21 May 2024 PAUSD Board Meeting Comments

4 Open Forum – JLS Enrollment Snafu?

I am a parent representative on the JLS Site Council, but I am not speaking on behalf of that group today. I was shocked to hear that JLS will have 950 students next year with the likelihood of more arriving during the year. Things may get to the point that JLS will need to add portable classrooms. Yet, at the same time, Greene and Fletcher are struggling to fill their classes.

What the heck is going on?

PAUSD should have been able to forecast this based on enrollment at our elementary schools months ago. Apparently, this has been brought up to district leadership, yet no action has apparently been taken. Changes to enrollment boundaries or even the reallocation of elementary schools to different middle schools or even just a call for voluntary transfers could have been implemented months ago to mitigate these effects both in the short and long term.

Our district is facing serious demographic changes. Both a reduction in the size of our student population and an apparent shift in where our students live. It is time for the district and board to take these changes seriously to serve our students today and in the future.

5Q – Recruitment and Retention Policy Update

Please add the word “disability” to the proposed policy document:

“The Board of Education is committed to employing suitable, qualified individuals to effectively carry
out the district’s vision, mission, and goals, and believes that students benefit when district staff
reflects the racial, ethnic, linguistic, DISABILITY, and cultural diversity of the district.”

Disabled students should also see themselves reflected in the staff of the district.

* 20 percent of our population is disabled – 54 million disabled Americans (this is about the same as our disabled student population if you include all students with IEPs, 504 plans, ADHD, dyslexia, anxiety, and other disabilities that do not have formal educational accommodations, and those students who are eligible but whose families choose not identify as disabled.

* There is a 37 percent employment gap for disabled people nationally. The district should be a leader in employment equity.

* The district does not currently report on disability status of employees in their demographic report.
* There is no data to support that the district hires disabled food service workers even though this is an emphasis of the districts “Futures” program.

6E – California School Employees Association (CSEA) Negotiations

As a parent, I support the district taking proactive action to improve the opportunities for long term growth of our classified staff, particularly our special education aides. There is a huge cost both financial and in performance from staff churn, lack of training, and limited career opportunities to stay in place doing the hard work of supporting our students. PAUSD should also allow classified staff to be paid for leave at the end of their work period to reduce absenteeism on the job and provide a longer work day and adequate coverage for collaboration with teachers, breaks, lunch, and leave so that our classrooms are not perpetually understaffed.

6G – Palo Alto Educators Association Tentative Agreement

It is disheartening to see the lack of action taken by PAUSD to address the churn and morale problems for out special education teachers. Our students can’t thrive without their teachers thriving. Other school districts have added a stipend for their special educators – and these stipends have worked (articles from NPR and Mother Jones). We have done so for teachers who teach combination classes.

Better, happier teachers likely will lead to fewer settlements and our current $1.65M in settlements would be much better spent on thriving teachers.

PAUSD should consider a stipend for both being certified for special education as well as actively teaching in special education classes. All of our classes have disabled students so all teachers will be able to teach better with more training. A possible annual stipend model could be: Certified to teach mild/mod $2k, certified to teach mod/severe $3k, and actively teaching in special education $5k… cumulative.

7A – The Promise Key Performance Indicators

While many of the goals are great, there are no specifics and therefore indicators of ambition. How much are we trying to close the distance between our target groups and their peers? Are we going to be ambitious and try to close the gap by 50% in 3 years or inch along at 5%? or just “try”. Ambitious goals lead to meaningful change. Ending elementary suspensions. Cutting chronic absenteeism in half. Let’s shoot high and do the work to make real change, not just stack vague Powerpoint bullets.

7C – SWIFT Report

We judge our education for our Palo Alto general education students, not by “distance to standard’ but excellence – substantailly above California’s standard. Why are our special education students held to a much lower standard. Our goal needs to be not merely to meet California standards, but close the gap between our special education and general education students by raising the performance for both groups.

Online Agenda and resources: https://go.boarddocs.com/ca/pausd/Board.nsf/Public