By Lauren McSherry

When the Los Altos Hills City Council was asked “to give a signal” last week about supporting the redistricting of local schools, the council responded with a mixed message.

The request was made by Public Education Committee spokesman Duncan McMillan during a presentation of “a matrix of options” about reopening a public school at the council’s regular meeting on Thursday. He asked the council to be ready to hear from citizen action groups advocating changing school district boundaries through a ballot measure.

Redistricting could affect students attending schools in Mountain View, Los Altos and Palo Alto and could cut millions of dollars from existing school districts.

The Hills lost its last public school in 2003, setting off a divisive struggle between the Hills community and the Los Altos School District to reopen a public elementary school.

Councilman Craig Jones said the council should consider giving its support to redistricting to solve the city’s structural problem, that of being split between the Los Altos School District and Palo Alto Unified School District. Jones is the former chairman of the charter school.

He also said it was important that the council continue its efforts to bring Bullis Charter School into city bounds and to enforce zoning through its lawsuit with the Los Altos School District.

Not all councilmembers seemed eager to join the committee’s stance in favor of redistricting.

“This whole thing about redistricting, I’m not prepared to sign up for that now without getting more information,” Councilman Dean Warshawsky said.

Mayor Mike O’Malley said he didn’t think the Los Altos School District had “done much to win the hearts and minds of residents,” but he refrained from endorsing redistricting.

“Redistricting from my standpoint is another issue. … I would have concerns that redistricting could possibly be difficult,” he said.

Councilman Jean Mordo backed the idea. He cited the independent telephone survey conducted last year by Godbe Research that showed 65 percent of residents opposed redistricting.

“My guess is that since then things have evolved a lot,” he said.

Among the options proposed by the Public Education Committee were creating a school district to serve only Los Altos Hills and reorganizing PAUSD to include “a greater part of Los Altos Hills.” McMillan said the option of the two districts jointly running a school in the Hills that he presented to the Los Altos council May 3 should be taken off the table.