By Kathleen Acuff
Bullis Charter School’s enrollment for next year has jumped from approximately 170 to 230 students since its application for facilities for next year. The Santa Clara County Office of Education has confirmed that 184 are residents of the Los Altos School District, which provides the facilities.
District Superintendent Marge Gratiot said last week that in a Feb. 7 letter charter school staff informed her that 12 of the 29 first- through sixth-graders who registered after the charter submitted its facilities request Oct. 1 attend district schools - one is at Santa Rita, nine are at Covington, and two are at Loyola. The remaining 17 attend private schools.
Gratiot said the kindergarten enrollment analysis the charter school provided March 16 shows in-district children in the Covington (23), Loyola (seven), Santa Rita (four), Almond (two), Oak (one) and Springer (one) enrollment areas.
“Many of those parents also registered (their children) for our kindergarten classes, and we will probably not know until summer, or maybe the first day of school, where they will actually attend,” Gratiot said.
Principal Wanny Hersey said the charter school and the district are in the same boat as far as kindergarten registrations go. Neither will know until the first day of class next year how many kindergartners it will have, she said.
The charter school’s facilities application for 2005-2006 projected a total of 143 in-district students. Despite many more in-district registrations at the charter than expected in the fall, the district’s legal obligation is to provide classrooms and other space for the number of in-district students in the school’s Oct. 1 application.
Bullis spokesman Marlin Miller said, “We had an early indication of the numbers. We asked for two more portables for next year, plus we’ll be filling out the existing classrooms.”
Miller said staff haven’t computed new grade counts yet but do know they’ll need to hire one first- and one sixth-grade teacher and perhaps another kindergarten aide. He said the school now has a waiting list of more than 100 students. Its ultimate enrollment goal is 310 students.
“We’ll be fine for next year, but I don’t know about 310 students at Egan. We’re still very interested in the Bullis site,” Miller said, referring to Bullis-Purissima Elementary School, the district’s Los Altos Hills campus, closed two years ago.
The charter school can request more space when it applies for facilities for 2006-2007. Meanwhile, what can it do to fit into the Egan camp?
“We do not have any plan for extra space for the charter school; we are offering the amount of space required by law, and that they requested, and they could have limited their enrollment to that number had they wished to. Actually, based on our class-size maximums, and with 40 of the students in their kindergarten classes, they can fit up to 190 students in the seven classrooms being offered,” Gratiot said.
She added that the charter school’s facilities use agreement “prohibits any major changes - which would include additional portables - without permission from the (district’s) board of trustees. Additional portables, depending on the number, might also require another CEQA study.”
Charter wins grant
The charter school has been awarded a $360,000 Charter School Implementation Grant by the California State Board of Education. The grant must be used for specific new programs and cannot be used for such expenses as teachers’ salaries.
The charter school plans to use the grant chiefly to implement Schools Attuned, a professional development and service program to help teachers improve the way they work with students with different learning styles.
