22 April 2025 PAUSD Board Meeting Comments

4 Open Forum

1. Board members and student board members. You rapidly added a student representative for Middle College – why not one for our Cubberley students this year? Why are they denied a voice on the board?

2. While a SEDAC and strategic plan is going to improve special education in Palo Alto, real change has got to come from the board and district leadership.

We have a serious staffing problem for SPED.

We have persistent, high churn – especially in our extensive support needs programs where churn has the biggest impact.

In addition to what their gen ed colleagues do, Special Education Teachers: develop custom education programs for each individual student, ensure compliance with legal reporting under IDEA, coordinate and support general education teachers, coordinate schedules and support with multiple specialists, oversee a team of aides, create IEPs, attend IEP meetings, and deal with very demanding parents.

Hawaii addressed their Special Educator staffing problem with a $10k stipend in 2020. It’s worked. We’ve done the same for gen ed teachers who teach in a combined classroom with 2 curricula. Better SPED teachers will help us reduce our $1 to $2 million in legal settlements. Let’s keep and hire better special education teachers using tactics we’ve used as well as others.

How do we do this?

We can grow more special education certified teachers from within as well as outside. We can give a $5k a year stipend to any teacher who has an current SPED certification with an additional $5k stipend for those who are in active SPED positions. We should also provide flexible compensation so that SPED teachers meet student needs and support their general education colleagues.

3A – Special Education Teacher Residency Program

Thank you PAUSD leadership for taking the initiative to apply for, launch, and suppport this program.

3B – SEDAC and Strategy

Thank you for putting this topic on the agenda, however, it is unfortunate that there is still no action item to actually charter the SEDAC as a District Advisory Committee. I hope this was an oversight that will be addressed at the next board meeting.

It is premature to discuss Special Education Strategy for PAUSD when we don’t have top-level goals. As Dr. Austin has noted for the PAUSD Promise, the key is to keep those goals to a minimum. At the kickoff meeting last week, two topics stood out:

1. Hire and Retain Excellent Teachers and Staff.

2. Move from a culture of Compliance to the same target of Educational Excellence PAUSD pursues across the board.

These are board decisions and require prompt board action and relentless attention. You don’t need the SEDAC to make this choice.

But if we have to start somewhere today, it is with hiring and retaining staff. Just as with everywhere else in our educational program, teachers and staff lead our success. This is a perpetual problem in PAUSD and no matter what our strategies or goals are, very little will happen without them.

We need action starting now, not waiting for a report next Spring.

Do not wait. No excuses. No delays. Concrete Action matters, not powerpoints or meetings or committees. The pyramid is inverted. What matters is outcomes for kids starting today. Everything is just fuel to feed that.

3C – The PAUSD Promise

We rightly celebrate many of our metrics, but let me share some correctives. Our big special education claim is that 68.5% of our students with disabilities spend 80% or more of their time in general education. That puts us behind the average for 25 states, Puerto Rico, and the Native American schools. Dead average. The gap between students with disabilities and other marginalized groups and the overall PAUSD student population is growing, not shrinking. There is an Inclusion Collaborative report cited, but when will it be presented to the board?

Suspensions are a growing problem. Small in absolute number, but growing by an alarming 50% percent for the past three years…

I am glad we are doing work in all the areas we do. I am not even surprised that gains for disabled students have lagged. Burying the unhappy data in footnotes is not going to make things better, it is going to continue the neglect of the past.

5. Consent Agenda

F. Work Orders and Warrants – According to these work orders, it looks like we are spending at least $4 Million on contracted para ed aides (presumably for special education). Is that accurate? Why aren’t these staff brought in as PAUSD employees?

I – VA Program – the Veterans Administration vocational program supports 65 students, yet the public and board haven’t had a presentation on it. An overall presentation was given to the CAC recentlly, the board and public should hear about this and our other vocational programs.

T. The US History Textbook adoption doesn’t appear to include considerations for Accessibility. The PAUSD Promise goal of Equity and Excellence should be considered as well.

6 B – Budget Assumptions – TK

I am curious about the TK program and budget planning for special education students (or lack thereof) and the implications for inclusion (or lack thereof).