By Kathleen Acuff

Superintendent Rich Fischer said the copper façade that faces into the Mountain View High School quad required professional treatment after being spray-painted with this graffiti Dec. 2.

The fathers of three of the four Mountain View High School students who were expelled earlier this year for vandalizing their campus say their sons were punished too severely for what they called a senior prank. The students had no previous offenses, and one was an Eagle Scout and a campus leader, the fathers told the Town Crier last week. All four students were reinstated in school with all privileges in mid-March.

The Mountain View-Los Altos Union High School District, which expelled the four seniors for painting graffiti on a copper façade and putting glue into most of the locks at their recently renovated school, takes a different view of the matter. The Santa Clara County Board of Education, which overturned the expulsion of the student who appealed his case - after which the district reversed its decision on the three related expulsions - took issue with the district’s methods but seemed to be in sympathy with its views.

The county board’s overturning his expulsion should not be taken as exoneration of the teen whose appeal it heard in two and a half hours of closed session March 16, the president of the county board said Friday.

Leon Beauchman, a six-year veteran of the board, said the county made its decision, stated in language taken from California Education Code, “on procedural grounds only.”

“Nothing we did would indicate that the actual consequences were not appropriate, only that, procedurally, the way the district had come to those conclusions did not meet the education code,” he said last Friday.

“It would be unfortunate for anyone in the community to recognize the vandalism as anything but a serious incident and one that should have appropriate consequences,” Beauchman added.

David Williams, the president of MVLA’s board of trustees, said, “As a board, as a district, we value the community’s investment in our facilities, and we will always act and continue to act to protect that investment on an ongoing basis. That’s one of the places we come from on that (decision). It cost $80 million to upgrade the two comprehensive high schools.”

The county board’s resolution states: “(There) was not a fair hearing before the district governing board (and) there was a prejudicial abuse of discretion in the student appellant’s hearing … in that the district failed to present evidence at the hearing that the student is a danger to himself or others and that other means of correcting the student are infeasible.”

Superintendent Rich Fischer said last week that the district had been of the opinion that “danger to self and others” refers to both people and property.

The county board ordered the district to erase the expulsions from the student’s school record and reimburse him for the cost of the written transcription he presented in the hearing. The district board subsequently decided to have the other three students’ expulsions cleared from their school records as well. All four students were told they could return to Mountain View High, Fischer said.

The teen was one of four students arrested, charged first with misdemeanor then with felony vandalism and expelled after taking part in a prank that went off the rails. The prank escalated into a felony when the cost of removing the glue from approximately 80 locks, replacing two handles and repainting a wall rose from an initial estimate of $200 to $2,000.

The father of the student who successfully appealed his expulsion said his son was suspended for a week, told to pay $460 in compensation and assigned to the probation program as a juvenile to perform 55 hours of community service and attend community programs.

The father said the worst punishment, however, was his son’s missing out on classes at Mountain View High between his Dec. 3 suspension, which was followed rapidly by expulsion, and his March 16 reinstatement. His son took his first semester finals and continued classes elsewhere until his reinstatement.

“I’m more concerned about my son’s college admission than anything else,” the father said.

The three fathers who called the Town Crier last week all said they felt the district was making an example of their sons.

“We have no interest in making an example out of these students,” said Brigitte Sarraf, the district’s associate superintendent for educational services.

“We have regulations, and we are very, very upfront about what the consequences of violating them are,” she said. “Students know what our vandalism policy is - we’re not hiding that. Students know that long before they make the decision to engage in inappropriate behavior.”

If the students had achieved their confessed goal of shutting down school for the day, the district would have been required by state law to add another instructional day to the Mountain View High calendar, Sarraf said.

“There would have been an uproar in the community, which was expecting vacation to start on a certain day,” she added.

The president of the district’s board said trustees plan to discuss at some future meeting the possibility of having such cases heard by a non-trustee panel. They will also take another look at the district’s vandalism policy.

“The kids should be able to move forward without very much prejudice,” Fischer said. “Typically, these kids would have lost all privileges, Instead, we took the item to the board, the board had to contemplate whether to take privileges away from them. … They will be able to walk with their class unless they have further problems.”

Fischer said one of the students was 18 at the time of the vandalism; three were 17. The superintendent said he intervened with the district attorney, who intervened with the judge, who allowed the 18-year-old to be treated as a minor.

“These pranks breed pranks. These boys acknowledged that they knew full well that vandalism of this nature would be severely punished. Nobody is happy about this case,” Fischer said.