By Kathleen Acuff

Housing the extended-day kindergarten next year is bringing Bullis-Purissma reinstatement as a public school.

Los Altos School District trustees voted 4-0 last week to apply to the state Department of Education for reinstatement.

When the district closed Bullis in June 2003, the school had 341 students. Next fall, five classrooms of 20 kindergartners each will be on campus, supervised by a teacher-in-charge, Laura Bence, who taught kindergarten at Covington School this year. Leslie Crane will be Bullis’ administrator as well as Covington’s principal.

A waiting list of 30 for the extended-day kindergarten boosts total district enrollment for fall to 4,106.

“We seem to be having a minor enrollment boom of our own residents in town. These are not interdistrict kids,” Superintendent Marge Gratiot said.

Only five of the eight permanent classrooms at Bullis are available for the kindergarten program. The district has not yet agreed to new leases with the current tenants of the three remaining permanent classrooms, but may need one of the rented rooms for after-school child care, Gratiot said.

A countywide baby boomlet in 1998 is filling second-grade classes for next fall. The district has added a fifth second-grade class at Covington, first disbanding a first-grade class and assigning a half dozen children to another school. Almond will have six second-grade classes.