Dental Implants Near Mountain View, CA

Charles DiFazio is running for a seat on the Mountain View Whisman school board to bring “calm oversight and leadership” to the district at a time when a majority of the current board members aren’t running for re-election.

DiFazio told the Voice that he decided to run because he felt this could be a critical election and turning point in the district. Three out of five board seats are up for a vote this November and no incumbents are running, which DiFazio said creates a situation with the potential to be disruptive.

“What I really want is to be able to navigate our challenges in a positive manner and be able to come together,” he said.

DiFazio has three children: one at Crittenden Middle School, another at Vargas Elementary and a third who hasn’t started elementary school. Over the years, he said that he’s volunteered at his childrens’ schools, was on the school site council at Landels (where his family was previously zoned) and is currently a member of the PTAs at Vargas and Crittenden.

Asked what his top three priorities would be if elected, DiFazio said he would focus on ensuring all students get a great education regardless of their background, rebuilding communication between the district and community, and making sure the board is operating effectively.

A particular area of focus for DiFazio is closing the achievement gap. One of Mountain View’s strengths is its diversity, DiFazio said. Within the school district, there are students who are socioeconomically disadvantaged and students experiencing homelessness learning alongside students from very wealthy families, he said.

“One of the issues in the district that has been tough is the achievement gap between those groups,” DiFazio said. “It’s hard to address, I don’t think anyone’s got a silver bullet, but I want to focus on that.”

The district had been making progress before the pandemic hit, but things have gotten worse since then, DiFazio said. Now, he sees an opportunity to refocus on tackling this issue. He pointed to the district’s creation of an early literacy team as an area of success, and said he wants to expand these types of programs to other subjects, such as math.

DiFazio also wants to offer more support for families, as well as mental health services and social-emotional learning opportunities for students. These can be important for children who are facing difficulties outside of school, DiFazio said. He added that students are still processing trauma from the pandemic.

When it comes to district leadership, DiFazio also said he wants to work on rebuilding communication between the district and parents, as well as with the city of Mountain View. Over the past year, the district has faced criticism from parents, including over controversial contracts and a proposal to change the middle school bell schedule.

“It’s a lot easier to break trust than to rebuild it – that’s the harder thing,” DiFazio said.

On the board, he said that he would focus on transparency, adding that it’s important to show that the district is taking things seriously by quickly addressing problems when they come up. While the board gets a lot of its information from the superintendent during board meetings, DiFazio said that the trustees can also reach out directly to stakeholders to get more insight.

When it comes to the district’s relationship with the city, DiFazio said that the two agencies serve many of the same people and that their “fates are really tied together.”

The two entities have been at odds in recent months over an agreement to share funding from a special tax district in the Shoreline area. The city said it wouldn’t negotiate a long-term agreement until the school district signed a three-year deal. The school board ended up approving the three-year agreement at an Oct. 17 meeting, which was after DiFazio spoke with the Voice in September.

DiFazio said in September that given the sensitive negotiations, he wouldn’t commit – before being elected – to taking any particular action. But in general, DiFazio said that he would rather not lose out on funding now to have the potential to negotiate for additional funding later. He added that the city isn’t obligated to provide this funding, and that it does support the district in other ways, including with the Safe Routes to School program.

When asked to assess the effectiveness of the district’s superintendent and other leaders, DiFazio said that while the superintendent should get credit for effective programs he’s implemented, including an early literacy team and affordable housing for teachers, he added that it would be “implausible” to say missteps hadn’t been made.

In particular, DiFazio pointed to a plan to reduce middle school elective periods, which was ultimately scrapped in the face of controversy. With his own child starting middle school, DiFazio said that regardless of its merits, the proposal was surprising and the process felt both chaotic and disorganized. If he had been on the board, DiFazio said he would have brought parents into the process early, explained what was happening and gotten their feedback.

DiFazio said that he didn’t favor the board’s decision in June to approve a multi-year contract extension and raises for the superintendent. The decision wasn’t urgent, DiFazio said, and he would have preferred for the new board members to be able to weigh in.

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Looking to upgrade aging school facilities – and potentially build an entirely new campus – the Los Altos School District is asking voters to approve a $350 million bond measure this November.

Measure EE requires 55% support to pass. Those living in much of Los Altos and certain areas of Mountain View will have a chance to vote on the measure, because the Los Altos School District’s attendance boundaries encompass portions of both cities.

Bonds like Measure EE can only be spent on school facilities, including construction, rehabilitation and replacement, according to the county counsel’s analysis of the measure. That’s different from the district’s typical funding streams, which can generally be used for a wider range of expenses, including staff salaries and other operating expenses.

The school district has said that it would spend the majority of Measure EE funds on upgrading its existing campuses. It may also use some of the proceeds to build a school on a 11.7-acre parcel of land in Mountain View, known as the “10th school site,” that the district purchased in 2019. The school board has not decided what portion of Measure EE would go to the 10th site versus existing schools.

How much would you pay?

The bonds would be paid back by levying a tax on properties within the school district at an estimated average annual rate of $30 per $100,000 of assessed value. The total cost, including both the principal and interest over the life of the bond, is estimated at $730.8 million.

The text of the measure requires the school board to establish an independent citizens’ oversight committee to review bond spending. Independent annual performance and financial audits are also required.

What would the measure support?

The ballot measure language states that the money would be used to “upgrade aging neighborhood schools, enhance science, technology, engineering, and math classrooms/labs, fix leaky roofs/windows, improve school traffic safety, update aging heating, cooling/plumbing, and construct facilities needed to preserve small neighborhood schools.”

The school district has said most of Measure EE’s proceeds would go to improving existing campuses. Last month, the school board unanimously approved a facilities master plan, which lays out roughly $700 million in potential upgrades to the district’s nine current schools.

Measure EE wouldn’t raise enough money to pay for all of these improvements, but the facilities master plan identifies projects that the district wants to try to complete with the bond proceeds and places them into three priority groups.

“We need some basic renovations to get our classrooms up to speed to the 21st century,” Assistant Superintendent Business Services Erik Walukiewicz said. “They’ve been maintained relatively well, but it’s time to do some major renovations at all the school sites.”

The first priority group encompasses modernization projects on all nine campuses, including upgrading heating and cooling systems, making roofing repairs, updating classroom AV equipment and upgrading fire alarm systems.

The second group includes renovating the district’s two junior high schools so that they can accommodate sixth graders and upgrading the transitional kindergarten and kindergarten spaces at three of the district’s elementary school campuses.

The third group includes building new classrooms, libraries and innovation labs at certain campuses.

The facilities master plan is meant to be a living document, since needs can change over time, Walukiewicz said.

How many of these projects the district can afford is dependent in part on how much money is set aside for construction at the 10th school site. School board President Bryan Johnson said in August that he anticipated the board would decide before the election how it would split bond proceeds between existing campuses and the 10th site.

That didn’t end up happening. Johnson told the Voice recently that the board won’t be able to decide ahead of the election due to Bullis Charter School’s “ongoing dispute with the county over their charter renewal and the resulting uncertainty.” The Santa Clara County Board of Education approved a five year renewal of Bullis’ charter in August, but made it subject to a set of conditions. The charter school is contesting those conditions and the dispute is ongoing.

The school district purchased the 10th site, located at the corner of Showers Drive and California Street, nearly five years ago with plans to build a school, but construction hasn’t yet begun. The district has previously said it wants to place Bullis at the 10th site, while the charter school has said it isn’t interested in going there.

Arguments in favor of the bond measure

Bond measure supporters argue that the money would fund critical repairs to schools that haven’t been upgraded in almost three decades.

“Too many students are learning in deteriorating portable classrooms that are well past their useful age and expensive to maintain. We want to prepare local students to compete in high school, college and their future careers. We need Measure EE to provide the exceptional education our community expects,” the argument in favor of Measure EE that appears in the county’s official voter information guide states.

Among those who signed the ballot argument in favor are Los Altos Chamber of Commerce President Kim Mosley and the vice president of the Los Altos-Mountain View PTA Council.

They argue that despite Los Altos having some of the best schools in the country, students are learning in buildings with leaky roofs and have science labs that don’t meet modern standards.

Supporters also note that the measure would provide the money to have “10 schools on 10 campuses,” a reference to the 10th school site. Currently, in addition to the district’s nine schools, Bullis Charter School shares space at Egan and Blach junior high schools.

“We also know that having 10 schools at nine campuses isn’t working — with hundreds of students taking classes at overcrowded junior high schools in dilapidated portables,” the ballot argument in favor of the measure states.

The district has not yet decided what to build on the 10th site, with options including a 900-student school, 500-student school or simply razing the site, prepping it for future construction and building athletic fields and a gymnasium to fulfill the terms of a deal with the city of Mountain View.

Decisions about what to build on the 10th site and which school would go there “would be determined through a transparent, public process once Measure EE is approved,” the website in favor of Measure EE states.

Arguments against the bond measure

Bullis Charter School’s board has come out against Measure EE. In a press release, the board said that it had voted unanimously to oppose the bond, and raised concerns about the potential use of bond proceeds to build on the 10th school site.

Bullis’ board said it does not want the Los Altos School District to spend Measure EE funds to develop a school on the 10th site to house the charter school and is instead happy to continue being split between Blach and Egan.

“We have no wish to see students in district-run schools shortchanged so that LASD can spend $145+ million on a new school for us when we have made it abundantly clear that we do not want it,” the press release said.

Bullis also said it was “disconcerting” that the school district hasn’t been more transparent about the potential to spend a substantial portion of the bond proceeds on a new school, taking money away from improvements to existing sites. The charter school went on to say that the district could make adjustments to accommodate sixth graders at Blach and Egan without spending much of the bond proceeds on a 10th site.

Johnson responded that the majority of Measure EE funds would fund existing schools and that “to the extent that some funds may be allocated to the 10th site, it will be to reduce the overcrowding on the junior high campuses, which impacts the programs there on a daily basis.”

The school district’s board wasn’t unanimous about placing Measure EE on the ballot. Board member Vladimir Ivanovic was the sole “no” vote. He has argued that the bond measure “privileges” Bullis over the district’s schools by spending money to construct a campus on the 10th site.

The Silicon Valley Taxpayers Association and Libertarian Party of Santa Clara County are also against the bond and wrote the ballot argument in opposition to Measure EE.