By Kathleen Acuff
The camp school at Egan Junior High is the Los Altos School District’s final facilities offer to Bullis Charter School for 2005-2006. Trustees voted unanimously to extend the offer at their March 21 meeting.
Charter school board member Peter Evans told trustees the offer is two classrooms short of the school’s needs. The district has offered seven, and the charter school has stated a need for nine.
One point on which the final offer differs from the first is in making about 28,700 square feet of space the school is already using officially part of the agreement, Superintendent Marge Gratiot said. Overall, the charter will have about 960 square feet of new space next year, she said.
“We’re not talking about more space - we requested nine teaching stations in October. Our kids will be sitting on top of each other,” Evans told the board.
“This offer is based on the 143 in-district students of the October application,” Gratiot said. “Our attorneys say our offer by law is based on Oct. 1 enrollment projections of one kindergarten classroom, three (primary) classrooms and … three (grade 4-6) classrooms.
“I would give seven instructional stations at any of our other schools. You may need to combine classes. We’re planning some combined classes next year.”
District trustee Duane Roberts said, “The key thing to remember is that the offer is based on a particular law, Proposition 39, an onerous law, actually. It is not based on desires. It would be a mistake to deviate from anything other than reasonable equivalency under Proposition 39. Maybe we can do something else outside of that.”
The rest of the board agreed with Roberts. President Jay Thomas said, “Peter, we want you to take that away as a positive.”
The district also removed the cap on class sizes and will permit the school to keep equipment and suppliesin the portables over the summer.
Despite the cordial tone of the conversation, the charter school’s suit against the district and the Los Altos Hills City Council’s companion suit against the district are ongoing.
The resolution approving the final facilities offer reiterates the district’s finding that the Egan camp is and the Bullis-Purissima Elementary School site is not “reasonably equivalent” to the district’s other schools as required by Proposition 39.
The resolution also states: “(Although) BCS has offered to waive the ‘reasonably equivalent’
standard if placed in the Bullis site, in the board’s judgment, the ability of BCS to waive this statutory requirement is questionable, as it does not ensure that the district is protected by a legal challenge brought by parents on behalf of the students to enforce this requirement. Furthermore, the board has no reasons to believe that BCS would honor any such written waiver.
“The facilities use agreement executed by BCS contains a waiver of any challenge to the Egan site based on Proposition 39 for the 2004-2005 school year; yet, in its pending lawsuit against the district, BCS, through its third set of attorneys, recently filed an amended complaint challenging the sufficiency of the district’s 2004-2005 facility offer under Proposition 39.
“… Given published statements by individuals affiliated with BCS that the charter school would oppose any effort to reopen Bullis Elementary, the board anticipates that BCS, if placed at the Bullis site, would resist being moved if the district ever needed the site to reopen Bullis Elementary.”
