Moving Forward

Health and Wellness

As many of you may already know, I’m particularly passionate about active transportation, and my primary vehicle is my bicycle. That’s just one part of wellness: “health and wellness” within our schools covers physical, mental, and social wellness for our students and community. One of the many places where schools can have an outsized impact on kids for the rest of their lives is in educating them about healthy living and helping them build lifelong habits. Naturally, in a diverse community like ours, this will look different for every family.

Staff Housing Oversight

The purpose of the Staff Housing Oversight Committee is to “advise on operations and management of [Mountain View Whisman at the Sevens].” Outside of the school district, one of the issues I’m passionate about is the housing crisis. Making sure that we prudently and effectively administer such a large investment is critical to fulfilling the community’s trust. On top of that, we will be providing homes for employees and filling a crucial need in their lives. It’s deeply important that we take that responsibility seriously, which is why I wanted to serve on this committee.

Staff Housing - Ground Lease and Option to Purchase

These are two separate items related to the district’s workforce housing at The Sevens. As the project progresses, these are steps along the way for the board to exercise its duty to the public to thoughtfully consider our options.

I’ll discuss these items out of order from how they will be acted upon at the meeting, but together they represent our continued efforts towards offering subsidized housing for employees. The Mountain View Voice has also presented additional coverage of these two upcoming items for more detail.

In short, completing the Ground Lease paves the way for the District to begin leasing units to employees. We will discuss the terms of the lease that have been updated from the direction given at the August 17, 2023 meeting.

As noted above, while the District owns the building that will house employees, it does not own the land beneath it. While there were attempts in the past to build workforce housing on land owned by the District, these did not come to pass. In collaboration with the City, the District was able to secure the subsidized portion of 777 West Middlefield, but it was unable to buy the land at the time. Times change, and staff will be presenting the Board a negotiated purchase option.

Superintendent Search Firm Interviews

As you may recall, we received proposals from four superintendent search firms by the deadline in our RFP. In the last meeting, the Board voted to bring in all four firms for interviews. During this process, we will hear a fifteen minute presentation by each of the three firms that chose to go forward:

• McPherson & Jacobson, LLC

• Education Leadership Services

• Leadership Associates

After each presentation, we have allocated ourselves fifteen minutes for questions from the trustees. Once they have all presented and we are done with questions, we will deliberate the options presented to us with the goal of selecting our preferred firm. After we have a firm, we’re well on our way to selecting our next superintendent!