BY BRADEN CARTWRIGHT
Daily Post Staff Writer
A bond measure put on the ballot by the Los Altos School District to get Bullis Charter School off of its two middle school campuses has passed.
Measure EE will allow the Los Altos School District to take out $350 million in bonds for construction, paid back by Los Altos property owners.
The district is planning to use a chunk of the money to build a new campus where Kohl’s is at the San Antonio Shopping Center in Mountain View.
By moving Bullis there, the district could move its sixth grade students from elementary school to middle school campuses, where they’d get more electives like foreign language, music and robotics, board member Bryan Johnson said before the election.
A new campus could open for Bullis before the 2027-28 school year, Johnson said.
Bullis opposed the bond measure. The charter school is happy with its current setup in portable classrooms at Egan Junior High School and Blach Intermediate School, Superintendent Maureen Israel said in an email.
A new campus also wouldn’t be large enough to fit Bullis and its 1,000-plus students, Israel said.
“LASD continues to exclude us from conversations about facilities, resulting in unworkable and counterproductive proposals,” Israel said.
The district passed a $150 million bond measure in November 2014 and purchased the Kohl’s site in 2019.
The district, working with the city of Mountain View, planned to sell its leftover development rights at Kohl’s to developers, bringing in another $79 million, Johnson said in an interview in August.
But developers paused their office projects because of the pandemic downturn and rising interest rates, and the district has only brought in about $10 million from developers so far, Johnson said.
“It’s been a long time since we’ve been able to significantly invest in our schools,” Johnson said.
Property owners will pay the bond back annually — $30 for every $100,000 on the assessed value of the property, or $1,200 for a $4 million home.
The total debt is estimated to be $730 million, paid off by 2060, a tax rate statement said.
The bond is the largest in the area. The Menlo Park City School District asked for a $124 million bond, and the Belmont-Redwood Shores School District asked for a $171 million bond.
Menlo Park received 71% support, Belmont received 67% support and Los Altos received 56% support — just over the 55% needed to pass.