The first LASD workshop for collecting opinions about ‘BCS facilities ideas’ was hijacked by a well-coordinated campaign for bullet votes in an extreme, no-compromise ‘anti-charter’ way. You can see in their ‘voting guide’ that workshop participants were coached to
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demand a BCS enrollment rollback from the current 1111 to 900
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fully support ideas that would force BCS entirely or partially on the 10th site
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reject virtually all other ideas
That meant out of 55 BCS ideas, they would vote to FULLY SUPPORT only 8 of them and FULLY REJECT all the others. There was no middle ground.
Need Another Look?
Activist Anti-charter group’s LASD voting guide here .If the group takes it offline, let Lalah know. I have screenshots to show that 8 ideas were supported, while the rest of the 56 were rejected. Clear evidence of bullet votes. It’s not illegal, but it sure violates the purpose of the community engagement.
Image: Excerpt from How to Bullet Vote
and Hobble the BCS Program
a ‘Polling Guide
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/15czjvFTWzhXHap5gzOKygODYFuXCth449gsbF9qPzO8/mobilepresent?slide=id.g73ceaf30d9_0_0
Official LASD page of Community Ideas for Workshop revised.pdf at the LASD site dated Nov. 1, 2019.
Demographics
Here are some highlights from the Nov. 1 workshop.
Children at home?
Age?
Extra Questions at Start –
BCS Enrollment Cap?
Before voting on the 56 ‘BCS Ideas’, particpants were asked if a BCS enrollment cap should be part of the upcoming negotiations for a long-term solution.
900 cap
1100 cap
No cap
How Charette ‘BCS Ideas’ were streamlined
BCS Ideas were collected at two charettes last month. Ms. Chaplick, the lead MIG public engagement consultant, explained that they decided not to cull any ideas. All they did was try to reduce the redundancies. They did not rank ideas by popularity or mentions in any way. Instead they organized ideas into 6 groups for a total of 56 ideas. Lalahpolitico: That seems very fair. But it sure was a tedious voting process on Nov. 1.
For each of the 56 BCS ideas, Ms. Chaplick took from 2 to 3 minutes to allow participants to use their clicker to vote — A) fully support … to E) not support at all or F) abstain. Lalahpolitico: You can see from this .pdf – which includes most of the voting results – that bullet voting by both ‘sides’ prevailed.
Late attendees were allowed to register and vote. Total votes at the beginning were 203…but by an hour into the voting, had grown to 231. So on Nov. 4 go late if you have to.
Nearly Full Voting Results of Nov. 1, 2019 Workshop.
Lalah missed collecting a few votes. You can also use this same .pdf as a voting guide as you go PREPARE to Monday, Nov. 4 Workshop, 6:30pm sign in, 7pm start at Blach Multipurpose Room. There is a right hand column in the .pdf where you can pencil in your choice, A B C D E F. Lalah is not telling you how to vote.
The Nov. 1 vote on ‘MOVE EGAN’
If you voted on Nov.1, please do not show up on Monday Nov.4 to vote again!
NEXT STEPS
The MIG consultant will probably be getting the final results to the LASD board pretty quick. The data collection is automated because of the clickers. All they have to do is run the data through a cross-tabs program and pretty that up. MIG expects to crosstab the voting by age and by children enrolled at LASD/BCS/both, etc.
Will there be results that jump out from the upcoming MIG analysis of the all the votes? Lalah: besides the total polarization of the vote! Perhaps detestation of ‘sharing.’? Perhaps hypocrisy about segregating the NEC students?
“It’s bad to segregate NEC students in a LASD run neighborhood school, but it’s fine to segregate NEC students in a BCS school with a NEC geographic preference.” – Lalahpolitico asks is this hypocrisy?
LASD will likely share the MIG consultant’s final results quite promptly with BCS. BCS board members have been invited to observe at the charettes and workshops. Lalah saw BCS board members Joe Hurd and Andrea Eyrling at the Nov. 1 Egan workshop.
Resources:
Los Altos Politico Previous Post – Bullet voting expected at workshops
Voting Results of Nov. 1, 2019 Workshop, and prep for Nov. 4 workshop
Activist Anti-charter group’s LASD voting guide here – evidence of intentional bullet voting
Official LASD page of Community Ideas for Workshop revised.pdf – prep for Nov. 4 workshop
Lalah has corrected a page from LASD Workshop info pack. LASD’s reporting of the size of Covington is misleading. Including the administration, there are 15.4 acres of LASD owned land. Previous City Councils of Los Altos have been willing to consider school use of the 3.0 acre Rosita Park during the day. That would be 18. 4 acres total.