Depending on where you get your news, you might think Los Altos has completely gone down the proverbial (storm) drain. What is clear is that some members of our city council are at odds with each other, and our city manager is under siege.

Recently, the Palo Alto-based Daily Post newspaper has published several slanted articles about where our city council has been meeting, and the articles have questioned the competence of our city manager and city attorney. The Post also has published articles attacking Councilwoman Jeannie Bruins. Add a few cranky Nextdoor posts, and you soon have a murky mix of misinformation.

The Los Altos School District and the Community Engagement Process Project Team invite the community to participate in the Community Engagement Process to formulate a long-term facility plan to house Bullis Charter School and ensure a top-quality education for all children.

The Los Altos School District is trying to finalize plans for important facilities changes. District officials attribute the need mainly to Bullis Charter School’s 15-year period of having inferior facilities. It’s almost as if they blame Bullis Charter School for needing a better facilities share for its 25% of district students.

Los Altos is a beautiful, peaceful town. However, the air quality, peace and beauty are disturbed by gas-powered leaf blowers. You may not know that gas-powered blowers are illegal in Los Altos. In fact, Los Altos was the first community in the Bay Area to ban gas leaf blowers back in 1991 (Los Altos Municipal Code 6.16.070 – Prohibited acts Section B.15).

They create lots of polluting emissions. Running a gas-powered blower for 30 minutes creates more ozone-forming emissions than driving an F-150 pickup truck 3,800 miles, according to the online automotive information resource Edmunds.com. The small engines in gas-powered blowers are very inefficient due to incomplete fuel burning, thus they produce high amounts of carbon monoxide, ozone and other polluting gases compared with motor vehicles. They are unhealthy for you, your gardeners and the entire community.

There seems to be a perception that Bullis Charter School offers an elite academic education that is not available in the Los Altos School District. Data from the California Board of Education indicates that district students and Bullis Charter School students are achieving comparable academic scores.

This is great news for our students, a terrific accomplishment by their teachers and a tribute to the continuous care provided by their parents.

Our community is currently engaged in a historic discussion about the future of our schools. Back in 2014, the voters of the Los Altos School District approved a $150 million bond measure to build a 10th school site and upgrade existing school facilities. This past school year, many of us were shocked and angered when the district seriously considered a plan to relocate our longtime neighborhood school, Egan Junior High School, to a new site on the other side of El Camino Real to give use of the entire campus (less 2 acres for much-needed affordable teacher housing) to Bullis Charter School.

Many of us were relieved when the district board of trustees, after listening to the concerns of many district residents, tabled the proposal for further study. However, the issues of where and how to house Bullis Charter School, what happens to our neighborhood public schools and how the $150 million bond measure will ultimately be spent still loom large.