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5/16/2012: Bullis Charter School Grease; Hits Up

Two quick updates.

First, KPAO.org once again found some great information on how Bullis Charter School officials and family members get their way on the County board: yep, by "greasing the wheels of Industry".

Second, a site note: since the announcement of the extorted "deal" mentioned below, site hits have quadrupled on average! We're working hard to become an important resource for our community. Send us a message if you have any suggestions on making our site better.

5/8/2012: For Facebook Users, a Place to Talk BCS

If you are interested in a place to talk to other community members about these issues, check out the Bullis Charter School discussion on the Facebook group, "Los Altos & Los Altos Hills Public Education Forum".

5/8/2012: Pearl Harbor? Meet 9/11...

Last night our school district announced the results of years of legal extortion by Bullis Charter School: they will give these billionaires a campus for free. This agreement is still tentative, but it appears to be a major setback in our battle to preserve our schools here in Los Altos and Hills.

4/6/2012: BCS Special Needs Support Under Fire

Thanks to a very focused community member who brought this to our attention: a report on the special-needs support deficiencies at Bullis Charter School [pdf]. The report, by the California state watch-dog agency FCMAT concludes that there are serious questions about Bullis Charter's support of special education. For example:

As submitted to the county office on August 30, 2006, the Bullis Charter School special education program's expenditure reimbursement report for 2005-2006 showed a total of $133,294 in expenses.
[...]
The Controller reviewed the special education expenditure claims and concluded that approximately 75% of the expenditures should not be paid with state and/or federal special education funds.

Unfortunately the Santa Clara County Board of Education has not followed-up on this 2007 report, but we're hoping that a concerted effort by parents will cause them to do so.

3/27/2012: New Bullis Charter School Blogs

The online momentum against Bullis Charter School continues to build. In the past weeks two new blogs have appeared along side of a long-standing one:

LASDVoices: Local Los Altos and Hills community members write about a number of subjects on Bullis Charter School.
BCS Thoughts: Local online commenter "Joan J. Strong" writes about Bullis Charter School.
KPAO: A long-time advocate for our public schools here, David Cortright writes about Bullis Charter School.

3/20/2012: Money, Money, Money

The Financials Section is now ready in "beta" form. As this is a complicated subject and we very much want to get this section exactly right we're soliciting feedback from the wider community with any necessary corrections.

This section, however, will ultimately be the cornerstone of our case against Bullis Charter School and will right the most important misconception about BCS, which is that is somehow saves our community money.

2/28/2012: New Materials

Our Materials Section has been updated to include some new materials including a new flyer. Today our focus is LASD parent awareness. Even now with all of negative press on BCS, it's important to understand that most parents do not know what is going on in our community.

Silence and secrecy have always been two key allies for BCS. Parents need to be told what is at stake. Citizens without children need to know that our top-ranked school district here is under attack and is in danger of being severely damaged--with devastating consequences to our real estate values.

2/18/2012: Updated History Section

The History Section has been mostly re-written. While this new version is a vast improvement over the previous one, the story of Bullis Charter School is a long and complicated one, so more additions to this section are forthcoming. Again, we welcome and encourage feedback and additions as we want it to be a perfect and complete account of the facts. (It's also worth noting that we are not afraid of publishing mistakes that might have been made by the District which would provide more motive to the BCS "crime" against our community).

2/13/2012: Parent Feedback (updated)

We have received messages from many, many parents. Almost all of them are from our community but our site has also gained the attention of parents across the USA--many of whom are in a similar battle with a Charter School in their area.

Virtually all of these messages have been very positive and many parents have spent significant time researching information in order to make our site better.

Some time ago we received messages from two local overtly pro-public school parents who did not agree with the core positions taken on this site. Although these messages were a "statistical anomaly", there is certainly room for disagreement about the fine points of our struggle to keep our local neighborhood public schools from being closed. With that, we'd like everybody to know the following:

We are dedicated to making this site as accurate as possible. If you see any fact on this site that is not accurate please point it out.
Related to the above, if you find any of the wording or "tone" of the site getting in the way of the core messages, please by all means send us specific corrections.
We feel it is our duty to parents in our community to warn them about BCS. We have all heard many, many very sad stories about children's educations being disrupted by parents who didn't know they were part of a revenge plot and after finding out had to take their kids out of BCS. This is very difficult thing for children to go through and we hope this site will help prevent more stories like this. The only way that will occur is for prospective parents of BCS to get the whole story.
We do not believe that appeasing the BCS leadership will accomplish anything. BCS has been attacking our public schools through lawsuits, letters to the editors, PR, buying politicians and telling their parents how to vote for years before this site ever existed. It's hard to imagine that reverting to our silence is going to accomplish anything.
While there is a time and place for careful tactfulness, this site intentionally does not bother itself with that. The goal of this site is information (sometimes in very raw form). We will leave the "smoothing out" of the messages to others.
We know that some parents believe that BCS has a right to exist. We think this is misguided. We do not agree that the Charter laws passed by Californians had Bullis Charter School in mind--far from it. We do not think this school helps our community in any way and in fact hurts it in many ways.
As a movement, we think that Charter Schools are on their way out, as some of the leading edge press has been showing. Our community should be on the "leading edge" of education and getting rid of our failed "Charter School" experiment will accomplish exactly that.
We are absolutely clear on the human toll this is taking on our community. This is not a game. In particular, we think that the current BCS students should be treated as fairly as possible as this was not their fault.
We most emphatically do not consider BCS parents, "the enemy". Many LASD parents either once were BCS parents or considered it. Many parents have taken their children out of BCS and we hope more do so. It's important that we help our neighbors by showing them the facts. This site is dedicated to all Los Altos and Hills parents whether they are currently attending Bullis Charter or an LASD school.
We think that sites like this one are dictated by the Charter Laws.

Whether you agree with it our not (we don't) the Charter laws in California were designed to create "competition" in our school system. Today most Charters--BCS included--take this to mean that they will compete with our public schools in the same way that any for-profit business would ruthlessly battle a competitor.

This means aggressive marketing, "spin", coordinated campaigns, lobbying efforts, PR, and their own biased "comparisons" to public schools. In other words, exactly what any new, aggressive start-up company might do (except for the lobbying part).

Our school district, being a public school district, is not equipped to "compete" in this way (nor should they be, in our opinion). However BCS and other Charters have shown that this creates a completely unbalanced situation wherein the Charter school is allowed to beat up on a defenseless public school system.

This "brave new world" that the Charter laws in California have created are giving rise to sites and efforts exactly like this one: if the District cannot fight for itself, parents need to step in.

2/8/2012: BCS Working the System

New revelations from the Mercury News on Bullis Charter School Pull Peddling. It's politics-as-usual again: plum contracts handed out in exchange for a little strategic help in subverting democracy.

1/12/2012: History Section Updated

Thanks to another parent who clarified some of the detailed history of the circumstances behind Bullis Charter's formation.

1/6/2012: Write The Santa Clara Board

Thanks to a parent who had a great idea: we now have the list of Santa Clara Board of Education Board of Education members on the site. Write them and let them know how you feel!

12/19/2011: Updates throughout the site.

Based on your feedback, we've made many updates to the site in the past few days. We've made some modifications to the history section and added some tidbits about the elected officials who have enabled this assault on our community.

12/16/2011: Thanks for all of the messages!

Yesterday we added the message functionality to let supporters communicate with us. The response has been amazing!

Besides encouraging words, we've received the following feedback and we've heard it loud and clear. We'll act on as soon as we can (if we haven't already):

Copy editing needed. Some have pointed out that we have some spelling and grammar mistakes on the site. We're in the process of making a "copy edit" run through the site, but more work is needed. Thanks to those who pointed out specific issues (those have been fixed). Please send a message if you see anything else that needs fixed.
More data please! We've had numerous requests to link to more hard data sources. Same deal here: if you have any specific data (with URLs) then we'll get them up here. We need all of the data we can get. We'll also try to do get more references together ourselves.
More points to make. Thanks to several readers who have sent us suggestions for content. We'll get that up as soon as possible.
Keep re-working the tone and messaging. Similar to the first point, we'll heartily admit that all of the wording isn't perfect yet. A lot of the work you see here was done stream-of-consciousness and can use some cleaning up. Again, feel free to send in your suggestions.

Again, we're 100% open to constructive criticism. Thanks for helping us to make this important resource the best it can be.