The superintendent, three board members and current Cupertino Council member Hung Wei intentionally spread deceptive narratives to satisfy their real eastate developer friends. They said our schools are too small to run due to the enrollment decline. But the TRUTH is:
Even before the school closure, CUSD already has the most crowded school in the surrounding area. After school closure, IT IS WORSE!!
CUSD has the highest number of households with eligible students per census data and many schools are over capacity with 200+ portable classrooms. Why close schools before getting rid of portable classrooms?
Even the smallest school in CUSD, Blue Hills has 10 more portable classrooms than 10 years ago. Not to mention these schools in East Cupertino and Sunnyvale were over-crowded to begin with. They call it enrollment decline. This is not enrollment decline, this is a reversion to the mean. We are finally — going back to NORMAL!
CUSD enrollment forecasts does not account for the thousands of new housing units in planned in Cupertino, Sunnyvale, and other cities due to various State government mandates. (4588 units in Cupertino, 7000+ in Sunnyvale and much more in San Jose over the next 5~10 years…)
Even if CUSD would lose 4000 students in the next 10 years as they claim (but will never happen), we are entering Basic Aid next year. Losing students means our per student funding will continue to rise making us even richer. With extra funding, we can improve the student/teacher ratio and education quality.
In California, the average student:teacher ratio is 29. CUSD is at 32:1 and often even more and is still closing schools. Other Basic Aid districts do not close schools. They optimize classroom size and neighborhood boundaries. But at CUSD, Board members like Lori and Sylvia didn’t even try the other ways before closing school. That’s because they need to satisfy some special interest groups first.