Voter Guide: Los Altos School District INSIDE
OCTOBER 19, 2018 VOLUME 26, NO. 39
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MOVIES | 24
Big challenges await Mountain View Whisman school board By Kevin Forestieri
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here’s never a dull moment in the Mountain View Whisman School District. In just the last few years, parents and community members have witnessed major shifts in school boundaries, construction projects at every school and the looming potential for the district’s student enrollment growing by 50 percent. A new school named after Jose Antonio Vargas at the former Slater site is slated to open up in just 10 months. Four candidates — incumbents Greg Coladonato and Ellen Wheeler, and challengers Devon Conley and Tamara Patterson — are vying for two seats on the board, arguing that they’re the right choice to lead the Mountain View Whisman through a critical time in the district. The two top vote-getters will have to contend with several big issues on the academic front — a persistent achievement gap along ethnic and economic lines, new school schedules and significant teacher and administrative turnover. But they’ll also have to put on their real estate hats, managing land negotiations with major tech companies, including Google, and working with city of Mountain View to secure a future North Bayshore campus. Teacher housing proposals made by the district — one of which already flamed out due to community feedback — will also likely require cross-agency collaboration. The latest news is that Mountain View Whisman will also face having to approve, and somehow accommodate, a new charter school proposed by
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VOTER G UI D E Bullis Charter School that would eventually house 320 K-5 students. District officials are bracing for how that might throw a wrench in newly approved school attendance boundaries set to take effect next year, and not to mention uncertainty over where a charter school could be housed. The Mountain View Whisman community is also still reeling from major controversies in recent years, and current and prospective board members are seeking to rebuild trust with families. Earlier this year, the school board voted 5-0 to remove and reassign four principals without an explanation, prompting a monthslong protest by families demanding answers amid a trickle of information about how district leaders arrived at the decision. Last year, the school district also faced scrutiny over how the superintendent and district leadership implemented a digital math program called Teach to One, which was adopted without adequate community input, “piloted” for an entire grade level, and was put into place before a contract had been signed. A donation to cover the estimated $500,000 cost of the program never materialized and the level of dissent from teachers and administrators was hidden from the board and only revealed through emails procured by the Voice through a Public Records Act request. The two incumbents, Coladonato and Wheeler, say that new checks and balances have been put in place to avoid such a thing from happening again. See MV WHISMAN, page 14
NATALIA NAZAROVA
Radha Shyamsundar, left, welcomes visitors to her Mountain View home’s golu, an annual display of dolls and figurines depicting mythological scenes to celebrate the 10-day Hindu festival of Dasara.
A colorful Dasara display Radha Shyamsundar celebrates the Hindu holiday of Dasara every year in traditional fashion at her home in Mountain View. She said she spends a month prior to the 10-day festival setting up her golu, a huge display of dolls representing figures from Indian mythology. During the fall festival, friends visit to sing religious songs, exchange gifts and admire the
display, which will stay up until Friday, Oct. 19. The golu attracted up to 30 visitors a day over the weekend, said Shyamsundar. Shyamsundar said her children, Divya and Surya Sethuraman, help create the golu displays, learning the traditions and stories behind the colorful dolls in the process. Dasara (sometimes spelled Dasehra in English) celebrates the triumph
of good over evil and is centered on Durga, a warrior goddess who killed the buffalo demon Mahishasura, according to Shyamsundar. The family, longtime residents of Mountain View who immigrated from the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, faithfully sets up the elaborate display every year, Shyamsundar said. —Andrea Gemmet
New registry, fees ahead for Airbnb rentals By Mark Noack
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fter years of deliberation, Mountain View is finally ready to rein in on Airbnb and other freewheeling shortterm rental services. At the Oct. 9 meeting, the Mountain View City Council voted unanimously to launch a new citywide registry and to require short-term rentals to pay a hodgepodge of city
surcharges, including a new $165 annual registration fee. This cottage industry has grown rapidly in recent years and is now estimated to encompass approximately 1,000 listings in Mountain View that include houses, apartments or individual rooms rented out on a day-byday basis. Airbnb is the largest by far, estimated to hold about 86 percent of the listings in the city.
VIEWPOINT 19 | WEEKEND 21 | GOINGS ON 25 | MARKETPLACE 26 | REAL ESTATE 28
Airbnb and similar companies have been a boon for many homeowners looking to earn a little extra money on the side, and they have benefited from the absence of any city regulations or taxes for nearly a decade. For nearly four years, city officials have been pondering how to strike the right balance when See AIRBNB, page 10