The Hills are alive

A group of Los Altos Hills residents claiming to be a silent majority opposed to redrawing school district boundaries packed the inappropriately-named multipurpose room at Bullis Elementary Monday night.

The folks who want to create what would be an all-white district in Los Altos Hills clearly have a couple of strategic problems on their hands, particularly that it's difficult to argue with a group that says it represents a silent majority. Behave yourselves, as redistricting proponents did for most of the meeting Monday, and you appear to be outnumbered. Try to yell louder, as they did towards the end (and in their e-mails to me), and you've justified your opponents claims of intimidation.

If the negotiations fall apart and the redistricting plan does wind up going through, look for Mountain View-Los Altos High School officials to "play the race card, big-time," as one told me last night. They might have a point -- in seven years at Bullis, I met one Latino student, and, not knowing the difference, assumed he was black.