By Eliza Ridgeway
A poll released in Los Altos Hills last week that showed a marked increase in approval for schools redistricting has been challenged by opponents, who call it an attempt by charter school and redistricting supporters to paint consensus upon a divided town.
Information, and spin thereof, is at the center of this autumn’s redistricting and city council campaigns. On Dec. 7, the Santa Clara County redistricting committee will hear arguments on whether to create a new K-8 district for Los Altos Hills. Local school districts will argue that Hills residents don’t need a separate district, given the planned reopening of Bullis-Purissima Elementary School in the Hills. Redistricting supporters are gathering backing for arguing that residents deserve a chance to vote on separating from school districts that have, in recent decades, closed every public school in the town.
Devised by the town’s reorganization committee and the San Francisco polling firm David Binder Research, the poll found that 53 percent of Hills registered voters support redistricting. That is almost double the 28 percent support found by a Godbe Research survey in 2004. The Binder poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 5.9 percent.
The poll is one piece of information collected by the town’s reorganization committee to present to the county committee, Mayor Dean Warshawsky said.
But some residents, such as David Pefley, a trustee for the Los Altos School District, say the phrasing of the poll’s questions represented only one side’s arguments.
“I’m less concerned about the election than I am that people understand that LASD has been committed for some time to reopening Bullis,” Pefley said. “The more times that (people read) articles and that people see bulldozers at the site, people will recognize that this was happening before the initiative.”
John Vidovich, who is running for LAH council, described the Binder poll as a “push poll,” a political campaign technique used since the 1960s in which leading questions on a poll seek to influence the views of respondents.
The poll was developed by a town committee, but privately, anonymously bankrolled by redistricting supporters. While David Binder Research would not give their price for conducting the Los Altos Hills poll, a representative said that a poll of comparable size would cost approximately $10,000. The polling firm and town committee declined to release a transcript of the poll’s contents. But in a press release Binder Research described a sample question.
Residents were asked whether “the promise by the Los Altos School District to reopen Bullis-Purissima Elementary solves the problem,” or whether “there is no guarantee at the next budget crunch that Bullis-Purissima Elementary would not be closed again.”
Binder Research concluded, in a press release, “Los Altos Hills voters have grown tired of unfulfilled promises to improve local education from the two neighboring school districts.”
Vidovich said that his council campaign, focused on the education issue, would more accurately represent the town.
“Los Altos Hills doesn’t need to be separate from Los Altos,” he said. “I think I’m really going to accomplish something good.”
Warshawsky, who is running for council re-election, disagreed.
“My opinion is, get all the information out there, let people look at it, and let people do what they may,” he said. “Only a vote can be truthful, give you 100 percent of this answer. This is just a poll, one data point. People can question the way the questions were presented, that’s fine. That’s what’s democracy’s about.”
Vidovich was asked last week about the propriety of a town-sponsored poll that, if it were a push poll, represented negative campaigning for the incumbent candidates.
“It’s really not right. Have they reported it?” Vidovich said, referring to the campaign finance reports that were to have been filed Tuesday.
