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When new housing developments rise in and near the Los Altos School District, district officials examine square footage, housing types and marketing to estimate the number of new students that might enter the district. Demographers use past statistics for comparable housing to develop a predicted student yield. A complex of 30 single-family homes at the Satake Gardens site in Mountain View could yield up to 27 students.
The district’s demographer estimates that for every 10 units rented in Carmel The Village, also in Mountain View, one new student would join the district. The new 330-unit development is forecast to add 33 students to the district. Another 133 students are expected to enroll from other housing developments within district boundaries, notably the 167 apartments and 37 townhomes scheduled for the former location of Los Altos Garden Supply along El Camino Real. The new developments fall into several different elementary schools’ boundaries within the district, so any attendance growth should be spread over several schools. Assistant Superintendent Randy Kenyon said new residents at The Village at San Antonio Center would attend Almond School based on current attendance maps, while those moving into the area formerly occupied by the bowling alley in Palo Alto would attend Santa Rita, as do most students who live west of San Antonio Road in Mountain View. Apartments constructed on the former location of Los Altos Garden Supply will feed into Almond, Los Altos Gardens students would attend Santa Rita and new First Street residents would send their children to Covington. The demographer is updating the district’s growth projection. The previous analysis estimated the district might grow from 4,500 to 4,700 students by 2014. Kenyon said that conflicting factors complicate the calculation: Birth rates in the area have decreased, but families continue to move into the district to benefit from the excellent public schools and housing projects are sprouting up. “We’ve seen a steady trend of 1 to 2 percent growth in recent years,” he said. “Will that continue unchecked? It’s hard to know.” Kenyon said district officials are scheduled to meet with the Mountain View City Council Feb. 12 to provide data on the possible student yield from recent housing projects. Because much of the growth is in Mountain View, subject to that council’s approval, Los Altos city officials have little or no say in the projects. However, Zach Dahl, senior planner for Los Altos, said the city has “a pretty good rapport with the planning staff over at Mountain View,” and that Los Altos staff reviews and comments on proposed developments in Mountain View. “The challenge is that Mountain View has much different priorities than Los Altos – Mountain View doesn’t have the problem going much denser than we do in Los Altos,” he said. “School traffic is one of our primary concerns, because we know that it will be coming into Los Altos.”
8 Comments
1Comment
at Friday, 25 January 2013 09:12
LASD seems to have been asleep at the wheel much of the last decade. The Superintendent's Enrollment Taskforce meeting notes reveal that there are already over 500 LASD students living north of El Camino. It looks like they have not provided a neighborhood school for that area even tho that is the district policy. The district passed over an opportunity to build a district school on Egan Camp site back in 2007 (instead, they built a school on opposite side of the district, away from the dense student population). It looks like they missed another opportunity to provide a neighborhood school north of El Camino by not getting in front of the Mountain View City and San Antonio Visioning. Lack of foresight or willful negligence?
2Comment
at Monday, 28 January 2013 09:59
@asleep: You sound just like LASD's most effective spokesperson: Ron Haley. Nice mixture of fact and innuendo, although the effect is marred not knowing that Egan is south of El Camino. Better luck next time.
3"Passing a Bond"
at Monday, 28 January 2013 10:00
problem is how do we get a bond passed to build the new school. With many opposed and a very divided community because of the charter where do we get the money?
4Comment
at Monday, 28 January 2013 10:00
LASD is taking a very reactive approach to enrollment growth. I agree with the previous poster that they should have proactively planned for this. Maybe it is also time to redraw the school boundaries so that the influx of students from new developments in mountain view attend mountain view schools. I wish Jeff Baier, Randy Kenyon and Doug Smith consider this. It is hard to tolerate all the bickering over Bullis whereas this is a much bigger problem.
5"Let"
at Monday, 28 January 2013 10:01
I think it time to stop doing things that are not in the best interest of our children. LASD built office buildings and opened a school in a neighborhood that didn't need one. Then it built another school claiming that it needed it to relieve crowding in um.... Los Altos Hills? About all that was accomplished by that was providing a closer school from some PAUSD families. So now we are crowded. North of El Camino has over 600 students that do not have a neighborhood school. Santa Rita and Almond are two very crowded, opening Gardner had zero effect. Blach , Covington and Egan have lots of surplus space. Did you know that they have classrooms that are completely unoccupied? Time to equal things out, improve facilities at every school. Move six graders to the Junior Highs, build a school for NEC at Egan. Redraw the boundaries put BCS at Covington, replace portables everywhere. Relieve crowding, and go back to focusing on educating children.
6"Asleep at the Wheel"
at Monday, 28 January 2013 10:01
Actually, the city of Mountain View is asleep at the wheel. MV has added several dense new NEC housing developments over the years, yet failed to provide any school or park for the neighborhood north of El Camino. My reading of the Task Force data is that in 2011, there were already 602 LASD students living north of El Camino (582 from MV and 20 from PA). In addition, there are probably well over 300 Mountain View students living south of El Camino enrolled at Springer and Blach. This does not include the additional MV students expected to enrolll from the new construction projects in MV. Yet MV has only ever set aside one parcel in MV for LASD use (Springer) --1/9 of the LASD campuses for almost 20% of the LASD students. Egan is not in the NEC neighborhood --in fact it is in a different city! MV needs to take responsibility for its development by providing infrastructure for NEC residents. MV could use a portion of its construction profits to allocate land for a new LASD school NEC.
7Comment
at Wednesday, 30 January 2013 09:04
The taxes from the portion of the Mountain View that is within LASD boundary go to LASD. (the $790 parcel tax, the last bond measure $$, parts of property tax that goes to school district, ...) LASD should have been proactive in working with MV Council to include school discussion while all these development talks were going on the last several years. This week, they are appearing at the MV city council meeting. Too little too late, I'm afraid...
8"Redwood City just as bad."
at Tuesday, 19 February 2013 08:52
SAME IRRESPONSIBILITY IS HAPPENING AT THE REDWOOD CITY MAYOR'S OFFICE AND CITY COUNCIL WHEN IT COMES TO SITTING BACK AND RUBBER-STAMPING RNHA MANDATED INCREASES IN HOUSING. AND, THEY ARE NOT INCLUDING THE LOCAL CITIZENS' NEEDS IN THEIR PLANS. THERE IS NO END IN SIGHT UNLESS LOCAL CITIZENS START CALLING AND WRITING THEIR LOCAL GOVERNMENTS AND MAKING IT KNOWN THAT WE WON'T TAKE THIS ANYMORE--TAXES ESCALATING, TRAFFIC A NIGHTMARE, SCHOOLS CROWDED, PARKS NON-EXISTENT ETC. ETC.
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