Facilities

School Facilities

Here are two articles exploring the history and issues surrounding school facilities in the Los Altos School District. One explores the history of district-owed facilities, from the buildout of numerous schools in the 40s and 50s, to the closures that occurred as the student population dwindled and financial resources tightened, to the reopening of schools as student numbers grew again. The other article looks at facilities costs and questions surrounding Bullis Charter School and the potential impact on neighborhood schools.

LASD Facilities Overview 1940 -2019

This article chronicles the history of Los Altos School District facilities, from the rapid building of schools in the late 1940s and 50s, to school closures as the student population declined, and the reopening of two schools as numbers climbed again.

During WWII, the State of California sent a letter to the leaders of the Los Altos area, addressed to Los Altos School District (LASD), indicating that the school facilities needed to be upgraded. During the last year of the war, the number of students attending LASD increased 4%.  The following year, veterans returned, young families moved into the area, and the student population grew 17%.  During the decade from 1945 to 1955, the student population grew at a compound rate of 25% per year (from under 400 to over 4,300). 

In 1947, community leaders made a pivotal decision.  To accommodate the expected growth, to ease transportation pressures, and at the encouragement of the State, the decision was made to create a network of elementary schools which would become the core of various neighborhoods.  Bond measures were passed, State aid was provided, and in 1948 multiple future school sites were purchased.  Subdivisions were created and houses built as families moved into the area.  Los Altos was one of the fastest growing communities in the area.

In the 1960’s, the post WWII baby-boom students were finishing their elementary school years, and many of their parents chose to live much of the rest of their lives in the area.  A 1960 article notes that Los Altos is a good place to grow old since “the climate is pleasant, the economy is promising, there are cultural centers, and the location is near Stanford University.”  Kids grew up and moved out, while older members of families stayed in their homes.  During the 1970’s, the LASD school population declined almost 50%, from 5,900 in 1966, to under 3,000 by 1980.  The declining student population led to the closure of several LASD public schools.

Three of the four public elementary schools that served Los Altos Hills residents were closed.  Four of the ten elementary schools serving Los Altos residents were also closed.  There were a number of reasons why neighboring cities/towns had different numbers of surviving elementary schools.  Los Altos Hills has 8.8 square miles of land area, a population of ~900 per square mile, with ~19% of the population between 5 and 18 and ~26% of the population 65 and older.  Los Altos had less land area (6.5 square miles), with 5 times higher density (4,500 per square mile), ~22% of the population between 5 and 18, and ~20% of the population over 65.  When faced with dollars and cents trade-off’s, the higher utilization, lowest cost to operate school facilities were kept open.

In 1978, California Proposition 13 passed, reducing and placing future limits on property taxes.  Public school were primarily financed by property taxes. Less tax income led to budget cuts, growth of class sizes, and decreased spending per student. 

By the mid-1990’s, the population of elementary school age students was growing again, although much slower.  Proposition 13 and the local economic cycles made it difficult to balance annual revenue/expense budgets and to maintain facilities.  Special bond measure elections were needed to upgrade facilities. 

Covington was closed for approximately 20 years and Bullis Purimmisa was closed for 5 years.The closure of Bullis Purimmisa prompted the formation of a Bullis Charter School (BCS) to serve the local neighborhood.Once the budget pressures caused by the busting of the Dot.com bubble, had eased, Bullis Purimmisa was renovated and reopened as a neighborhood school.BCS began the process of incrementally reinventing itself as a district-wide resource.
(*Note: Click on the charts and graphs below to enlarge them.)

Bullis Charter School Facilities

This article explores the costs of classroom and other facilities used by Bullis Charter School, much of which is paid by the Los Altos School District. It also asks whether the current enrollment of BCS is sustainable and whether portable classrooms better meet the need for flexibility in addressing student and educational needs. BCS enrollment has grown from a goal of serving between 310 and 350 neighborhood students in 2003 to its current enrollment more than 1,000 students from across and outside of the Los Altos School District

In 2000, Proposition 39 was passed creating new requirements for school districts to provide facilities to charter schools. Guidance began to emerge as the 2003 effective date approached.  As with new rules and guidance, open issues and specific interpretations needed to be sorted out by the courts.  LASD and BCS were on the forefront of the specific definition of these emerging practices and both organizations incurred substantial legal fees.  The following material is a snapshot of how the passage of Proposition 39, regulations, lawsuits, legal judgements and negotiations have manifested themselves. 

A great deal of information is readily available for the LASD budget and actual facilities expenditures (‘https://www.lasdschools.org/District/9821-Annual-Budget.html).  There is not a similar public repository of information on BCS or the BCS Foundation.  Since the BCS Board has chosen not to offer transparency, examining IRS form 990 filings offers the next best indication of the financial resources deployed and the annual facilities costs.  Since only partial information is publicly available, the following discussion includes some estimates and is meant to be an indictive picture of the resources deployed.

BCS serves students using 58 portable classrooms.  These portables have been in service between 1 and 19 years, 10 years on average.  The 13 oldest portables were installed in 2000 as a temporary campus to serve various elementary school students, as their respective schools were renovated.  Surprisingly, BCS students are served by most the most modern classrooms in the district.

In contrast, the permanent buildings on each neighborhood school site are 40 to 50 years old, with renovations performed 16 years ago, and the portables on each of the school sites range from 1 to 35 years old, 20 years on average.  Each school site currently has 9 to 37 portables providing flexibility and serving the existing enrollment.

Each portable supports a class size of 20 or more students, and requires an annual lease payment of approximately $10,000.   Once installed, the annual lease cost is approximately $500 per student.

Planning, permitting, providing utilities, preparing the site and installing each portable cost between $100,000 and $200,000.  If each portable has a 30-year life, the cost per student for installation would range from $150 to $300 a year per student served.  Excluding maintenance and utilities, a student’s classroom needs are probably served for between $650 and $800 per year ($500 in annual lease payment + $150 to $300 for cost of installation).

The amortized capital cost, excluding the interest on the borrowed capital, of building a new classroom will probably range between 2 to 3 times the all-in portable cost per student. 

BCS began in 2003 with a clear goal of serving between 310 and 350 students using a neighborhood school site which had been temporarily closed.  Once that neighborhood school was renovated and reopened, BCS began a journey of incremental reinvention. 

It’s important to consider that the current state of the reinvention may not necessarily lead to sustained enrollment.  The flexibility of a portable based campus may be an excellent option to deal with the potential flexibility BCS Board will need as it embraces the challenges of serving a student body that reflects the ethnicity, race, economic status and special-needs students in our community.

LASD currently deploys financial resources to both install and lease each BCS portable.  Currently approximately $600,000 of annual lease payments are absorbed in the LASD budget.  As illustrated by the horizontal blue line in the following graph, BCS’s cost structure has consistently been able to avoid between $500 and $600 per BCS student per year.

Adding together the annual operating lease payments and the cost of installation, LASD has deployed approximately $13,000,000 to provide facilities for BCS students. 

The BCS Board has not disclosed their facilities costs.  A review of the IRS form 990 filings indicates that the annual facilities costs (some shared costs from LASD plus BCS owned operating expenses and housekeeping) may be between $300,000 and $400,000 per year.  Although it is not clearly disclosed, prior BCS boards have deployed $650,000 on special purpose facilities in 2005 and 2007.

BSC’s cost structure probably includes 13% of the long-term investment in facilities and 34% of their annual facilities cost.