-PDBM/FXT MOUNTAIN VIEW VOICE
■ CITY COUNCIL UPDATES ■ COMMUNITY ■ FEATURES
Legal battle ends between Bullis, LASD By Nick Veronin
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MICHELLE LE
Members of Hacker Dojo work at the popular hang-out, which is under pressure from the city to comply with safety and building codes.
City could shut down Hacker Dojo POPULAR HANGOUT FOR PROGRAMMERS FACES BIG BILL TO MEET CITY CODES By Daniel DeBolt
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ity officials say that the popular classroom and open office space for computer programmers, Hacker Dojo, may be redtagged and shut down on Jan. 31 if the non-profit does not meet some potentially pricey city code requirements. The Dojo, which is used by 300 programmers who pay a $100 monthly fee, has been open since late 2009. Until last fall, Dojo board members say city officials had been relatively
permissive as the Dojo operated without building permits in an industrial garage space, and was welcomed by some officials as a sort of incubator for tech start-ups. But Dojo directors admit that they didn’t know much about city requirements when they picked the building and moved in. And the result has been a conflict is wearing on both city officials and Dojo directors. “We had been trying to work with them,” said the city’s economics development director, Ellis Berns. City officials have
been saying, “You gotta start meeting the terms of the conditional use permit,” Berns said, which required a fire alarm and building permits. But those and other requirements weren’t met, and the permit expired. “Then we learned not too long ago that they leased additional space,” Berns said. Last fall the Dojo was set to double in size, leasing a pair of 2,500-square-foot spaces nextdoor that were to be used for classes and work space.
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s we start 2012, let’s look back to see how five technology companies that have grown in Mountain View are contributing to our economy with multi-billion dollar businesses — Adobe, Symantec, Sun Microsystems, Intuit and Google. On arriving in California, I had to write software so that our office Xerox laser printer, connected to a computer running the UNIX operating system, could print. Different printers used different commands. So, in 1982, John Warnock and Charles Geschke left Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) to
found Adobe to help standardize printing by creating the Postscript language. From Embarcadero Road in Palo Alto, Adobe moved to new premises at 1585 Charleston Road, graced by a sculpture of a person peeping out of a tower. In 1997, Adobe left Mountain View for downtown San Jose office towers. Adobe is now a $4.2 billion, 10,000-employee company with software and online services for document management, digital media
creation, web management and publishing. Symantec, founded in 1982 and headquartered at 350 Ellis Street, started with a combined flat-file database and word processor called Q&A for personal computers. After a few acquisitions, Symantec took off when it purchased Peter Norton’s Norton Computing in 1990, becoming a leader in security software. It expanded from personal computer software into enterprise systems and cloud computing services. Revenues for the fiscal year ending April 1 2011 were $6.2 billion. See HEY TECH, page 11
See BULLIS, page 11
El Camino board member steps down from post UWE KLADDE WILL REMAIN IN HIS SEAT ON THE HOSPITAL DISTRICT’S BOARD
See HACKER DOJO, page 8
Billion-dollar tech players hatch in MV By Angela Hey
he California Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal from the Los Altos School District on Jan. 18, effectively ending the yearslong battle between the district and Bullis Charter School over equitable sharing of the district’s facilities and funds. The court’s decision was celebrated by officials at Bullis Charter School who said the ruling was a precedent-setting victory for charter schools across the state. “This case was not only of great importance for the families and children at our school,” said Ken Moore, chair of the board of directors at Bullis. “It’s also an important message throughout the state that public school students that choose to attend a charter school program do not give up their rights to be treated equally to their peers who attend district-run programs.” Jeff Baier, superintendent of the Los Altos School District, said he was “disappointed” with the high court’s decision, as well as with the ultimate ruling of the court of appeals.
“We thought it warranted (the state Supreme Court’s) attention, because the appeal court hearing has implications for school districts throughout the state,” Baier said. He said that the district sought to have the official opinion of the appeals court “unpublished,” because of concerns over some of the methodologies the court outlined for determining how to calculate equitable apportionment. “I hope it’s not a precedent,” said Diane Ravitch, an author of numerous books on education in America. Ravitch, once in favor of the charter school movement, has changed her mind on the matter. “The original purpose of the charter school was to help the neediest kids in a community. This is not the profile of Bullis. What you have is a group of wealthy parents who have created a private school with public school money.” If the state Supreme Court’s decision in this case were to set a precedent, Ravitch said, it would be a “dangerous” one. “Increasingly the charter sector
By Nick Veronin
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we Kladde, who has served on El Camino Hospital’s board of directors since 2008, has announced he will be stepping down immediately in order to “spend more time and energy on his family.” He will continue to serve on the board of the hospital district, a separate governing body made up of the same board members. The hospital board meets monthly on business decisions, while the district board meets quarterly and rules strictly on matters pertaining to the El Camino Hospital District. The board of directors has not decided how it will go about replacing Kladde, a former registered nurse who was elected
in 2008 to a four-year term that expires this November. The hospital statement said that the board will determine the process it will follow to fill the vacancy in the coming weeks. Since it is the district board members who appoint the members of the hospital board, it may be that Kladde will have some say in choosing his replacement. “He has had tremendous positive impact over these past three years on El Camino Hospital, its patients and the community,” said John Zoglin, chairman of the hospital’s board of directors. “It has been my privilege to serve on the El Camino Hospital Board of Directors, and I am pleased to be able to continue to See KLADDE, page 10
JANUARY 27, 2012 ■ MOUNTAIN VIEW VOICE ■
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