By Kathleen Acuff

The Los Altos Elementary School District Board of Trustees has begun mulling over the idea of reopening Bullis School in fall 2004.

“We have to look at the thing objectively,” trustee Jay Thomas said. “It’s a financial issue … It is also a site issue. If anyone says this smells like six months ago, it does.”

At their regular meeting Oct. 20, school district trustees and administrative staff, though taken by surprise, seemed receptive to Thomas’ proposal that they add reopening Bullis as a small school to the other possibilities under consideration for the surplus site.

Thomas said he had not intended his presentation as a surprise but had finished preparing it just in time for the meeting. Apart from briefly consulting Victor M. Reid III, he had not had time to discuss it with board members, he explained.

The proposed school would have about 160 K-6 students, drawn from the area north of Burke Road and west of Foothill Expressway. If classroom enrollment were lower than desired, Bullis would accept intradistrict transfers. The school would be housed in eight classrooms and possibly four portables now on the property. Thomas pointed out that the district would have to renovate the classrooms over the summer.

A reopened Bullis would be a satellite of Covington School. One idea is for the district to put a teacher in charge of Bullis and to give the principal of Covington responsibility for overseeing both schools. Doing so would save the expense of an additional principal’s salary.

No matter which option is finally chosen, state funds will pass through the district to the charter school, the district will have fewer teachers’ salaries to pay, and the district will lose its class-size reduction incentive, Thomas pointed out.

However, reopening Bullis would “support the concerns” of those Los Altos Hills parents who want to retain an elementary school in their community, ensure that all children in local public schools receive the same K-6 education, and preserve the site for district growth, Thomas said. It might also prevent at least one nuisance lawsuit, he added.

Reopening Bullis also would cost the district the revenue it would gain from leasing the property. Thomas suggested that the district could “lease a few portables at camps” to offset the loss, but he added, “If enrollment grows, we’d lose the lease money anyway.”

According to information presented to the public at the Oct. 20 meeting, the four possibilities for Bullis now being studied have very different financial repercussions. If the charter school is located on the Bullis property, the district will lose approximately $772,600 in state funding from various sources. Because the district would save money on staff salaries and other expenses for which it would no longer be responsible, its net loss would be approximately $361,000.

If the charter school shares another elementary school’s site, income from renting the Bullis property would offset enough of the financial impact to leave the district with a relatively small loss of $65,000, according to the board.

If the charter school camps out at another school site, the district will have the additional expense of rent for the portables, and its total loss would be about $156,000, the board reported.

Reopening Bullis as a small school would not interfere with state funding, but it would eliminate income from renting the site and add teachers’ salaries and other expenses. Thomas estimated the net loss to the district at approximately $268,500.

Another financial repercussion is that the district would have to cut the program budget. “But we’d have to do that anyway,” Thomas said, “and we’d need to cut it less than we would if the charter is at Bullis.”

Two conflicting disadvantages to reopening Bullis could spring from the contention still simmering in Los Altos Hills. The Bullis Charter School Board of Directors might sue the district, Thomas said - “But for what? The site?” Conversely, the community might conclude that the district board “caved” to the charter group, he said.

Members of the board and many of the parents at the meeting in the Covington School Multipurpose Room called Thomas’ suggestion “creative” and “outside the box.” Trustee Margot Harrigan noted, however, that “98 percent of the budget is staff” and added, “I do not want to cut any more program.”

David Casas commented, “It’s going to take some time to fully understand the financial implications of this proposal. We need to think out what the gaps are.”

Duane Roberts, president of the board, agreed, saying, “It’s important to move ahead and also important to deliberate carefully.”

The board agreed to compile the history of its actions in the Bullis matter and distribute it to the public. On Oct. 23 Roberts sent that information by letter to district parents.

Also in the Oct. 20 meeting, the board asked for time to study and discuss the greatly revised second draft of a charter school facilities policy, presented by district Superintendent Marge Gratiot. The first draft had been read at the board’s Oct. 6 meeting. Gratiot stated that the new draft “almost exactly mirrors” Proposition 39. The main difference, she said, is the addition of a March 15 deadline, by which the district is to give a charter school that has formally requested it “a preliminary offer of space and an estimate of the pro-rata share cost for the space.”

The charter school board is required to submit a written request for a facility to the school district board “by Jan. 1 of the academic year preceding the proposed start of school.” The request must be submitted on a form developed by the school district, and the charter school board must make its written request available to “interested parties” for review.

The board affirmed that the public will have an opportunity to read the final draft of the policy before the board votes on it.