21 January 2025 PAUSD Board Meeting Comments
4 Open Forum
Board Members –
Palo Alto had a 50% jump in suspensions this past school year.
We went From 119 suspensions in 2022-23 to 171 students in 2023-24.
And Total Days of Suspension jumped from 166 to 270.
Virtually all of the effect was highly concentrated at just 5 schools:
Greene, Fletcher, Ohlone, Palo Verde, and Hays.
With spikes for individual students at JLS and Addison and several other schools.
(The district should be able to unravel this below the level of public reporting)
While Palo Alto suspension rates are notably lower than California’s, they impact our disadvantaged groups substantially higher (ratio of suspension rate to percent of population).
This disproportionality (and excess disproportionality compared to the state) are very problematic as well as our use of suspensions for elementary students – what are we achieving?
This should be of substantial concern to the board, the district, and the public.
We are going exactly the wrong way.
I provided details in a spreadsheet which I sent to the board and that I ask to be included in the next meeting package and I ask that the board and district share with the public their plans to reverse this disturbing trend.
5. Consent Agenda
C. It looks like board members are being assigned to an advisory committee that hasn’t been established. When will that happen? It would be good to see a charter and such.
F. Classified Personnel – 2 Special Education Staff are leaving. I look forward to the district will consider providing better reporting on staff turnover or churn in different categories as well as data compared to same month last year and year to date to see if there are meaningful trends or issues to address. This is a critial issue both for our staff and for our students.
7A – PAUSD Promise – Literacy
Our literacy metrics need to include CAASP data. It is the state standard. What should be of concern and discussed here is why our CAASP scores for literacy (and math) went down this year. What is the reason for this change and why doesn’t it correlate with the iReady results? This is true in our elementary schools (at least from my quick look) where the iReady data and work is concentrated.
9. Information Items – Calendar
A. It is good that the PAEA and the District have together recognized the time impact for teachers and staff of IEP meeting outside of school. Our elementary special education teachers have effectively no prep time, unlike the 3+ hours a week that their peers have. I hope the District and PAEA also take the opportunity to do the esure there are no inequities in our work practices for any of our teachers or staff.
C. The state Dashboard report shows declines for several of our marginalized groups as well as going down slightly in English Language Arts with similar results in Math. Graduation rates for multiple marginalized groups also declined. Absenteeism improved but should still be considered troubling and, as noted previously, Suspensions jumped by 50%.
G. There are a number of important topics that are not on the calendar at all and they need to be addressed publicly. The District proposed a presentation on Special Education for the October meeting which they decided to defer. It looks like there is no presentation on the Special Education program for the rest of the school year. Nor is there a presentation on Suspensions which have gotten notably worse or Absenteeism which has improved, but should still be considered problematic, and of course, the 8th grade math problem with the large number of students failing – has it gotten better?
