Their Future is Now:  Support Our Children and Protect Our Schools

State budget cuts are undermining the Cupertino Union School District’s quality of education. The School Board must now make cuts to core
instructional programs. Among the actions planned, our District will lose up to 115 teachers in Kindergarten through 8th grade across the
district. (This is equivalent to losing 4 schools!) Students in every grade level at every school will be impacted.

The time to act is now! With a $375 contribution per family – about $2 per day of instruction – we can save our excellent school programs
together!

The campaign is ready to accept donations for the District-wide fundraising effort.http://www.savecupertinoschools.org/

1.  We need a large number of donations by this week (Wednesday evening) so that the fund raising team can get others
vested in the district to donate on Thursday morning in preparation for the Official March 16 Kickoff press conference.

2.   In addition this week, you can take advantage of the installment plan so that your donation can be divided by 2 monthly payments. Donation is tax
deductible. Sponsored by CEEF, 501(c)3 Feel free to share the informationwith other parents and friends.

Thanks to an anonymous Burbed reader for sending this in!

To all you cynics who claim that Prop 13 needs to be repealed to save our schools – take a look at this and weep!

We don’t need to raise taxes at all! Parents are more than willing to tax themselves directly to pay for the education of their children. This enables more of our precious tax dollars to go support the true hope for the future: retiring baby boomers.

This is win win. Property taxes stay the same for retiring baby boomers who pay 1/2 to 1/10 the property tax of their neighbors. Parents with their annoying children who are destroying the state with their greedy need for services pay for schools. Schools improve. House prices go up for everyone – including the baby boomers who pay 1/2 to 1/10 the property tax of their neighbors.

It’s clear – the next step is to cut school funding even further, and rebate residents based on how long they have owned their house. And keep those kids off the lawns!

It’s search engine Thursday!

The other day, I noticed a dramatic uptick in lottery related searches

ohlone mandarin school lottery 

"mountain view" schools lottery elementary 2010 

cupertino school district are all students enrolled?

cupertino union school district lottery date 2010 

Wow. That’s a lot of lottery searches!

I touched upon this last week, and I think that it’s now time to discuss this.

So what are these searches all about? Now, you might guess that this is because Bay Area Schools are so packed because voters in the late 1970’s decided to close many of them to save money because children aren’t the future… or that some districts are dramatically better than others voters in the late 1970’s decided to defund schools believing that children aren’t the future so districts rely on direct parental donations…

Or, these searches could be about how enrolling your child into a Bay Area school is like buying a winning lottery ticket! You’re guaranteed to get back a huge reward on your investment – even if you need to bring $2000-$10,000 in cash to class. Your child will go to Stanford, and then booom start the next Google.

I think it’s the latter… not the former. But that’s just my guess.

Should Money Buy You Privileged Access to a Public School System?

Schoolhouse In Palo Alto it does. Give Palo Alto Partners in Education — the district-wide foundation that supports all schools in the Palo Alto Unified School District — $2,500 and you get priority notification about middle and high school tours along with an invitation to a cocktail party with other wealthy donors to the district.

Give $5,000 and you get the same privileged access to information and the same exclusive chance to network with the community’s financial elite, plus an invite to a "special group event with the PAUSD superintendent."

Give over $10,000 and you get all the above, and an "invitation to individual discussion with PAUSD superintendent."

The message here is clear: in Palo Alto wealth buys differentiated access to the Superintendent of a public school district, membership of an inner ‘circle’ of local influencers and priority over the less well-off in visiting publicly-owned facilities.

Thanks to Burbed reader Herve for this find. A great post on SVMoms!

Personally I think this is a great idea. Let’s face it, we live in a market driven economy. Not a planned, socialist economy. It makes sense that if you invest more in your children, you will get better results. I don’t think there should be any outrage here.

Personally, I think you should be able to buy your grades, and even college acceptances – but let’s just start at buying good teachers and principals, without having to be all flashy and sending your kids to private school.

What? You don’t agree?

I’m tagging this post with the “Bay Area Schools” category. I’d appreciate it if you could help me find some older posts that should also get this tag.

Cupertino schools may cut GATE program, have 30-1 student-teacher ratio in some grades – San Jose Mercury News
The Cupertino Union School District could face cuts as early as next month as the Board of Trustees decides how to close a projected $5 million deficit for the 2010-2011 school year.

The board is scheduled to make long-term cuts Jan. 11, Superintendent Phil Quon announced Tuesday at a school board meeting.

Possible cuts include staff reductions, reducing custodial staff to halftime, eliminating district office classified positions, cutting hours at a teacher resource center and eliminating summer school and the GATE (Gifted and Talented Education) program.

“We have scrutinized every aspect of district operations. We think this represents the best way to get where we need to be,” Quon said.

Cutting classes and increasing the student-teacher ratio to 30-1 in grades 1, 2, and 3 is possible, chief business officer Rick Hausman said.

Thanks to Burbed reader Herve for this find.

Merry Christmas students of Cupertino. Come on, you’d rather be at home playing Metal Warefare 2 anyway. Now, there’s even less of a reason to go to school. Hurray!

Let’s continue this discussion!

How much is your school’s suggested donation? | SF Bay Area Home Price and Mortgage Insanity Blog – Burbed.com
How much is your school’s suggested donation?

Live in a Mansion Condo in Menlo Park! | SF Bay Area Home Price and Mortgage Insanity Blog – Burbed.com

SiO2 Says:
November 4th, 2009 at 7:34 am

Las Lomitas elem school foundation has a suggested donation of $1100 per child. AFAIK this is the highest among RBA schools. Most are around $700.

…

SiO2 Says:
November 6th, 2009 at 6:54 am

The amounts are usually published in the foundation’s newsletter.

Saratoga and Los Altos elementary are around $700.

The donations pay for things that are now extras in elem school, like art, music, P.E. Districts that don’t have the foundations may offer these but will charge the parents. Or they may not offer them at all.

On the bright side, property taxes are low if you held your house for 20 years. And those folks probably don’t particularly care about schools anymore.

So CA school spending is around $5500 for most schools (revenue limit) but is higher for ones that are funded by local prop tax (e.g. Saratoga, Los Altos, Los Gatos, Palo Alto) – these range from $8000 to $12000. I’m not sure if those figures include the foundation donations are not.

Whereas in NJ (Burbed’s favorite) school spending between $12k and $20k per student!

It’s puzzling why it’s so low here. Our taxes are not as high as Rush Limbaugh would have you believe, but they are not particularly low either. The only thing I can come up with is that there’s relatively more children here per taxpayer. Or we spend money on other things – but we are low on spending on roads and infrastructure too.

…

Mike Says:
November 6th, 2009 at 7:55 am

Los Gatos suggests $600 for family with 1 child, and
$900 for family with multiple kids.

…

gallileo Says:
November 6th, 2009 at 10:12 am

Ahh, a subject near and dear to my heart. The PIE foundation for my kid’s schools in the slums of Palo Alto recommend $650 for one, $1350 for two and and $1950 for three.

Either someone can’t do simple multiplication problems or they really believe that multiple kids per family are more burdensome to the system than one.

This is all in addition to the PTA requested donations, which vary between schools, but average around $350. So I guess the total is $1000 per student in the slums of palo alto.

But don’t forget the library donations or the pertpetual fundraisers (you would think they could pick decent restaurants, but they don’t.)

Actually there’s more… here’s what else gallileo sent to me:

Hi Burbed,

You asked for a few of the donation appeals. Mostly they just hit the round file (after I donate–yes, the guilt trips work). But here are a couple from the Palo Alto Partners in Education newsletter that hasn’t met its maker yet.

Funniest thing is that the need for money never changes.

Gallileo

From the September 2009 PiE newsletter

Skelly says the district will work hard to be financially responsible and he hopes the community will continue to support our schools.  But he admits there are tough challenges ahead.  “I don’t think any one part of this solves our problem.   We have to be a little smarter and a little more careful with our resources.  It’s a combination of parcel tax, parent support, budget cuts, and using reserves that can put us in a position where we’re as strong as we possibly can be to meet the needs of kids.”   And the role of PiE will increase in importance in the face of the budget challenges over the next few years.  “My sense is that we’re really fortunate to have PiE at this point,” Skelly adds.  “In a strong economic headwind, people are still stepping up.  And I think those people who have the resources now have a special responsibility to help support the schools.”

From the November 2006 newsletter:

Klausner said it would be great if the district had more money for personnel resources.  “Letting the math specialists have more time to get into the classrooms, to be there with the teachers when they’re teaching and then documenting and sharing the best teaching strategies across the district — I think everyone would benefit tremendously from that, but like many things, it (this math specialist program) is way under-funded.”

Can someone explain how math specialists work with teachers? How does this all work?

And why aren’t these schools asking for more? If a private school like Harker can ask for $35,000 a year, why can’t these public schools ask parents to caught up at least $3,500?

The other day someone told me this stunning fact: “The grades of students were better before education became public and mandatory by the government.”

Let’s face it, isn’t it time we ended public school and privatized it so that only those who can afford get educated? That’ll definitely help our statistics!

Just a thought.

It’s search engine Thursday!

Recently someone found this site by searching for: where will my child go to school cupertino school district

As a bonus, someone also found this site by searching for: kennedy middle cupertino too much homework

Again, these questions can be interpreted in multiple ways. Here’s how I interpreted them: “Where will my child go to school in the Cupertino school district?” and “How can I make sure my child gets too much homework at Kennedy Middle School in Cupertino?”

Now, I could cheat and just paste snippets from the WSJ article on white flight from Cupertino:

CUPERTINO, Calif. — By most measures, Monta Vista High here and Lynbrook High, in nearby San Jose, are among the nation’s top public high schools. Both boast stellar test scores, an array of advanced-placement classes and a track record of sending graduates from the affluent suburbs of Silicon Valley to prestigious colleges.

But locally, they’re also known for something else: white flight. Over the past 10 years, the proportion of white students at Lynbrook has fallen by nearly half, to 25% of the student body. At Monta Vista, white students make up less than one-third of the population, down from 45% — this in a town that’s half white. Some white Cupertino parents are instead sending their children to private schools or moving them to other, whiter public schools. More commonly, young white families in Silicon Valley say they are avoiding Cupertino altogether.

White students are far outnumbered by Asians at Monta Vista High School in Cupertino, Calif.

Whites aren’t quitting the schools because the schools are failing academically. Quite the contrary: Many white parents say they’re leaving because the schools are too academically driven and too narrowly invested in subjects such as math and science at the expense of liberal arts and extracurriculars like sports and other personal interests.

The two schools, put another way that parents rarely articulate so bluntly, are too Asian.

Ni hao!

Unfortunately, without knowing where the person who searched for the “where” question lives, an accurate answer cannot be provided. That said, if your house is below $600 per square foot the answer is probably “NONE”.

As for the second question, don’t worry…. it’ll happen automatically. Your child will be fine. He’ll simply be slaving away until 3am every night on homework so he/she can get rejected from Stanford/Harvard/MIT because all his classmates are slaving away until 5am every night, while someone who takes half as many AP courses in Idaho gets in because no one in his school even thought about applying.

But that’s ok. It’s better to introduce your child to the futility of life earlier, so he’ll be prepared for life in Silicon Valley. Woot!

From a flyer sent out to people living in the Fremont Union School District:

Wow. This is a bit of a shocker. The home of the juggernaut Monta Vista, the second most important high school in the world (after Gunn) has spending that is below the statewide average?

I think this is something we should all be proud of. This is an example of how the Bay Area perpetually wrings out more efficiency, doing more with less. It’s a key sign of our ability to innovate.

Congratulations!

But on a more serious note, what exactly is this a sign off? How is this possible?

Cupertino School District Overflow information | SF Bay Area Home Price and Mortgage Insanity Blog – Burbed.com
Real Alex Says:
August 26th, 2009 at 1:43 pm

Cupertino, heh… If you want to see real disaster, stop by Foster City Elementary at Edgewater. This is a trailer park and war zone at the same time. They over enrolled about 200 kids last year! I don’t know exact stats for this year, but from what I’ve heard it’s not much better. School has about 900 students now and enrollment is going up to 1000 this year, though it was originally designed for 600. In the beginning of last year they had one big class of ~100 kids with 2 temp teachers from other schools and volunteers who were… students from the middle school nearby. It reminded me something… temp schools I’ve seen in Somali… But this was actual school with 900 rating in the middle of Silicon Valley.
This year they had to close all main permanent buildings because of poor condition long overdue maintenance. So, now it’s a set of trailers. Proposition to build another elementary school was rejected by the city. Instead city allocated land for new commercial development. Good job, Foster City. Way to stay in the RBA!

I agree. Let’s face it, children are not the future. Let me say it again. Children are not the future.

Prop 13 made that clear in 1978. Children don’t add to communities, they take away from them. All they want is more more more. Does building a school help bring more $200k jobs to Bay Area? Does building a school make it so you can drive 1 block to go to Best Buy/Bed Bath Beyond/Target instead of 5 miles? Of course not. Investing in children is a net loss.

Good job, Foster City! You certainly did pick the right priorities.

Palo Alto Online : School district to cancel Garland re-opening | SF Bay Area Home Price and Mortgage Insanity Blog – Burbed.com
Herve Estater Says:
August 23rd, 2009 at 10:39 pm

Wow. I have seen the overflow down here and it’s bad. There are 3 CUSD elementary schools in Sunnyvale …, and the worst is Stocklmeir (in enrollment). CUSD kicked the resource people out of the adjacent set of buildings and moved grades 4&5 into that complex. I think Stocklmeir has around 950 kids in the K-5 school. 950!!! It’s like a million kids per classroom!

Chief problem is the other 2 elementary schools in the area … weren’t just closed when enrollment dropped in the 70s …. They were sold to developers who bulldozed the schools. So CUSD has nowhere else to send those kids. You should see the place; portable classrooms everywhere, and by portable I mean trailer park

Also from what I hear, anyone enrolling their kids in PA school dist who are older than kindergarten has zero priority on either the neighborhood elementary school or even *keeping siblings together*

I am seriously considering moving to Mountain View now. Cheaper yet better than Palo Alto, less pressure and fewer suicides).

Solid information. Thanks Herve.

By the way, does anyone know of anyone who has actually camped outside to get their kids into a school? That’d make a great post!

One of the reasons the Bay Area is so successful is that we are always pushing the envelope of innovation. Our amazing minds have this amazing ability to take common things and innovate the crap out of them, dramatically changing them. If you live anywhere else, you’ll just have the same ol’ same ol’ year after year, and be boring.

Let’s look at how Silicon Valley has pushed the envelope and truly innovated in the design of enrolling your kids into the local public school:

How to get your kids into a good school in California – camp for days, punch out others, voluntary mandatory donations [Burbed.com]
madhaus aka guitar hero Says:
June 4th, 2008 at 4:49 pm

How to get your kid into Cupertino Unified School District

If you live in CUSD borders:

1. Go to your neighborhood school during enrollment week, usually early February. District website has attendance area map and address finder.
2. Bring PG&E bill, birth certificate of kid, other ID
3. Child must be 5 by December 2nd of that year if enrolling in kindergarten.
4. To enroll in another neighborhood school or alternative program, tell enrollment person and get “lottery ticket” plus enrollment form.
5. Go to alternative school or other neighborhood school during alternative enrollment week, bring ticket and form to sign up. Some alternative schools have additional requirements to enroll. You should call the school well before enrollment to find out what they are so you can meet them.
6. Lottery is held at school district office. You can attend but what you see is meaningless. School by school, they call a bunch of names by picking them out of a hat and numbering them. But students with enrolled siblings are given preference, and you don’t know how many spots there are for each grade, so your number isn’t that useful. A kid with a sibling with #799 is ahead of another #1 and no sibling. Just wait for a letter from the school within 1-2 months.

If you want your kid to go to the intense homework factory with perfect scores on the API, there will be 700 other families trying too. Very few will make it due to sibling preference.

If you missed enrollment week:

Follow same procedure, knowing you are behind everyone who enrolled when they were supposed to. Schools are closed for 6 weeks in summer, you may have to wait until August to enroll, or call school district office.

This means your child may have to attend overflow school instead of regular neighborhood school. And this is why everyone enrolls the first day of enrollment week, first thing in the morning.

There is no transit provided to any CUSD school unless your child goes to a special education program.

If you do not live in CUSD and wish to have child attend:

1. One alternative school takes out of district kids, but makes it very tough. They will not let you know if you’re in until first day of school, since district residents always leapfrog you. None of the regular schools will take out of district, though.

Wow. Seriously. Is there any wonder how Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs ended up creating the amazingly and devastatingly innovative Apple? (we’ll ignore most of the late 80′s to early 90′s)

Keep on taking ordinary things and innovating on them Silicon Valley. Let’s see some more innovation! How can we take school enrollment to the next level?

(For you folks not lucky enough to live in the Bay Area, how do you enroll your kids? Do you have to camp outside for a few days?)