LASD to attend BCS Board Meeting

On August 6th, LASD Superintendent Jeff Baier will be presenting the results of the Superintendent's Enrollment Growth Task Force to the BCS Board of Directors.  There will also be an agenda item where the BCS and LASD boards can discuss what this means, and how we might move forward.  LASD will be agendizing this meeting (although technically under the Brown Act, we aren't required to do so, as we are actually attending BCS's agendized meeting). 

This presentation will include the same material that Jeff has presented to the LASD Board of Trustees, the Los Altos Hills Town Council, and other local agencies.  It clarifies why we need additional school sites and provides some of the supporting data that drives that conclusion.  Given that so many entities participated in the Task Force, it is only right to give those groups a read-out on the findings.

One of the key findings of the Task Force is that LASD and BCS need to work together on building community support for additional school sites.Clearly that will be front and center on my mind when we get to the second agenda item.

Even during the summer, I get occasional pings from folks asking about meetings with the BCS Board.  This meeting has been a long time in coming.  BCS has requested some tactical discussions about the 13-14 offer, but the LASD Board really wants to focus on how we can work together to address the long term needs.  I'm looking forward to this discussion.

Also, I've been pinged about why this meting hasn't been noticed yet.  The meting is not a regularly scheduled meeting- it is a "special meeting"  As such, the Brown Act requires the agenda to be posted at least 24 hours in advance (instead of at least 72 hours in advance, as is the case for regular meetings).  Technical the LASD Board doesn't need to agendize this meeting, as it is a noticed meeting of another group, but we will do so in an abundance of caution.

Hope to see you all on Tuesday night!

Right On, Town Crier

There's a super editorial in the Town Crier this week.  I couldn't have said it better myself. 

LASD Delivers Final Offer

Note: This blog post is late- we delivered the final offer on April 1, 2013 as required by law. At that time, I delivered a letter to the community. This post includes that letter, as well as links to the various documents for the 2013-14 facilities process.

On April 1, 2013, LASD delivered the Final Offer of Facilities to BCS.  They have responded with their Notice of Intent to Occupy, along with their customary statement that says they deem the offer insufficient and they reserve the right to sue us.

This offer is an exceptionally strong offer, and it is actually more than what is required by law.  I can only hope that BCS will decide it isn't worth suing over this, and we can return our focus to the children we educate.

I state this in my letter, but I also want to point it out here:  the District staff has worked incredibly hard to prepare this offer.  There are countless hours devoted to measuring, counting, and calculating, as well as then working through all the logistical and programmatic impacts of this type of arrangement.  The District's Chief Business Officer, Randy Kenyon, has taken point on this, and done a fantastic job.  I also want to specifically call out Sandra McGonagle for her hard work.  As the principal at Blach, she and her staff have gone through a great deal to revise their program to accommodate BCS and welcome them into a new way of sharing facilities.  We are fortunate to have such superb folks advancing the work of the District.  To accomplish this while maintaining such an excellent program, and to continue to achieve State-level recognition for our efficient administration, well, it says a lot about our team.

Date	Action	Documents
Nov 1	BCS submits request for facilities, incl. enrollment forecast and preferred location.	BCS request
Dec 1	LASD provides counter-projection to enrollment	LASD response
Jan 1	BCS responds to counter-projection	BCS response
Feb 1	LASD provides preliminary facilities offer (draft)	Prelim Offer Exhib A-E Exhib F Exhib G
Mar 1	BCS responds to draft offer	BCS Response Schedule D
April 1	LASD provides final facilities offer	LASD Final Offer
July 1	LASD adjusts classroom space based on final district budget for upcoming school year (Note:  This is a negotiated step, not part of the Prop 39 process)

Note:  I'm note sure why, but Google Docs has trouble dealing with the latest Jan 1 letter from BCS.  It won't show it in preview mode, but it is possible to download the document locally and read it.


(letter to community sent on April 3, 2013)

Parents, Guardians, and Community Members


I'm pleased to say that the District has successfully completed and delivered the final facilities offer to BCS for the 2013-14 school year. This year's process incorporated an unprecedented level of community input, spanning more than a dozen public meetings over a 5 month period. In developing the Final Offer, the District has offered BCS generous access to shared space on the Blach campus, as well as maintaining their footprint on the Egan campus. The shared space, in particular, represents a significant change in the offers we have made to BCS. In addition to providing their 6-8 students with access to specialized teaching space, it also creates an opportunity for us to work together and share, thereby increasing trust between the groups.

The District also strives to be transparent in our operations, so I would like to acknowledge a mistake we made recently. Under the open meeting laws in California, we agendize all topics to be discussed in closed session, so that the community can stay apprised of those discussions. At Monday's Board meeting, we met with consultants to discuss real estate during closed session, as permitted under the Brown Act. However, in the press of preparing the Final Offer, we neglected to use the correct language to agendize this item. Due to this oversight, the Board is required to meet again and discuss this item anew, which will provide the public the opportunity to weigh in before the Board adjourns to closed session. We will do this by holding a special board meeting on April 15th at 6pm.

The process of delivering the Final Offer is a challenging one, and on behalf of the board I would like to extend our thanks to the district employees who have worked so hard to evaluate options, develop alternatives, and make adjustments to our program in order to make this all work. They have been professional throughout the process. We can all be grateful that we have such a fantastic team working on behalf of our students.

Have a wonderful spring break, and we will see you on your return.

Warm regards,

Doug Smith
President, LASD Board of Trustees

Other Interesting Blogs

For obvious reasons, I read a fair bit of what is written in the education community.  I would like to share two interesting posts for you all:

Given my most recent post about BCS and the Brown Act, this post by San Carlos Trustee Seth Rosenblatt might be interesting.  It starts with a good explanation of the Brown Act, and what it means in practical terms.  He then goes into some discussion about what needs to change to bring the Brown Act into the 21st century.  I stand by my original post about BCS, but this is an interesting read nonetheless.  (link to EdSource)

Closer to home (as if San Carlos were far away), one of LASD's own has started her own blog.  Beth Leach is a 6th grade teacher at Almond, and has been at the forefront of many initatives within LASD.  She is a fearless experimenter, willing to try new techniques and update old ones.  I've been fortunate to have both of my girls in her classes.  In her first blog post, she builds on an article from Stanford, relating her experience both inside the classroom and on a recent trip to visit schools in China, to do a bit of analysis on the state of public education in the US.  Given all of the rhetoric, the detailed Stanford article is worthwhile, and Beth's personal experience and analysis is a valuable read.

Beth's Leach's blog

Thoughts On Being a Public School

Several months ago, the District field a cross complaint, asking the courts to evaluate whether BCS is truly a public school.   BCS has ridiculed the cross complaint, both in the press and in front of the courts.  At the core of the cross complaint, we've said they behave more like a private school than a public school.  This isn't meant to be a derogatory statement- our community has many private schools, and they seem to do a good job of educating students.  However, they aren't bound by the same rules that public schools are bound by- they can choose what students they accept, they are free from many of the obligations of public schools.  Let's step away from the heated discussion for a moment, and consider a simpler example: public meetings.

Because LASD is a public school district, we conduct our meetings under the Brown Act.  BCS has said that they follow the Brown Act.  Wanny Hersey has asserted this in communications with me and with the SCCBOE, including this instance, from an exchange in Dec 2011 where she also derides LASD for an unspecified Brown Act violation.  So let's look at this a bit deeper.

LASD does our best to follow not just the letter of the Brown Act, but the spirit of the law also.  I've personally been involved in discussions where we chose to delay meetings rather than utilize the "short notice" provisions under the Act.  We ensure the public has a place to wait while we meet in closed session, and when we anticipate a large crowd, we hold the meeting in an appropriate venue.  We also ensure that we receive public input before closed session, and report out any actions taken.

By contrast, I've seen several instances where BCS has either explicitly violated the Brown Act, or has skated dangerously close to doing so.  Some examples:

BCS posted a meeting notice stating that their meeting would be held Nov 6, 2012.  I found that odd, since Nov 6 was election day.  I snapped a photo of the notice as posted on the evening of Nov 4th.  When BCS apparently recognized the mistake, they simply changed the date on the agenda they emailed out on November 5th.  The minutes from that meeting - held November 5th- can be found on the BCS web site here.  The first part was likely an honest clerical error, but someone recognized the error before the meeting was held.  Rather than delay the meeting, they moved forward with a meeting that was not noticed to the public.

In May 2012, during a particularly contentious period, LASDVoices was regularly attending BCS Board Meetings.  Here is the report of one member of that group (in an email to the SCCBOE) about how the "report out from closed session" was handled.  In a nutshell, the email suggest that the "report out" was never made, or was done so in a manner that seems intentionally designed to deprive the public of knowing what happened.

Today, BCS held a meeting at the Gordon and Betty Moore foundation offices in Palo Alto, which puts them about 4 miles from BCS/Egan, and are definitely outside District Boundaries.  I don't know whether BCS is compliant with the "meet within the jurisdiction" requirement based on the fact that they are chartered with the County.  However, is it that difficult to find meeting space within the District's boundaries, so that community members can attend? 

I've also previously blogged about my experiences with BCS Board members when I recorded their board meetings, also explicitly permitted under the Brown Act.  Board member Janet Medlin took strong exception to my efforts, and also strongly criticized me for publishing the sworn deposition of a BCS Board member. 

During today's meeting, BCS Board Member Janet Medlin once again took me to task, it appears, for how I've insisted that the BCS facilities meetings this year be very public.  She posted part of an email exchange wherein she agreed with my request for public meetings, and implied to the public that she'd initiated the discussion.  I don't care about who gets credit, but I do care a lot that in that same exchange, she was arguing in favor of a "pre-meeting", a meeting over the weekend in advance of the LASD Board meeting.  I don't know how she thought that her proposal kept with my requirement that the meetings be public, but it certainly didn't come out in the full email exchange. 


So What?
To borrow a now famous phrase, "so what?"  These seem like small, innocuous things.  When it comes to serious matters of law, the general public might call these "technicalities" and accuse me of being overly pedantic.  That's part of the point, though.  The law *is* pedantic.  It demands that we follow it at all times.  LASD has a culture of understanding the legal requirements and following them in all aspects of how we conduct ourselves, from the largest matters of what students we educate down to the little things like how we post notice of our meetings.  If we educated 98% of our students in accordance with the law, there would still be nearly 100 children deprived of their rights to a public education.  To me, that isn't acceptable.

I work in private industry during the day.  I'm used to calling meetings on a split second notice, and reacting quickly to the situation.  As a public official, though, I have to be more measured.  I have a responsibility to the public, and part of that means ensuring the public can participate in the process.  I highlight this because I'm not convinced that all members of the BCS Board fully understand what it means to be a public entity.  Some BCS Board members (and especially their attorney) have scoffed at the District's allegations.  I'm not saying that all of these incidents were born out of ill intent.  However, I do think that some members of the BCS Board haven't fully internalized what it means to be a public entity, and to accept taxpayer funds.  It's easy to overlook the details, but it's not fair to say that the details don't matter.  The details do matter, because every child is entitled to a great public education- even the ones that don't attend a charter school.

A little more sunshine...

Recently, BCS has taken umbrage to my publication of the deposition of one of their board members.  Now, keep in mind that a deposition is sworn testimony- it is the same as someone sitting on the witness stand in open court.  I made a conscious choice to publish the entire transcript, rather than cherry-pick inflamitory pieces.  Nevertheless, when I arrived at the BCS board meeting last week, BCS Board member Janet Medlin felt the need to criticize me for publishing the deposition. 

BCS often reminds LASD that they are a "public school".  Yet, when it comes to behaving like a public institution, some members of their organization seem to struggle with the concepts.  Their recent Board meeting was an excellent example.  Members of the public have complained that deliberations at BCS Board meeting are impossible to hear.  This concerns me quite a bit, since they are debating topics that are crucial to our community.  I decided I would take the drastic step of investing in professional sound equipment, so that I could record their meetings.  Last Monday, I arrived well before the meeting began and was setting up my equipment to record.  As BCS Board members arrived, a couple of them went out of their way to criticize my use of the recording equipment.  One board member refered to it as "intimidation". She complained about the "palace" where we hold the LASD Board meetings (a 1940 sq ft portable located next ot a garage on the Covington site.)   Another board member complained about the placement of small, unobtrusive microphones.  (Link to the description of the mics)  I'm pleased to say that despite having to stash these small microphones under chairs, the recording worked just fine.

I do want to acknowledge that some members of the BCS Board understood the public's interest, and spoke louder and more clearly to ensure we could hear the discussion. On a couple of ocasions, one board member actually paused his colleagues and asked them to repeat comments that were made. If we want to improve relations, it is important that everyone has the same information about plans and intentions.


Still, I fnd these complaints more than a bit ironic.  Section 54953.5 (a) of the Brown Act specifically calls out that members of the public are permitted to record any public meeting.  Further, the complains are more than a bit hypocritical, esp considering that BCS founders video-taped a whole series of LASD Board meetings when they were starting up the charter school.

So, what came out of this meeting?  I'll put that in another post, along with the recording.  In the meantime, the sunshine is a good thing.