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Neighbors ask Cupertino commission to deny Tessellation School's proposed high-school expansion over traffic and parking
Summary
A resident representing 29 households urged the planning commission to deny Tessellation School's revised conditional use permit to expand high school grades and enrollment at the former Rickert Elementary site, citing existing traffic and parking problems and the school's past promises.
Gil Doyle, a resident who said he represents 29 households near the former Rickert Elementary site, asked the Cupertino Planning Commission on June 24, 2025, to deny Tessellation School's application to expand high-school grades and grow enrollment at that campus.
Doyle said the school received a conditional-use permit in December 2023 to operate pre-K through ninth grade with a maximum of 300 students and had told the city council it planned to move ninth grade to another campus in fall 2025. Quoting written statements by the school as presented in his remarks, Doyle said, “high school will only be ninth grade on the current campus, and only for 1 year.”
Doyle told commissioners Tessellation now seeks a revised conditional-use permit to add grades 10 through 12 and grow to 425 students while keeping staff levels at a maximum of 85. He said the school opened in 2023 with 141 students and currently enrolls 268 students and that the proposed increase to 425 would add about 125 cars at morning drop-off and afternoon pick-up. He said most students are driven to the campus and called the school “not a neighborhood school.”
Doyle urged the commission and city to require Tessellation address current traffic and parking impacts before approving any expansion. He noted the school's own proposal for a shuttle operation — using an off-site shuttle station such as New Life Church and minivans to ferry students to the campus — and said the shuttle plan should be evaluated in the traffic study required by the revised conditional-use-permit application.
The remarks were submitted during the meeting’s oral-communications section; the commission did not take action on the school’s application during the June 24 meeting.
The school’s application and the traffic-study requirement will be considered through the city’s planning process; Doyle’s remarks requested that the commission weigh existing neighborhood impacts and the school’s prior conditional-use commitments before approving any change to the earlier permit.
