May 11, 2008

School district could help end rift

Editorial

Los Altos School District officials should forget about appealing a judge's rejection of their lawsuit against a charter school because doing so would waste money and aggravate a rift with Los Altos Hills residents that has already lasted too long.

In their suit, district officials argued that Bullis Charter School shouldn't give admission preferences to some Los Altos Hills students. They worry that the practice complicates the district's plan to reopen its own campus in Los Altos Hills next fall.

But the provision favoring students from the closed school's boundaries was approved by the charter sponsor, the Santa Clara County Board of Education, and recently upheld by a Superior Court judge. District trustees are now weighing an appeal.

The bad blood began with the district's ill-fated move to close the Bullis-Purissima campus in 2003, leaving the community without a public school. That decision triggered a legal and political uproar.

Although efforts to create a separate Hills district and a lawsuit to force the school's reopening both failed, the dispute helped launch Bullis Charter. Backers of the charter school sued to open it at the old campus, but lost and operate it in Los Altos.

Amid this acrimony, the charter school filled a void left by Bullis-Purissima's closure. Reopening Bullis-Purissima now will not heal all the old wounds immediately. Some Hills parents will prefer to stay with the charter school, which could upset all the district's work redrawing school boundaries and cost it state funding based on attendance.

Rather than appealing its lawsuit, however, the district should continue to rebuild ties with the Hills community. The decision to open the Bullis-Purissima campus itself, at a cost of $12 million, was a positive signal to those residents. Furthermore, the district's Hills' school has the advantage of actually being in that community. The charter school is two miles away, near the Los Altos-Mountain View border.

Officials need to reassure Hills parents that the district is back in their community to stay. It can also show its neighborly side by accepting the decision of the county school board and a Superior Court judge.