Elections for three school boards can significantly impact local education

By Town Crier Staff Report,

The pressing issue for every school district in the state is the struggle to pay for necessities.

The Los Altos School District needs to find a way to afford to clean classrooms every day and maintain its refurbished facilities. The district has a history of hiring and retaining superior teachers and continually improving its successful instructional program. With enrollment growing and the budget shrinking, it needs to find a way to continue doing so.

Trustees recently voted to fund the library aide program and programs like music and art, essential to developing well-rounded individuals, need more funding, too.

On top of all that, the district will soon open a seventh elementary school, at the Bullis-Purissima site to ease the burden on Almond, Loyola and Santa Rita schools. The rundown campus needs millions of dollars’ worth of work before it’s on a par with the other schools.

Many Los Altos students attend Montclaire Elementary School in the Cupertino Union School District, a 16,500-student district that ranks high academically but near the bottom in funding in Santa Clara County. The district faces difficulties retaining teachers and maintaining reasonable class sizes.

In addition to making progress on construction and increasing funding, the Foothill-De Anza Community College District needs to resolve the conflict in its teachers’ union between those with lifelong benefits and those with lesser benefits.

The three school board elections will reshape current boards, producing a profound impact on district policy and local education for years to come.

Two of the seven candidates competing for three seats on the Los Altos School District Board of Trustees live in Los Altos Hills, David Pefley and David Struthers are making their first bids for election. The Los Altos residents running for the board are Mark Goines, Francis La Poll, David Luskin, Kathryn “Kitty” Uhlir and Bruce Wiener.