Mountain View Los Altos Union High School District Board of Trustees President Fiona Walters, Mountain View City Councilwoman Margaret Abe-Koga, former Mountain View Chamber of Commerce CEO Carol Olson, Los Altos City Councilwoman Mary Prochnow and Los Altos business owner Larry Chu
• Accommodate growing student enrollment.
The Mountain View Los Altos Union School District expects an increase of 500 students over the next five years, and a new classroom is needed for every 25 additional students, according to Superintendent Jeff Harding, who spoke at a Kiwanis Club of Los Altos meeting April 24.
Harding attributed the bump in enrollment to the prestige of attending MVLA’s high schools and to 46 new high-density housing projects, each featuring up to hundreds of units, currently under construction in the district.
Although it was spring break, two Loyola School teachers and seven third-graders attended the Los Altos Parks and Recreation Commission meeting April 11 to lobby for an inclusive playground.
The students – accompanied at the meeting by third-grade teacher Tracy Grinberg and STEM instructional support teacher Grace Choi – first raised the idea of an inclusive playground March 14 when Los Altos Mayor Jean Mordo visited their class. Mordo recommended that they speak to the Parks and Recreation Commission. So they did, even though the commission meeting was scheduled during their vacation.
At the Peninsula Teacher Town Hall last week, local teachers told horror stories of enduring two-hour commutes, living in their childhood bedrooms and coming to the realization that they would never be able to own a home in Silicon Valley.
Co-sponsored by Bay Area Forward and Support Teacher Housing, the town hall, held at Almond School March 27, focused on the “missing middle”: people who make too much money to qualify for affordable housing but not enough to buy a house in the area. Teachers are a large part of the missing middle, and they showed up in droves to vent their frustration. Dozens of teachers from the Mountain View Los Altos Union High District and the Los Altos School District packed the Almond library to tell their stories to Santa Clara County Supervisor Joe Simitian.
Inundated with complaints from the schools’ neighbors, the Los Altos School District has switched off the bright solar panel lights in the parking lot of Egan Junior High School, but not those at Santa Rita School.
At the district trustees’ meeting March 12, Randy Kenyon, assistant superintendent for business services, said district officials were unable to power down the solar panel lights at Santa Rita because they are connected to all of the school’s external lights.
Loyola School students stepped into the spotlight at the Los Altos School District Board of Trustees meeting Feb. 13 to promote the school’s Reader’s Workshop.
Accompanied by Loyola Principal Kimberly Attell and teachers Charity Mastropietro, Leslie Rainforth, Tracy Grinberg, Esther Cho and Gina McDonell, the students highlighted their accomplishments in the Reader’s Workshop, which is based on the new English curriculum guidelines the district adopted last fall.
