Susan Cretekos, director of J.B. Preschool, and her students took possession of her classroom in the former Bullis-Purissima Elementary School last week. An unexpected visitor found eight lively children playing in the courtyard under Cretekos’ eye Friday morning.
“The playgrounds here are great,” Cretekos said.
At the front of the campus are a shiny new front gate and a dark footprint where the amphitheater once stood. The wooden structure was considered too ramshackle to be safe for children to use, Cretekos said.
The flower beds around the campus have been tidied and replanted; there are rosebushes and pleasing juxtapositions of red and silver-green perennials.
Friday’s visitor was greeted politely by a quietly observant security guard, Richard Sudaro, hired after a few people who identified themselves as supporters of Bullis Charter School threatened to picket the preschools if they moved in. Cretekos said charter school supporters sometimes come by, but no one has disrupted the school day.
“I think they remembered that it would affect the children,” she said.
Cretekos emphasized that she has an autistic child among her students. The boy was calling to another child from the wheel of a child-size vehicle when his teacher introduced him.
Los Altos School District’s Preschool Autistic Center is now operating in three classrooms at the rear of the campus. Friday is the slow day at that preschool, said therapist Robert McCune, working with a lone student that morning. He said about six children attend the preschool on other days.
Randy Kenyon, the district’s business manager, said Montessori School of Los Altos and Creative Learning Center Preschool will probably move in once a fence goes up around the school and telephones have been installed in their classrooms. Kenyon expects the fence to be up by midweek.
