Los Altos families walk out to protest middle school relocation

LOS ALTOS, Calif. (KGO) -- Any hope of a happy compromise went out the window as families formed what they called a "human chain" outside Egan Junior High School on Monday morning.

"We don't want a charter school to be able to just move into one of our neighborhood schools," Amber MacDonald, a district parent, said.

MacDonald led the fight against a tentative agreement to move Egan Junior High School, and its hundreds of students, to a new location. Bullis Charter School would take over the site. The two schools currently share the campus.

"Almost everything in the agreement gives something to BCS, but nothing to LASD," Vladimir Ivanovic, an LASD Board of Trustees member, said. "So basically we give up what some would call our crown jewel and in return we get less of things that BSC already wanted."

Ivanovic is a Los Altos School District Board of Trustees member who was not representing the board in Monday's protest.

The tentative agreement would span over 10 years. BCS would take over Egan Junior High School's campus in 2023, with a small portion left over to one day become affordable housing for teachers and staff.

Eagan Junior High School would move to a new school planned at San Antonio Shopping Center on the other side of El Camino Real.

"It's very busy," MacDonald said. "There's a lot of retail. There's a lot of commercial. You know even less concern about biking or walking there, which there is, you're going to have to cross major intersections."

Joe Hurd, chair of the BCS Board of Directors, tells ABC7 News they have to concessions in the tentative agreement as well. BSC will have cap of 1,111 students. The school currently has a waiting list of roughly 1,000. However, Hurd still feels the tentative agreement is the best deal for Los Altos students.

Both school boards held meetings to hear the public's comments on the tentative agreement.