Bullis Ideas: One Jr High At Egan, BCS at Blach

Editor's Note: On New Year's Day, Patch asked readers to contribute ideas, large and small, to helping to resolve the facilities issue regarding Bullis Charter School (BCS) and the Los Altos School District (LASD). It could be as simple as an approach, or a more fully thought-out plan.

 We don't expect a magic bullet to appear, but who knows? The point was to start out the new year on a positive and constructive note, with members of our community thinking about solutions and a way forward.

We are publishing one each day. This letter below turned into a thoughtful exchange between BCS parent Ron Fagen and LASD board president Doug Smith. We've printed their exchange in their entirety.

And we welcome more contributions from readers:

 

Dear LASD Board, LASD Administration, LASD Parents and Town Crier and Patch Readers:

I'm a parent of two BCS students this year, and will have a third starting in the fall. This is our seventh year of being a part of the LASD community. My family is very happy with the choice we made regarding the education of our children. I've attended several meetings over the last few months regarding how to move forward as a community on the issue of a long-term solution for the Bullis Charter School.
I'm very happy that I took the time to engage with the LASD board, BCS representatives and the rest of the LASD parent community (whether they are parents of LASD children attending the district schools or BCS). I've learned a lot about the concerns of my peers, the other LASD parents, whose children attend district schools.

The most common pleas that I've heard are:

1. Don't close another neighborhood elementary school

2. Don't bring a commuter school into our neighborhood

3. Don't break up a community that's together for seven years

Through the discussion of these concerns, face to face with the other parents, I can very clearly see why moving BCS to a district elementary campus and reallocating the students to other elementary schools would be very disruptive on these three dimensions.

After reflecting on this for a while, I believe I have a solution that could create a long-term solution for a BCS facility without being disruptive on these three important dimensions. Specifically:

1. Move BCS from the Egan camp to the Blach campus

2. Consolidate LASD middle school attendance at the Egan campus, taking advantage of the camp site. Extend an invitation to current Blach 7th graders to attend BCS for eighth grade

I see many benefits:

1. Blach is a commuter school, as it draws from half of LASD, so there's no net detriment to the surrounding community and BCS's current practice of staggered class starts may actually help traffic.

2. The Egan+camp site is already set up with two parking/drop-off locations to help mitigate traffic congestion at the Egan site.

3. Blach 7th graders could complete their middle school experience in the same facility they started in. 

4. LASD could realize efficiencies in merging the two middle school programs on one campus. 

5. The lawsuits go away

6. BCS can plan for reasonable growth within a stable and known capacity

Granted, there are some downsides:

1. There would be a longer commute for middle school students from the southern and eastern parts of LASD (note: that's where we commute from to BCS, and it's not horrifying).

2. Egan would be a large school, but no larger than it already is hosting both Egan and BCS.

3. There would be disruption for the Blach teaching team during the transition year if the eighth grade teachers stay behind.

4. There would be a very challenging human resources problem to solve when dealing with Blach/Egan redundancies

The benefits far outweigh the challenges of this proposal. I understand time is short, but with a clear vision towards a long-term solution, we could make a very positive change with minimum disruption.

—Rob Fagen

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Mr Fagen-

Thanks for reaching out with your suggestions for how to address the BCS facilities needs.  I'm always grateful to receive a letter that makes specific suggestions, and it is good to hear from BCS parents on this issue also.

There are a couple of questions I have about your proposal.  I don't know if you've already considered these issues, but I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on these questions:

Specialized teaching space (STS)
As you may be aware, our junior high programs make extensive use of specialized teaching space.  We have science laboratories, gymnasiums, tracks, tennis courts, music rooms, etc. that are unique to the jr. high campuses.  Between Blach and Egan, we have about 1,000 students that need access to the STS at both campuses, and the facilities are heavily utilized.  For example, we use our science rooms on both campuses nearly every single period, and have already made significant changes to ensure that BCS has equal access to those specialized spaces.  If BCS had complete control of the Blach campus, we'd basically cut in half our specialized teaching space.  The core question is, if we consolidated both programs to Egan, how would you propose that we meet the needs of the LASD students for access to those specialized spaces?  

"Equivalence"
Broadly speaking, my read of the proposal you've made would disproportionately benefit BCS.  They'd have ~600 kids on an 18-acre campus with full facilities for jr high students.  (If I recall the numbers, BCS would have <100 jr. high students, and the other 500+ kids are K-6)  By contrast, LASD jr. high students would then be 1,000 kids on a similar sized campus, with 1/10th the specialized teaching space per student.  The BCS K-6 students would have full run of a "double-sized" campus with a full soccer field, tennis courts, etc.  Their LASD counterparts would not have a facility that approaches that level.  

Commuter Campus(?)
Your note suggests that Blach is a commuter campus because it draws from half of the district.  While I agree that our jr. highs each serve about half of geography, I'd suggest that the data tells us it is not the same as being a "commuter campus".  For example, we have a *substantial* portion of our students who bike or walk to our middle schools.  As the kids reach those pre-teen years, independence sets in and many of them get themselves to school.  (As an example, I live a couple of miles from Egan, yet for two years my daughter rode her bike to Egan in all but the very worst weather.)  If we moved the Blach students to the Egan campus, they'd be all the way across town, making it virtually impossible for them to get themselves to school without a parent and a car.  I would also note that this isn't just a "green" issue, or a traffic / safety issue.  For some families, this is imperative, particularly if the parents can't drive the kids to school.  This has a disportionate impact on our students of lower socio-economic standing.

School Size
The other aspect that concerns me greatly is the "mega school" nature of the LASD junior high school.  We have some of the highest-ranking junior highs in the State of California.  Part of the reason we are so successful is that we run campuses at a  size where the staff and faculty can interact with each child, and every child is known by name. Although BCS seems comfortable with the idea of growing to a 900+ person school, LASD has specifically chosen NOT to go down this path.  

I'd definitely like to hear your thoughts on these issues.  However, I have significant concerns that would need to be addressed before this would be a viable option.  I believe that our best path is to pursue a 10th site, so that we can provide BCS with their own campus while not disrupting our high-achieving neighborhood school model.

Best wishes, and thank you for your engagement.

Regards,
DJS

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Mr. Smith,
Thanks for the response and the respectful identification of possible issues I hadn't considered. In general, I did think about them, but in a broad non-numerical way. I appreciate the opportunity to think about them more quantitatively with the numbers you point out. Before I start, I would like to say that email is probably too low on bandwidth for a conversation like this (face-to-face being preferable), but I don't know that I have standing to make a one-on-one conversation an efficient use of either my time or of the Trustee's time. I have mentioned to other BCS folks that I like the idea of locking both boards in a room some Friday at 5pm and not letting them out until there's something that works (with equitably shared downsides). But I digress.

Something that colors all of my comments below is a new understanding that Blach is an 18 acre site. My impression was that space was at an extreme premium on Blach's campus. This is based on the allocation of BCS space there, which included pathways between classrooms winding through hedges and 3 foot wide strips of turf surrounding the track as "BCS space". This may answer a question Mr. Goines had for me in a separate email about why isn't BCS using the current Blach allocation.

Specialized Teaching Space Yes, I'm aware of the need for facilities to cover the subjects/activities of the 7th & 8th grade students. I'm also aware that there have been some accommodations made for the BCS 7th & 8th graders at the camp site. As I noted in my proposal, encouraging those students currently in 7th at Blach to stay there for eighth grade as BCS students could be extended to keep Blach as an LASD middle school, but with a footprint compatible with housing the K-6 students of BCS along with the 7th & 8th grades of both the reduced Blach and projected BCS populations. This would certainly help the STS utilization between Blach and Egan+camp, and it would also help with the 'neighborhood' aspect of Blach. It would keep Egan+camp from growing to 1000+.

Equivalence (I prefer to think of it as "Equitable")I think the idea of moving just 8th, or moving just part of 7th & 8th would address these concerns. Likewise, perhaps the solution is to reverse the roles of Egan+camp and Blach. I certainly am not asking that the 12% of LASD students who choose BCS be housed on 18% of the current facilities. I'm working towards a compromise where that 12% (projected) are housed on more than the current 6-8% of facilities. Similarly, I wouldn't want to displace LASD students who have explicitly chosen Blach for its "neighborhood" aspect to be disrupted. I would like to offer them a choice such that if location is critical, let them and their parents consciously make that trade-off instead of just handing them an experience completely free of any inconvenience. I think this provides some color on my thinking as far as your Commuter Campus question as well.

School Size I actually did think pretty long and hard about this one. I think the mark of an excellent program scales with class size and the teachers doing the teaching much more than it scales with school size. Any reference to studies counter to that would be appreciated. Of course, my assertion is dependent on the availability of sufficient facilities to offer the extra- and co-curricular activities as well as sufficient STS teachers and enough space to spread it all around. This as I believe it to be available at Blach or Egan+camp. Something more than 500 and less than 1000 may actually be a net benefit. The larger population of students allows for more students in the pool for finding common interests. Maybe we need more than one science or PE teacher to handle a larger population, and maybe having a team of specialists instead of "single points of availability" improves the program overall, but these additional costs may provide greater than linear net benefit to the students being taught.

In short, I would love a 10th campus, but it won't magically appear unless someone wins PowerBall and can magnanimously throw $100 million dollars at purchasing 10 one-acre homesites, flattening the houses and building a school (maybe we can convince Mountain View to let us use the Cuesta Annex -- it's 10 acres!).

As I said in an earlier email, I'm looking to spur a positive conversation about solving the problems we have today with the resources we have today. I look forward to continuing that conversation next Monday.

Regards,
Rob