Letter to County Board Of Education
September 19, 2019
Santa Clara County Board of Education
Dr. Mary Ann Dewan, Ph.D., County Superintendent of Schools
1290 Ridder Park Drive, San Jose, CA 95131
RE: Support for Letter of Los Altos School District Requesting Equitable Access for All Students to Bullis Charter School
Dear Board Members and Dr. Dewan:
I commend your team, and the great majority of SCCOE-authorized charter schools, for doing an excellent job serving the needs of many disadvantaged students. I noticed that seven of your charters were recognized as a “2019 Top School for Low-Income” students. Congratulations!
My wife and I, and many of our friends, understood that Bullis Charter School (BCS) was formed back in 2003 after a small neighborhood school was closed in the budget squeezes after the dot.com bubble burst. The BCS Charter request was to serve the needs of these children. Fortunately, Los Altos School District (LASD) budget pressures eased, an $11 million renovation was completed, and five years later, in 2008, the neighborhood school reopened.
At that point, the original BCS Charter was no longer relevant. In an effort to reinvent itself, the current version of BCS began to emerge. It has been a rocky road for our community. Most of us were pretty easy going about what BCS was doing and assumed the oversight from both LASD and SCCOE would result in a charter school serving the goals of the entire district. We assumed that by passing a $150 million-dollar bond measure, an entirely new school for BCS could be built and the friction in our community would subside. Land has been purchased, less than a mile from the BCS site, and there is over $100 million ready to spend on construction. Unfortunately, the BCS Board now wants to close an existing neighborhood school and then take the neighborhood campus. The last time a neighborhood school was closed, the community heart-break led to the BCS charter. WOW! How did we come full circle over 15 years?
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For the last few months, I have been trying to understand how we got this point, where we are now and where we might be headed. I have dived into a number of public data bases (e.g. the California Board of Education, the IRS Form 990s, the state and county election data bases, etc.) and I now have a pretty good, data-driven idea of how we got here and what the data indicates we have become.
There is a profound need for our community, along with the Santa Clara Board of Education and the LASD board, to have a very thoughtful dialogue about what we want for our future. The assertive nature of the BCS Board has been a forcing function for our community to embrace this dialogue.
The fundamental issues our community has to address are not about who gets which facility, this is a second order set of issues. We need to decide how we feel about ethnic and racial segregation, our role in educating the economically disadvantaged, the importance of transparency in maintaining public trust in our institutions, the importance of physical (vs. virtual/commuter) communities, how we finance our schools and what is the role of LASD in supporting out-of-district students.
As a long-time Los Altos community member whose children attended LASD schools, I strongly support the LASD's Board letter of September 10 urging your attention to SCCOE’s oversight responsibilities to see that Bullis Charter School ends exclusionary and discriminatory practices in selecting its student population. It is alarming that BCS would seek to reinstate a Los Altos Hills' neighborhood preference, and allow other preferences, that have resulted in a BCS student population that does not reflect the overall diversity of the District as required, and that conflicts with California's goals for charter schools to expand opportunities for academically low achieving pupils.
The great majority of SSCOE charter schools are doing an excellent job serving the needs of disadvantaged students. However, this makes the poor performance and exclusionary preferences of BCS all the more obvious and concerning. BCS is the extreme outlier among SCCOE charter schools in its student population and woeful lack of attention to students eligible for free and reduced-price meals (FRPM). Only1% of the BCS enrollment comprises FRPM students in need of expanded opportunities whereas all other charter schools authorized by SCCOE serve much greater populations of FRPM students, with many schools serving FRPM populations in the 70th, 80th, and 90th percentiles. (Attachment) In fact, BCS serves just 9 of the 209 FRPM students in the district. Seventy percent of these over 200 students live in walking distance from the campus in which BCS has resided for 15 years. Apparently, this is an issue of ongoing concern which, in past SCCOE Board minutes, has been mentioned by SSCOE Board members.
Why does SCCOE allow this tremendous inequity at BCS to continue?
LASD's letter highlights the longstanding exclusionary Los Altos Hills' neighborhood admissions preference and discriminatory practices, such as requiring significant private financial contributions from parents, both of which conflict with legal requirements and the spirit of California law, resulting in a student population that does not represent LASD as a whole and has significantly lower numbers of FRPM and academically low achieving pupils. Although BCS apparently agreed to take steps to end these exclusionary practices, preferences for siblings of BCS students and familiarity with the BCS program mean that the effects of these practices remain. Moreover, when BCS indicates its intent to reinstate an exclusionary Los Altos Hills' neighborhood preference, it startles the conscience and raises questions of whether BCS ever exercised good faith in seeking to increase diversity within its student population, expand opportunities for low-achieving pupils, and serve the district as a whole. It is distressing to see a public charter school allowed to exercise discrimination completely at odds with requirements and goals for public education in California.
SCCOE's oversight is urgently needed, and indeed required, to see that concrete and proactive steps are taken to diversify the student population at BCS as outlined in LASD's letter. Education Code section 47605(d) does not allow for BCS to provide admission preference to a neighborhood within the district and clearly states in (d)(2)(B)(iii) that any "[p]references shall not result in limiting enrollment access for pupil with disabilities, academically low-achieving pupils, English learners, neglected or delinquent pupils, homeless pupils, or pupils who are economically disadvantaged, as determined by eligibility for any free or reduced-price meal program, foster youth, or pupils based on nationality, race, ethnicity, or sexual orientation." If you allow BCS to reinstate its neighborhood preference, it directly conflicts with this provision.
Out of my desire to understand our situation, I have read, or scanned, many of the over 1,800 pages of BCS filing which are on your web site. I do not envy the challenge you face in fully understanding the many nuances of the twenty-plus charter schools you oversee.
In the September 2008 Material Revision Request, page 2, the SSCOE approved the following:
"WHOM THE SCHOOL IS ATTEMPTING TO EDUCATE: The School seeks to educate all students in the state of California who wish to attend the School subject only to capacity, with a focus on serving students of the Los Altos Elementary School District. The school seeks to preserve a neighborhood school environment, serving kindergarten through eighth grade students."
In the same 2008 request, a set of conflicting admission preferences were also approved which has contributed to a decade of unintended consequences, which we are all now obligated to address. They do not reflect a clear, proactive desire to address the needs, first and foremost, of all LASD school children and particularly not those who are economically or learning disadvantaged.
In the April 2016 Renewal Petition, the admission preferences remained similarly conflicting. Pages 185 and 186 from that request are also attached.
From what I have read, admission preferences number 2 (attachment) is not required by law, in fact conflicts with legal guidelines and should be eliminated.
BSC has a lot of ground to make up, just to serve the whole community of LASD students, and much more ground to cover for the economically disadvantaged students, who physically reside adjacent to the facility BCS has occupied for the last 15 years. The measure of success or failure is the results achieved, not the promises made. 15 years is a very long time to wait for results.
LASD's letter recounts a long, costly, and painful community history in seeking to end exclusionary practices at BCS. It is embarrassing and unacceptable for the Los Altos community and Santa Clara County to allow exclusionary and discriminatory practices to continue in public education. As the California Attorney General's Office stated in taking steps to end segregation at a charter school in Sausalito Marin School City District: "Every child—no matter their stripe or stature—deserves equal access to a quality education. That's what we say, what we believe, and what's required under the law," and "Attorney General Becerra issued an alert to remind schools throughout the state of their legal obligations to protect the civil rights of all students." BCS has clearly failed to heed the Attorney General’s admonition, and now our governing bodies need to take action to reverse this failure.
It is critical for us to honor the promise of public education and the words of the Attorney General and put an end to exclusionary practices in public education in our own community. I urge your attention to the LASD Board's letter and your concrete and transparent steps to see that the BCS student population reflects the whole LASD community and expands opportunities for academically low-achieving pupils. Our community has a growing number of students that need our help. BCS has the potential to play a significant constructive role in meeting the needs of all of our youth. It would be great if you would assume more attentive oversight authority focused on creating opportunities for all our students.
I have spent a great deal of time going through public databases and there a number of interesting observations falling out of the data which I think you might find interesting. If you would be interested, please let me know and I would be glad to meet with you, at your convenience.
It is incumbent upon all of us to understand where this situation has taken us and how we can make positive and responsible change.
Sincerely,
Steve Brown
26120 Rancho Manuella Lane
Los Altos Hills, CA 94022
stevebrown94022@gmail.com
cell: 650-996-4895
cc: Joseph Di Salvo, Area 4 Rosemary Kamei, President, Area 3
Kathleen M. King, Area 2 Grace H. Mah, Area 1
Peter Ortiz, Area 6 Claudia Rossi, Area 7
Anna Song, Vice-President, Area 5
Mary Ann Dewan, Ph.D., County Superintendent of Schools
Michelle Johnson, Ed.D., Interim Director Charter Schools Department
Gavin Newsom, California Governor
Xavier Becerra, California Attorney General
Tony Thurmond, California Superintendent of Schools
Linda Darling-Hammond, President of California State Board of Education
Jerry Hill, California State Senator, 13th District
Marc Berman, California State Assembly, 24th District
Connie Leyva, Chair of California State Senate Education Committee
Patrick O’Donnell, Chair of California State Assembly Education Committee
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