By Kathleen Acuff and Lauren McSherry
The Los Altos Hills public education committee last Thursday won the city council’s unanimous promise of $4,000 for a mailer about a public hearing on a possible legal partnership between the town and Bullis Charter School. The hearing most likely will be held after Oct. 20.
Asked by Councilman Jean Mordo what the subject of the mailer would be, committee chairman Duncan MacMillan replied, “We don’t have specifics. We’re just getting ready for it.”
Craig Jones, the council’s liaison with the committee, said the hearing would be “about the potential partnership between the town and the charter school.” No specific proposal has been set for the council’s agenda yet, he added.
In a telephone interview Friday, Jones, a former chairman of the school’s board of directors, said the committee wants to be ready for a public hearing when the charter school identifies a piece of property for a permanent site in Los Altos Hills. The town already passed a resolution for partnership with the charter school, and it filed a companion lawsuit when the charter school sued the Los Altos School District last September. However, “an actual partnership would be a legal agreement regarding the property,” Jones said.
He added that before the town and the school enter into a legal agreement, the school must find suitable property, and the town must consider the property and its cost. Then the town must hold a public hearing to discuss the location and cost of the school and the appropriate role of the town in the partnership, he said.
Jones said the committee planned the public hearing for late October because the lawsuit between the charter school and the district had been scheduled for a hearing in Santa Clara County Superior Court Oct. 17. On Sept. 9, attorneys for both parties asked the court for a ruling. The court issued a summary judgment dismissing the school’s claims. The school’s directors plan to appeal the decision.
Jones said Friday that during the summer the school asked the town to consider a partnership with the Bullis Charter School Foundation “to leverage their $5 million and get a school in town.”
He added, “We’re partnering to find a home for them in Los Altos Hills that would take advantage of their donations, and we still have to determine what that partnership will look like. We don’t have a site in mind, and we have not determined what the town’s roles will be, or its level of financial participation.”
Jones said he would like an arrangement in which all the town’s residents can use the school’s playing fields when school is not in session.
“There’s a huge lack of playing fields but a huge demand for them,” he said.
In last Thursday’s meeting, although Mordo said it was “bizarre” to ask for money when “we don’t know what the proposal will be,” the council voted unanimously that when and if a public hearing is scheduled, the committee would receive the same amount that was spent on the recent mailer about the proposed energy efficiency ordinance.
MacMillan said that having direction from council to work on the mailer would help reduce its cost because the committee could work ahead on its design and content.
