By Sara Ballenger
Bullis-Purissima School closed its doors this month as the last K-6 public school in Los Altos Hills, but the fate of the school site has still not been decided.
The Los Altos School District Board of Trustees accepted the district’s 7-11 Committee’s majority report recommendations for what to do with the site, as presented at its June 16 meeting. No decision regarding the site was made, or action taken.
The board verbally acknowledged a minority report submitted by 7-11 Committee members and Los Altos Hills residents Jim Steiner, Scott Vanderlip and Los Altos Hills Councilman Breene Kerr, but the minority report was not added to the committee’s formal recommendations to the board.
By law, when a school district has a piece of property or school that is not in use, it must appoint a site disposal committee to decide what to do with the property. The committee is responsible for making a recommendation to the school board.
Because of Education Code requirements, the district should first offer the Bullis facilities to child-care or child-development agencies and simultaneously to the Santa Clara County Office of Education for special education uses.
The committee recommended: The site should not be sold, so it can remain available for possible use by the district; the open space areas of the site should be leased for uses acceptable under the Education Code and the Los Altos Hills zoning restrictions to the highest qualified bidder; and the district should consider any proposals to further develop the open space for recreational purposes, such as further development of the fields for parks or athletic fields.
Board member Victor Reid III suggested renovating Bullis while it is unoccupied.
“This is the perfect time to move quickly and do the modernization of this campus,” Reid said. “We can get it down to the original school site between now and next summer. We are going to have to have a facility that is usable to any tenant, whoever they may be, and this window may be an opportune time to do that.”
The board also discussed working with the Los Altos Hills Town Council on the possibility of upgrading the upper four acres of the school, including two acres of existing soccer fields for community use. No formal decisions or agreements regarding that issue have been made.
Hannelore Engelman, director of the Montessori School of Los Altos, now operating in Palo Alto, also addressed the board and publicly stated the school’s interest in the Bullis site.
“A great majority of our students come from Los Altos and the Los Altos Hills area,” Engelman told the board. “Our parent community is anxious to return to Los Altos, and I wanted to declare our interest in the Bullis site and speak on behalf of our parent community.”
The Montessori school was housed at Covington School until early 2001, when it had to move out so the campus could be renovated and reopened as an elementary school last year.
The school district lost about $400,000 in annual rental income from Covington tenants, according to Randy Kenyon, assistant superintendent of business services, which also included Stepping Stones Preschool and Infant Care, Early Horizons and New Horizons preschool and day-care centers and The Morgan Center, which served children and adults with autism.
Bullis Charter School has also publicly stated interest in the site.
The charter school effort was started by a group of Bullis parents shortly after the district’s decision Feb. 10 to close the school.
The charter school offered to pay the district $150,000 in rent for the 2003-04 school year for the Bullis site. The district denied the charter school petition May 5. The charter school submitted an appeal of the district’s decision to the Santa Clara County Office of Education June 13. The county has 30 days to review the charter application and 30 days to have a public hearing on the charter. If the charter is denied at the county level, petitioners have 180 days to appeal to the state board of education. If approved, the charter hopes to open its doors in the fall of 2004.
Board president Duane Roberts urged the board to take its time on making any decisions regarding the use of the site.
“We need to move slowly on any major decision associated with the site,” Roberts said about Bullis. “A decision like this made in the summer has come back to haunt the board 100 percent of the time. We can use the 7-11 Committee’s recommendations as a framework to move forward carefully and deliberately. We have to determine the use of the site before we can determine how to go about doing any renovations.”
