right back where we started.
Francis BCS: My recollection is that we did deal with that. It’s quid pro quo. We went through 5 or 6 days, it was laborious. But we did reach a point where you had the certainty you needed. We were all over the map in last year’s discussions. Is it 10 years, 15 years, 99 years? The district has it’s own [projection] issues going beyond a certain period of time too.
Doug LASD: Would it be reasonable to say, it’s 15 years, but if the district passes a bond in the interim, the change in facilities from that, BCS would be considered in that as well? Could be put something like that into the agreement.
Francis BCS: You’d have to write it down so that I could read it. There is a lot in there which you just said.
[Doug starts writing….]
Peter BCS: Let’s not forget there are a number of families in the community who believe that BCS is right for their child. I don’t know that number. I don’t think anybody here knows that number. We are also talking about facilities to serve a pool of kids- Los Altos School District Public School kids. I think that for us four to make up a number that we think will endure for 15 years, I would say, is unnecessary. It may start in one configuration, then change. People are saying the growth is the problem. No the growth is the opportunity. We are going to make a decision that serves the community.
Doug LASD: Understood. But we cant tell the community….and we are going to be back here next year [asking for more money.] or in 2, 5 years.
Peter BCS: But these students are not coming from Mars. They are coming from within the district and going to BCS. Or from BCS going to district schools.
Tamara LASD: The population is going up. So that’s not necessarily so. We have more student in the district. And you have more students in BCS. It’s not that have disappeared from one site, and filled up another site, and that there is a net zero total change. We have to language in there so that you are not going to take us back to court or to ask up to close a school. That’s what Doug is asking for.
Francis BCS: When we ask for facilities for BCS students, we have to acknowledge that they are from families and homes that are paying the property taxes too. Presumably for the bond measure, if it passes. So maybe they are voting with their feet. But they have a right to some of those monies, whether they are under a BCS roof or a Los Altos School District roof.
Tamara LASD: When we are building a school exclusively for your use…
Francis BCS: Right, but if people want more space. I’m not arguing that we couldn’t reach an agreement on this question. But as a matter of principle, these aren’t your dollars. These are the taxpayers dollars. Right? So when those kids want to go to BCS, why shouldn’t they get the benefit of those dollars their family is putting in? You made a comment, ‘Gee they are going to vote on a bond but they don’t know what is going to happen with their facilities. ‘ We are only going to build a certain number of facilities. And they are going to be occupied by kids from Los Altos School District.
Doug LASD: But we will not get the support of the community if folks feel like hanging over their head is the threat of a closure of a neighborhood school within N number of years where n is not a large enough number.
Peter Evans and Francis LaPoll, BCS trustees
Francis BCS: And I respect that, having voted for a bond, and having my school closed. People need assurances. Absolutely.
[ sic Los Altos Hills and Orange Avenue neighborhood parents worked hard for the 1998 capital bond. Their school – Bullis-Purissima – was top of the project list for remodeling, right after the new District Offices at Covington project. These parents also donated to LAEF in those days. The bond passed, the State had a shortfall and District operations were squeezed. The Covington project was bungled, and it had large cost overruns. To cover a $200,000 operations gap, the board decided to close a school. Loyola was originally the target, but Loyola was represented on the 5-person board while Bullis-Purissima was not. Bullis-Purissima was closed and the students were reassigned to newly opened Covington. Read the facts from the Town Crier in the top of page “The Genesis” article at www.losaltospolitico.com ]
Doug LASD: How do we cross that bridge?
Francis BCS: I think if the Los Altos School District board shows leadership on this. The issue ultimately won’t be with our community. We struck a deal last time. The issue was not the BCS community.
Doug LASD: the issue last time [the Facilitated Negotiated Agreement of April 2012] … the proposal did not take into account, enough of the community’s concerns. The BCS community was ok, and the Los Altos School District community was not OK. You have to ask if we had enough support from the whole community to make this fly. It was very clear we did not.
Tamara LASD: It has to satisfy the taxpayers and not just the board.
Francis BCS: So the solution this time won’t threaten every school in the district with potential closure. Which made no sense to me last time, but that was a required point. Maybe it wasn’t every district school, but at least half the district schools were threatened with closure.
Tamara LASD: So you want to narrow it down to one school being threatened with closure?
Francis BCS: When its phrased that way, I’m not sure why you would do that. Instead you need to have more certainty on the [sic new?] site.
Doug LASD: I did not follow that.
Gary: I’m not following you either. You lost me on the closing of 4 or 5 schools. Can you elaborate?
Francis BCS: If you look at the agreement we had last year. It said if the bond passed or didn’t pass, any of the following schools would be closed and given to BCS. So maybe you have partly addressed that this time. That is just not a very good solution, telling people they are going to have their school closed.
Doug LASD: That’s why we are saying we want to have certainty to say, if we pass a bond, for this period of time, x, people should feel comfortable that their neighborhood school isn’t going to be needed to be closed. That’s exactly what we’re after.
Francis BCS: In the meantime, we want some assurances we will have reasonably adequate facilities.
Doug LASD: And that’s absolutely what we’re trying to do.
Tamara LASD: In the new school that we would be building especially for you.
Francis BCS: From now until then, we would want no intrusion on our program
Doug LASD: What I see is two different ideas here. One is the short-term, pre- new site being built. The other is the long term – we hand you the keys and say this your lovely new facility. What I’m concerned about is that from the day we hand you the keys, we need to start a clock for a least x number of years, so that we are not going to be coming around to the community to close a Los Altos School District school.
People who are concerned right now will want to have visibility into how long they are “safe.” Or they won’t vote for the bond. So we have to have language in there that there is 10 or 15 years of “site certainty.”
Francis BCS: What is your definition of short-term?
Doug LASD: That’s from now till we pass the bond.
Francis BCS: For us short-term is this school year. Not being locked out that’s our short-term. So even before something passed and having money. Your earliest is June. And we have something going on in February. At some point we should talk about time line.
Doug LASD: We will definitely need to talk about what I will call the transition period, from now till when the school is built. Once we build the school, we need to be able to tell the taxpayers that from the time we pass the bond, for 10 to 15 years they don’t need to fear that their neighborhood school will be closed.
Peter BCS: Please write that down on the board [sic to Geoff the facilitator]. To me that’s consistent with us both being mutually thriving.
Francis BCS: Can you legally bind your future board members?
Doug LASD: We will put in what is legal language in the bond measure. I am comfortable we can figure something out. There was a formula we had in the last one [long term agreement] such that if you add a certain number of students, we provide a certain amount of additional space. We would work with you on the CEQA’s that are required to increase the capacity of the site. The district can sponsor those. We can put language in there says we can do that.
Gary: Both sides have clear understanding what your own needs are. But… So BCS, do you understand the legal ramifications that are imposed on the district? Los Altos School District, do you understand what you can give to them? BCS, do you understand as a group the legal, and other measures [sic “requirements”?] that drive their behavior?
Francis BCS: Like with CEQA? I was a number of years on the Valley Transportation Authority, I was a number of years on the City Council of Los Altos. We also have counsel who are CEQA experts.
Gary: So you have lots of help.
Francis BCS: I think it is the community that doesn’t understand CEQA [sic not either of the boards]. The community seems to think that CEQA can actually prevent something from happening. Actually if the board [LASD] has a mind to do it, and makes the appropriate “findings,” salamanders aside, you can do just about anything you want to. Yes you can.
Doug LASD: So I am not willing to be somebody, who rams through, counter to the community’s concerns. I think we need to take community input, and understand the concerns, and ways to address that. Not just to say we have some power, and therefore we are going to exercise it. That’s not going to fly in our community. Our population is far too educated for that.
Tamara LASD: There is a consensus in the state that CEQA does prevent projects from happening. That is what happens. So we have to be concerned. And we are in a lawsuit that you [BCS] filed against us about our CEQA analysis
Doug LASD: This is a different example. When the city was considering building a swimming pool in Rosita park, the neighbors said they were going to use CEQA to prevent that project from moving forward. The impacts on their neighborhood were too great.
Francis BCS: Don’t throw stuff out that you don’t know anything about. You are implying the CEQA stopped that pool project. In fact the city did a Mitigated Negative Declaration (MND) on the project. And then it went to court, and the court decided there should have been a full EIR. The council membership changed, and the new council decided not to do that. Had the council gone through that process, and made the findings, and then the pool would have gone in.
My objection is not your taking input, especially from neighbors. My concern is that you sometimes appear to be using that as an excuse to say that you can not do something. Neighbors have already sued. They sued over the campsite at Egan [sic back in 2000 or so?]. You may remember. And they lost. In fact, it got thrown out of court the same day.
I’m not saying you should treat the neighbors that way. I didn’t like it when our kids were sent through an “F” intersection either. When the district closed Bullis and sent my kids to Covington.
[sic, Bullis Purissma was closed, so Los Altos Hills and Orange Ave area students had to cross Foothill and El Monte to reach Covington, a F-grade intersection for student safety. FYI 50 Students near W. Edith today cross Foothill and Edith to attend Bullis Gardner, another intersection rated unsafe for students. They were reallocated from Santa Rita to Bullis Gardner in order to get enough students there to justify fully opening the site again in 2008]
Obviously, I understand student safety issues. But let’s be truthful, it’s not that the environmental law is saying you can’t do it. It’s you saying you don’t want to do it. That’s important to understand so you can address the real issues.
Doug LASD: If the expectation is that the board is going to force something through against the wishes of the community, I think that is unrealistic. OK? We wouldn’t do that, let alone, say we will craft a bond that requires that we do that. We won’t even get to the starting line. The bond won’t pass if people feel something is being forced on them.
Francis BCS: So I think CEQA was maybe not a good thing to talk about. It ‘s really involved now because of the short term issues. And we’re not supposed to be talking about that at this meeting. [which was to discuss long-term issues.]
Doug LASD: I’m going to set this aside. And then come back with some language around the 15 years.
Gary: What should we visit next?
Tamara LASD: Site certainty is a part. Transparency issues are a part. People are very frustrated about that. Do we want to look at that tonight?
Doug LASD: Why don’t we take a softball? Can we all agree that we drop the litigation? Oh, maybe that is not a softball. [?!??!] Just tell me. Presumably, if we are going to go out to ask the community for a bond, we are going to have to stop the litigation?
Francis BCS: Are we going to stop looking for sites outside the district?
Doug LASD: If we are working together on a bond, then we are going to pick a site which is mutually agreeable.
Francis BCS: And as the court said two days ago, you can do that [sic look outside] if the charter school agrees. And perhaps the county needs to sign off on that as well. [County is the BCS charter authorizer and supervisor.] We could partially or fully locate outside the county [sic he meant district]. But for you to be finding places several districts away, that’s just not going to fly.
Doug LASD: In our conversations with the consultants we use to pass bonds, they tell us the best shot is to say, “This is exactly the site. And that you agree with it.” So then can we agree that we will drop all the existing litigation?
Francis BCS: If you comply with the law. No we are not going to disarm. We are not going to throw away our shield. That makes no sense. If we hadn’t sued [sic about the Sunnyvale Raynor School site LASD attempted to purchase, presumably to house BCS], we would have ended up in southern Santa Clara?[TL1]
Doug LASD: The existing suits that are out there. The litigating over the 12-13 offer, a school year that is done. The appeals and what not left over from the 09-10 stuff, is that all going to go away is what I’m asking? It seems like we should be able to say, if we are building you a site, and we mutually selected the location, and we mutually agreed to the design of the school, then all the stuff about years past shouldn’t matter any more.
Peter BCS: So here is what I have. I thought it was a softball. Of course it is a softball. Here are actions that the District has initiated. Allegations and Complaints: “That BCS engages in illegal discriminatory admission practices, BCS fraudulently represents the number of interested students it serves, BCS engages in illegal fundraising, the Los Altos School District can exile BCS students to another site in a city two districts away, and previously, that BCS engages in false and illegal marketing, BCS engages in unfair competition, and Los Altos School District is entitled to restitution, previously, it is illegal for BCS to operate a middle school.” These are lawsuits you guys have brought.
Doug LASD: You want me to rattle off all the ones you guys have brought?
Peter BCS: Here is your answer. Sure, I’m waiting for you to drop the litigation.
Doug LASD: Is it a a mutually agreed stand down?
Peter BCS: I would say it is on the table if we have an agreement. Is that the question. Yes, that’s a softball.
Doug LASD: Can we incorporate language into the agreement that says both sides agree to dismiss their lawsuits.
Francis BCS: That certainly can be on the table.
Peter BCS: I want everyone who hears the conversation, understands that this is a two way street, that is rapidly becoming a one-way street, and not in the way most people think.
Gary: I missed that point.
Doug Smith, LASD and Gary Waldeck, Los Altos City Council member
Peter BCS: All the lawsuits are lawsuits that BCS brought. Is that correct? And all we ever do is sue. Correct? No. No! Not correct. And the issues the district has brought have nothing to do with facilities. And arguably might persist after a facilities agreement. So I’m waiting.
Doug LASD: All right let’s go there. Let’s solve that problem.
Francis BCS: So there would be a clause that says we drop litigation on both sides.
Ultimately we would get a set of points we would each discuss with our boards. And the state of litigation would that would be discussed.
Doug LASD: As I had previously emailed to Joe Hurd, the district would be happy to draft the language that encapsulates what we’ve been talking about, putting together something we can all work from.
Francis BCS: I was not privy to that email. My vision would be to have both parties do that. Or maybe have us do the short term one, and you guys do the long-term one.
[ some back and forth…]
Peter BCS: I’m not sure what we’ve agreed to. I don’t want to have our students locked out.
Tamara LASD: Our board agreed to that [sic not to lockout students] on Monday. You can watch the video.
Peter BCS: Yes, you did. And thank you. We need to get this FUA resolved. Yes this is short term issue.
Gary: Let’s put that in the short term meeting.
Francis BCS: You mean you both [Doug and Tamara] agreed that a lockout would not occur?
Doug LASD: All five board members said that none have any interest in locking any students out of classrooms. [sic. This was not a vote. Luther and Taglio said they would never support a board action to lockout students, ever. Others said they had no interest in doing so.]
Francis BCS: I don’t have any interest in litigation, but it happens.
Gary: At lot of these issues are being discussed at a high level here. Where the rubber meets the road is in the details.
Tamara LASD: Shall we each create a first draft?
Gary: Both sides could write it up, what’s important to them. They are not going to be the same. You could establish a point by point dialog that you could start resolving. Two issues I’ve heard: this lockout business, and this litigation, and ok, site certainty. If both sides write it down, then we can begin to merge the issues real time.
Tamara LASD: One of the problems I saw with the agreement last year , I hate to go back to that, but there was “we will support a bond and we are going to give you a chunk of money for a campaign.” I think we need to see a commitment to pass it that is bigger than that.
Gary: That’s why I said each side should put together their own document. In some cases they will fit together and in others not. Then we can talk specifics as opposed to platitudes. And right now, we have 3 or 4 specifics here. I think that’s great. But I think there are a whole bunch more out there that need to be dealt with. They are all long term.
Francis BCS: I think it makes sense for both sides to come up with a first draft. I don’t think it makes sense for one side to go out and make up a list.
Gary: It’s got to be both sides. And you each need to have some skin in the game in the sense that you haven’t had a chance to see all your ideas get expressed yet, then you can see where they might go. Maybe only 5% of them will go somewhere. That’s more than we have now, and that’s a start. This history that I see – I’m a newcomer so I don’t have the history. What I’m seeing is a little distrust. Let’s get past that. It starts with each side proposing a set of concepts to the other. Does that sound like a reasonable approach? We have another meeting scheduled for next Tuesday… Each side take a whack at it [sic making your list of concepts].
Francis BCS: The Tuesday date was set without our commitment. No subterfuge. I just have a standing commitment… We can do schedule setting off line or after… We only have two hours.
[ lots of back and forth. Doug – Talking about short term scheduling [sic on behalf of Taglio and Goines Los Altos School District team] could be a Brown Act violation? No said Francis – you can talk about scheduling, just not the agenda for the short-term meeting….]
Geoff: Do you guys want to talk about the schedule for the bond? What I’ve been doing is pulling some of the ideas that seem to be the beginning of some kind of agreement. There are couple other items that did not get up here. At some point this evening we might want to test this list here [sic Geoff has been writing items down on the flip charts].
Doug LASD: In order to pass with the 55% threshold, we need to align with one of the general elections. Next year that means June or November.
Francis BCS: It seems you would rather go with the 55%.? [ Doug – Hell yeah!. ] Francis BCS: The difference is $150 Million vs. $300 Million [sic with a 2/3 majority bond]. So what’s the thinking? Or you don’t want to go there right now?
Doug LASD: If you do it on a general election day, you can pass it with a 55% vote, then there is a $30 per 100.000 limit, for about $150M raised. If you don’t want to take advantage of that part of Prop 39 – you’ve got to have a sense of humor about that – you can do it on any Tuesday. That could be $60 per 100,000 assessed value for $300M raised, but you need 2/3 to pass that. If we can get get a framework together, we can go do some polling and see what [sic tax rate] we can get. If the public says you are all putting the litigation behind you, joining hands, and singing choruses together, we want to support our public schools, if we think we can do that [sic framework.] great. I personally have no idea what the voters’ tolerance is at the upper ranges for a dollar amount.
Francis BCS: It’s kind of binary. If you go over $30 per 100K assessed value you need, two-thirds vote. We’ve already identified over $200 M and that’s without cost overruns.
Doug LASD: We are a public entity. We are used to doing with less.
Tamara LASD: You take your pony list and make it fit within the bounds of the given.
Doug LASD: Here’s how I think about this…I look at the smaller number and I say, let’s figure out what we can be done within that envelope. If we can get an upside polling surprise and the public says, “oh yeah,” we’ll test for that upside. The survey may say that’s worth 250 million dollars to me [sic the voter]. We can always pull additional parts of the list in [sic the pony list]. We have to prioritize all these things, site, construction, additional site, construction. If there is money leftover after that, we can pay for maintenance that hasn’t happened for years. There are portables on every campus. There is field work that needs to be done. If the voters surprise us in a poll and are willing to do a much larger bond, we’ll have that conversation then. But right now, I’m thinking the lower threshold [sic $150M], and pass it on general election day.
Francis BCS: Speaking for yourself, on which of those two dates [sic June or November 2014].
Doug LASD: There are pros and cons. Nine months from now is pretty aggressive. To get the community from where they are right now to where we want them to be. And we haven’t event tackled the hairier issues yet. I don’t like the idea of running in November because it is a crowded ballot. School bond measures wind up at the end of a very long ballot. Voters have fatigue after the US senator page. The consultants tell us this.
Peter BCS: It sounds like you don’t have a preference between those two dates.
Doug LASD: I’d like to get this all wrapped up.
??: If you work backwards from June, what are the other milestones?
Doug LASD: We have to pass a board resolution. Put it on the ballot. You have to start the drumbeat within the community. You guys have been around for the previous school bond and parcel taxes.
Francis BCS: Yes, I think you have used my name [sic as an endorsement] on some of them. The corporate you – Los Altos School District.
Peter BCS: And is there another site? Do we keep flipping between the site for Bullis students and site for the North of El Camino students?
Doug LASD: We are aware of the loading challenges and the need for a school in that community.
Francis BCS: I though that [sic need for an 11th site] was a firm conclusion of the Task Force? [Superintendent’s Task Force on Facilities and Enrollment Growth?
Doug LASD: Yes, it is. We have to identify a parcel first. We need to know how much the land costs. Then how much the land, before you can go to the voters. That’s why we had the back and forth about inside or outside the district. It’s almost impossible to pass a bond if you haven’t articulated to the voters where you are going to go spend it. That means what’s the site, what are the architectural drawings, get people exciting about it.
Francis BCS: Do you have any sites in mind? For us. I don’t feel qualified to talk for the people of North of El Camino.
Doug LASD: I think I am going to defer that. There is a working group working on that. BCS is on the working group. There are some options out there. None of them are clean. There is hair on all of them, to use your expression. There are possibilities. A lot of what we do here…we can people to say I’m not thrilled about this, but I support it.
Gary: In order to get support, and damp down the flames.. This has been a better meeting than I expected.. I think the essence of what the voters would need to see is that the animosity would be reduced, and certainty put into people’s lives. If BCS has a site they can call their own and feel comfortable in for some time to come. That’s not fully supported by every group in the community. But if we go after a bond and build that school, that can become inclusionary process, rather than a divisionary process. This is going to have been well defined. Given this amount of money, here is where it is going to go. And it has to be agreed. Get estimates. Have that agreed up front. Maybe we will get there
Tamara LASD: We have to turn this conversation around. It’s not when do YOU want the bond, but when do WE want the bond, how are WE going to work together.
Doug LASD: When is the community ready to support it.
Gary: There are 30 to 40 thousand people that you people represent.
Francis BCS: We volunteered to help on the last parcel tax and we tried to volunteer for the last bond. You have to convince our BCS parents as taxpayers, as you have to convince every taxpayer in this community, that this is going to be money well-spent. That’s the ultimate issue.
Gary: Now you have a target, almost and you can put together a plan how to get there.
Doug LASD: Your comments about being representative of a broader community are well placed. I’m particularly sensitive to that issue. The same people who come to our board meetings and speak on both sides of the issues, I can names of respective parents, we all know who they are. They are well informed on the issues. These are the exact people we will all rely on to create the machinery to pass a bond. [
That’s a double edge sword. We will ask them to lead the bond activity. But these are well versed about the issues. And what the concerns are. I guess what we are going to dive into next time is how can we address some of those concerns. So the people we are going to turn to [sic to drive a bond campaign] can support this personally. It’s tempting to just say, these folks don’t express views that align with me. They are just going to be part of the group that votes No, and I don’t have to worry about it. But we don’t have 55% now. Those people, who are pretty vocal, are the ones who will sway the broader community. Their neighbor who doesn’t have kids in school will turn to them and ask what do you think? Should I vote for this thing or not? So how do we address their concerns [sic the concerns(sic what concerns?) of all the activist, opinionated parents].
[Lalahpolitico: So the “aggressive” minority activists will get to drown out the silent majority and the low/no information voters? The squeeky wheel gets grease? Just great.]
Francis : Does LATA take positions on these measures? [Los Altos Teacher Association]
Doug LASD: They occasionally endorse board candidates. I don’t know about measures. We’d have to ask them.
Francis BCS: I don’t recall them taking positions on measure either. But that is another group we should be thinking about [sic to help promote passing a bond].
Peter BCS: What issues?
Doug LASD: It’s under the umbrella – address the community’s concerns.
Peter BCS: Can you be specific?
Doug LASD: I’d rather we wait till the next meeting. Because if we start we are going to be here for a while. We’ve had a good first session, we’ll come back for a second one and dive in again. Early in this session, we had a lot of tension, we’ve worked through that. If we reopen the tension, it’s going to hard to come back in the room.
What days work for the next conversation? I think you both need to be here. [back and forth]. Francis can do the 16th at 7pm and 18th penciled 7pm
Francis BCS: I am concerned about the community list you have. Anything like this is going to start with venting. And then maybe to something productive. It seems like you are better off throwing those things out. And it seems you should know sooner than later that there are lines we are just not going to pass them And there there are some things I’ve heard from some folks in the community, that we as a board will just not accept. They intrude on our program. And some of them are specious.
Gary: That just the kind of thing you need to bring here. There is a bag of stuff.
Francis BCS: We want to know what’s in that bag.
Doug LASD: We’re not going there right now. We’ll have that conversation next week.
Gary: What is the paradigm in most negotiations? That’s where both parties walk away equally angry. That’s the definition of negotiation. If you don’t come to that understanding, then we’ve changed nothing. You have to be willing to move a bit on some of your needed points.
Francis BCS: [ sic re the bag of stuff ] If you wait to bring them up next time, we’ll just lose a lot of time.
Gary: We’ll those folks [sic Los Altos School District] are not prepared to talk about them now. Both sides, come next time with some proposal points on paper.
Peter BCS: Did we capture the point Francis raised about needing to discuss a stable transition period from the bond till the construction would be complete?
Doug LASD: Yes that is reasonable to add here as part of the long-term agreement. Next week.
Tamara LASD: That is the medium term. That is part of a long-term agreement.
ENDING PUBLIC COMMENT PERIOS
Todd V.: I’m just arrived from Massachusetts. My son just started at Santa Rita. When I see you guys drop the acrimony. I think you are closer together than you think you are. This is where it gets simplistic. Just drop the bad blood.
From the point of view of someone who is new here, and plans to live here 30 years, please drop all the acrimony.
Phil Aaronson: [BCS parent. Husband of recent school board candidate Amanda Burke-Aaronson. ] I’m originally from Massachusetts too. 20 years ago. I’m glad we touched on the acrimony. I want to talk about it too. Given the recent broadsides, one from Ms. Logan and one from Ken?[inaudible] over Raynor [sic the surplus school in Sunnyvale where the district wanted to located BCS]. PAUSE. I have to wonder how this rhetoric is going to impact a long-term deal on passing a bond. Both sides bring a fair amount of baggage with them. Somehow we have to drop that. On the BCS side it’s [sic dropping] litigation and [ sic providing ]certainty [sic about the 10-15 year “safety” of your neighborhood school]. We got through that pretty quickly.
From my point of view LASD has waged a campaign of bad options for about 10 years, from locating BCS at the camp site in the first place, to making 11th hour changes to facilities, I mean it goes on and on, then Raynor, then getting creative with FUA restrictions. With all these things, comes rhetoric. The subtext, the message that the has been conveyed to people in the district is that BCS is maybe not a public school, It’s not open, transparent, inclusive enough to deserve reasonably equivalent facilities. I think the challenge you have in front you, is that the past 10 years of history has built up that message. Now your supporters [sic who believe the subtext-message] [Gary Waldeck, moderator, interrupts with 10 seconds notice]… I’d like to see how we get passed that. I’d like to see what the plan is to bring those supporters around to support a bond. [sic a bond that would include building a site for BCS]
Gary: Thanks for coming.
