Town Crier Staff Report
The answer finally came, and it was no. After studying district needs for facilities for nearly a year, elementary school officials said no to the city's dream of developing a joint-use gymnasium as part of its Rosita recreation plans, on the Covington School site.
School trustees told the city council, at a joint study session May 5, that they need to re-open the Covington School, that it will be an elementary school.
And "we don't need a large community-use gym at an elementary school," said Superintendent Marge Gratiot.
During the months of examining school needs, the question of joint use with the city at Covington "didn't come up," Gratiot said. "We needed the best plan for our schools and worked on that. But with the parents it came up."
Issues for parents of prospective Covington students were "no pool, no gym and no facilities yard," said school trustee Terri Sachs. Parents told school officials they want their elementary school to be just like the others in the district with an enclosed environment without strangers coming to a city-owned gym and without a pool into which a child might fall.
Council members were disappointed.
"We had a hope, a vision, a dream that's now a bit tarnished, changed," said Los Altos Mayor Kris Casto. City officials had been waiting almost a year for an answer from the school district.
For councilman Francis La Poll, he said the report was "bittersweet. I want to fall back and have a chance to think about it and talk with the council."
Councilman John Moss, a former president of the school trustees, asked about opening Covington as a junior high school.
But Gratiot said it would cost $4 million to $5 million more to do that.
One dramatic possibility, mentioned in staff notes, suggests trading the school-owned Covington site for the city-owned Hillview Community Center, formerly a school. The school district could open their school at Hillview, and the city could develop the Covington and adjoining Rosita sites for community recreation.
Covington currently houses the district offices, an aged school-owned swimming pool run by the Masters Swim Program, day care centers and the school district corporation yard.
The city owns an adjoining 5.5-acre parcel at 401 Rosita Ave.
A community task force spent six months in 1997 creating a master plan for developing soccer and ball fields on the Rosita land and a community gymnasium and renovated swimming pool next door at the Covington site.
The facilities study by the school district has identified $66 million of remodeling and retrofitting at their eight schools and reopening a ninth. The district hopes to have a bond measure on the ballot by November.