News

Megan V. Winslow/Town Crier
A 10th school site could provide a new campus for Bullis Charter School, which currently shares land with Egan Junior High on West Portola Avenue in Los Altos, left, and Blach Intermediate School.

As the Los Altos School District continues to explore commercial Mountain View properties for housing a new school site, a member of the committee tasked with overseeing the purchase is questioning whether it makes more sense to target residential properties in Los Altos or Los Altos Hills instead.

In two open letters presented to the district board of trustees early this month, Measure N Bond Citizens Oversight Committee member John Swan offered three examples of residential properties priced or valued between $1 million and $3.5 million per acre, a comparatively paltry sum compared to the estimated $15 million-per-acre cost for commercial Mountain View land.

Town Crier file photo
A Montclaire Elementary School student gets off the bus on the first day of school last August. Parents in south Los Altos have asked the school district to provide more buses.

 

This is the second in a two-part series on traffic safety in south Los Altos. The first, "Standing up for safe school routes," was published in the Town Crier's June 7 edition.

Students’ discovery of a swastika drawn on the blacktop at Egan Junior High April 21 has sparked schoolwide conversations about religious intolerance and the school’s values.

The symbol, which appeared to have been drawn with pencil lead, was discovered by students Friday afternoon, quickly reported to staff and removed. Egan Principal Keith Rocha said the school is still investigating, but that a student is believed to be responsible.

A new acronym driving the latest round of school-site searching in Los Altos, the TDR, or transfer of development rights, seeks to use a school’s humble scale as an asset with a concrete dollar value.

If the district buys expensive land near where students need a school and “underdevelops” it by building a school rather than high-rises, a TDR might allow the district to recoup a non-trivial chunk of the land’s purchase price.

Courtesy of LASD
A schematic from the Feb. 13 Los Altos School District board meeting points to the damage in the Egan Junior High School roof.

The roof of the two-story classroom building at Egan Junior High School has been leaking during the rainy season, prompting Los Altos School District officials to take action to remedy the situation.

After a lengthy discussion about grants and public funds district officials could seek to fund the project, trustees last month approved opening the repair work to bids for completion over the summer.

In light of an ongoing federal investigation of the Mountain View Los Altos Union High School District for Title IX violations, district officials are emphasizing communication with parents regarding off-campus incidents.

Last June, a former district student initiated a Title IX investigation with the U.S. Department of Education Office of Civil Rights, claiming that the district failed to respond adequately after she alleged that a fellow student raped her at a an after-hours party.