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Community, alumni and teachers urge board to preserve Mountain View's AP and advanced courses
Summary
Mountain View High alumni, current teachers and community members pressed the El Monte Union board to reverse proposed cuts to AP Calculus BC, AP Computer Science and advanced language sequences, saying reductions would harm college readiness and drive students to transfer.
Jeff Bolin, a 27-year math teacher at Mountain View High School, opened public comment with a direct plea to the board to preserve advanced offerings that he said are central to students'college pathways. "Out of the five classes I taught two years ago, three of them are not being offered next school year," Bolin said, citing cuts to Academic Decathlon, AP Computer Science A and AP Calculus BC and noting that students spent a summer preparing to take BC only to be told the course would not run. He warned that "this decision very well could be the tipping point sending Mountain View into a downward spiral."
A sequence of alumni and community members followed, tying personal success to Mountain View's AP programs. Jesus Castellanos, class of 2012, said reductions would be "detrimental to the success of high-achieving students in our community," and George Aguilar, a 2007 graduate and attorney, said removing Calculus BC would reduce students' prospects for STEM careers and competitive college admissions. Monica Tomiyasu, a Mountain View teacher, read a student's plea from Johns Hopkins and MIT to keep calculus offerings intact to preserve access for future underrepresented learners. "To limit the potential of Mountain View High's high-achieving students is completely senseless," Tomiyasu said.
Superintendent Edward Zuniga and LCAP presenter Edith Echeverria responded in the meeting's budget discussion, explaining the master-schedule trade-offs that arise when enrollment or section counts fall below thresholds. Zuniga said the district is exploring options to retain pathways where feasible but emphasized the complexity of block schedules and the ripple effects of restoring single sections: "There's no elimination of calculus" in the current master-schedule process, he said, while acknowledging reductions to two AP sections are being considered across the district.
What happens next: the board heard the community input during the public-comment period and will consider the Local Control and Accountability Plan and the proposed budget at its June 18 adoption meeting. Several trustees requested more detailed, school-level staffing and English-learner counts to evaluate whether targeted restorations are possible.
