The Los Altos School District recently disclosed the school renovation budget. As a parent in the district, I was surprised to learn that the district has already spent almost 80 percent of the renovation fund but half of the existing eight schools have not yet been renovated.
If the school board were to move forward with renovating Loyola, Oak and Santa Rita next year, according to the budget, there will be about $2 million left to renovate Bullis in 2004-05. The school renovation project so far has spent $80 million on items that were budgeted for $70 million. This is a 15 percent cost overrun. If this cost overrun pattern were to continue, there would be absolutely no money left to renovate Bullis. If the school is not renovated in the next couple of years, it will have to be closed.
Bullis parents, like all the citizens in the district, paid for the school renovation bond and are entitled to have their school renovated. It was not too long ago that the Bullis parents worked very hard to help pass Measure H and worked just as hard on SOS (Save Our Staff).
It is very clear that the vast majority of parents and students in the district do not want their schools to be closed. The district currently operates six elementary schools and will have funding to operate only six elementary schools. Every student in the district can point out that if you start with six schools, you don’t have to close one school to keep six open. All the district has to do is not open the seventh school, Covington. As for the $15 million the district spent on Covington, this is money down the drain. It will be a big mistake to ask Bullis students, or any students in the district, to pay for that mistake again by having their school closed.
Simon Lau
Los Altos Hills
Thousands raised for SMA research
Our “Trick or Treatment for SMA” (spinal muscular atrophy) fund-raiser was a huge success. We were overwhelmed by the generous support of the community, from the Los Altos merchants who put fliers in their windows, to all of you who sent donations and helped us make everyone more aware of this disease. We were able to send $9,000 to Families of SMA, a non-profit, volunteer-driven organization that supports families dealing with SMA. Of the donated amount, 80 percent goes directly to research to find a treatment and eventually a cure for SMA; 17 percent goes to patient services; and only 3 percent goes to general expenses.
SMA is the leading genetic cause of death of children under the age of 2. One person in 40 is a carrier, and a recessive gene from each of the parents is necessary to cause SMA. One birth in 6,000 is afflicted.
For more information, log on to www.curesma.com. To send a tax-deductible donation, make checks payable to Families of SMA, and mail to P.O. Box 3831, Los Altos 94024.
Our granddaughter, Jessica, now 11 months old, has SMA and has been in Oakland Children’s Hospital since Nov. 3 with respiratory complications. She will probably spend Christmas there, too.
Thank you for helping raise awareness and funds for research toward the treatment and cure of this disease.
Marge and Jim Shively
Los Altos
Why the need for a restaurant?
Seems sort of silly to want the proposed Main St hotel to include a restaurant.
Downtown does not lack for a good variety of dining establishments, and the rationale for a hotel was to provide rooms for folks to visit and enjoy our lovely village. A restaurant in the hotel would take space better used for rooms, and provide unnecessary (and probably undesired) competition for existing restaurants.
Alan Mela
Los Altos
Landscaping suffers from neglect
Open letter to Los Altos City Council:
The landscaping along Foothill Expressway, San Antonio Road and Fremont Avenue is suffering from almost total neglect, notably pruning trees and shrubbery. The olive trees are being ignored and the sucker growth from the bottom of the tree trunks are almost as high as the tree itself. They look abandoned and unsightly giving a bad impression to motorists driving through the city. If this neglect continues, I believe the trees will die. At this point the median could be paved over. I hope that this will not happen.
I would like to make a suggestion that the City approach the County to utilize the “honor” prisoners serving misdemeanor sentences that are available on the weekends to serve out their sentences in doing light menial labor.They could very well alleviate some of the burden to the necessary landscape work in Los Altos streets.
It is a pleasure to drive through Sunnyvale and MountainView and see how nicely they they care for their medians and street shoulders. I was pleased when Foothill Expressway was first built and the landscaping was installed and kept up well for a number of years. it is only recently that this deterioration has been observed
I am sure that Real Estate salespersons will be happy to support me as they are escorting would be buyers through this city. I hope that my logic makes sense and that the capable administration can see a way ahead to take care of this problem.
I wish all of you a happy holiday and wouldn’t it be a great New Year to accomplish removing all the suckers and pruning the beautiful olive trees.
Mario Bonicelli
Los Altos
