New faces and big changes greeted school districts in Mountain View this year after two superintendents called it quits and voters ushered in new board members. Specific plans to open new schools and raise poor student achievement are still to come as well, leaving the future open for the citys schools. But not everything is left unfinished. The Mountain View Whisman School District diffused a heated debate over teacher salaries with a revised contract and bigger salaries, and a long-term agreement between the Los Altos School District and Bullis Charter School meant an end to litigation and a less contentious relationship between the two. New schools on the way The Mountain View Whisman school board agreed last month to split Castro Elementary into two new schools on the same campus, ending a multi-year effort by district administrators to find a way to restructure the school that the parents could agree to. The school has two different programs: Dual Immersion, a popular bilingual program that provides instruction in both English and Spanish, and the traditional school program. The Castro Restructuring Task Force reported that the two programs are very different from each other and would be better structured as two distinct schools. Members of the task force, including Superintendent Craig Goldman, said the split will help the district focus on the low-income and minority students at the traditional school who perform poorly on standardized tests. But exactly how the district plans to increase student achievement and close the achievement gap remains unclear going into 2015. That uncertainty was cause for concern for some board members. Prior to the decision, board member Chris Chiang said he would have trouble supporting the split until the district made a serious commitment of money to improve performance at Castro to the tune of about $2 million. Goldman said a specific plan and financial commitments to increase student achievement should not be a prerequisite to approving the split, and could come at a later time. The board later approved the proposal unanimously. The Los Altos School District might be establishing a school in the San Antonio area of Mountain View. After successfully passing a $150 million bond by a small margin last month, the district is looking to open a new school to handle high enrollment growth and overcrowded schools. Its still too early to say where that new school will be, but district board members and administrators say the best location would be north of El Camino in Mountain View. The problem is that the San Antonio area is built out, and lacking park space or other public land that could go towards a school. Building a school there would likely mean buying high-cost private land, a smaller school size and less money left over to spend on other capital improvements. Teacher salaries Teachers at the Mountain View Whisman School District blindsided administrators and the school board this year when they showed up at a board meeting in September demanding higher pay. Leaders of the teachers union said they would no longer sit idly as their salaries continue to get heavily outpaced by the high cost of living in the Bay Area. Superintendent Craig Goldman defended the districts position, saying teachers enjoy automatic salary increases and some of the best salaries relative to comparable districts in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties. He questioned why the union would lash out at the district prior to contract negotiations over salaries that year. The Sept. 4 board meeting was followed by a month of back-and-forth on what the district could afford to pay its teaching staff and what compromise could be struck between the two parties. The teachers union, disappointed after the second round of negotiations, declared impasse and work-to-rule for a week a schedule in which teachers work the contractual hours only and dont participate in after-school activities. After a special closed session meeting on Sept. 26, the school board authorized a revised district proposal for teacher salaries, and contract negotiations were back on. The parties finally settled on a 5 percent permanent, on-schedule salary increase, as well as an additional 2 percent one-time boost to salaries. The debate over teacher salaries brought district parents and community members together at several meetings to talk about what teachers should be making in the Bay Area, and whether the district should be holding as much as $24 million in reserves when it could be using that money to raise teacher salaries, among other things. LASD and Bullis declare cease-fire After a decade of difficulty between the Los Altos School District and Bullis Charter School over shared facilities, both parties came together this year under a five-year agreement crafted to avoid conflicts over enrollment, facilities, and other issues. The agreement was announced in early July after board members from both the district and the charter school drafted the document and worked out each compromise in mediation meetings. The agreement also ended all pending litigation between the district and the charter school, concluding years of lawsuits that cost both sides millions. Disputes over facilities use agreements came to a head last year when the district changed the locks on classrooms used by the charter school at Blach Intermediate School. Superintendents departures In the final months of 2014, both Goldman and Superintendent Barry Groves of the Mountain View-Los Altos Union High School District announced their resignation. Goldman said it was his decision to resign, and cited a need for new leadership in the district. He said there was a growing disparity in priorities and the methodologies between him and the school board, and that only one board member who originally approved his hiring still sits on the board. Though Goldman said hes not sure what hell do next or where he will go, hell be heading off with a lump sum payment from the district equivalent to 12 months salary. According to Goldmans contract, his 2014-15 annual salary was $227,027. The Mountain View Whisman school board has since chosen Kevin Skelly, former superintendent of Palo Alto Unified School District, as an interim superintendent through July. Groves also announced his retirement after nearly nine years as superintendent of the high school district and 37 years in public education. He said he plans to continue to work as a public education consultant and coach in the coming years.
Posted on: Tue, 30 Dec 2014 04:20:23 +0000
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