Newly elected school board members Terry Godfrey and Ken Dauber will take their seats behind the dais for the first time Tuesday night to be sworn into office and then tackle a full agenda.
The beginning of the meeting will be devoted to administering Godfrey and Dauber’s oath of office and other housekeeping items – officially certifying the Nov. 4 election results, electing the new president and vice president for the year and making new committee and school assignments.
The board will also hear a report on the latest available data for two major student surveys: the California Healthy Kids Survey (CHKS), which is administered to fifth, seventh, ninth and eleventh graders every other year, and Palo Alto Reality Check (PARC), which surveys all middle school students annually. The two surveys aim to gauge students’ experience with and perceptions of subjects like physical and mental health, school support, engagement and safety; bullying and drug and alcohol use.
Student Services Coordinator Brenda Carrillo will present the “key findings” from the 2013-14 CHKS and 2014-15 PARC results. A staff report calls the results “encouraging” in that they suggest a decline in bullying and harassment.
“While bullying and harassment are still present, the mandatory training, notifications, student programming, reporting, documentation, and investigation procedures appear to have contributed to the reduction in incidents,” a staff report reads.
The survey results are posted on the district website.
In other business Tuesday, the board will hear an updated enrollment projection from the district’s demographer that draws on new 2014-15 enrollment data. The board last discussed the implications of consistently rising enrollment, including the possibility of needing to open a 13th elementary school and fourth middle school, in September when Superintendent Max McGee recommended the board convene a committee to analyze that need.
“While the demographer’s report may not indicate the level of growth we thought we
would experience, I still think an Enrollment Management Advisory Committee is necessary given the size of our middle schools, the number of students being ‘overflowed,’ and the fact there will be uneven growth throughout the district, with the most significant enrollment increases in the Western Cluster of PAUSD,” McGee wrote in his executive summary for the Dec. 9 meeting.
McGee will also provide updates on board goals and the district’s outstanding Office for Civil Rights-related matters.
District Bond Program Manager Bob Golton and Gunn High School Principal Denise Herrmann, along with an architect and another Gunn staff member, will present modifications that have been made to the design of Gunn’s upcoming construction project, including creating a “wellness center” and enhancements to music, choral, student activities and media arts classrooms.
The meeting begins at 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Dec. 9, in district headquarters at 25 Churchill Ave., Palo Alto. View the agenda here.
Go Kent, make PAUSD a better place for our kids!
I look forward to hearing about this meeting. Now that we have 2 new board members I am expecting a lot more action and a lot less fluff. Along with the enrollment projections, there are more housing developments which will bring in more students. This is a discussion which needs to have been made already.
On top of the agenda, I understand that there will be many people speaking at Open Forum and I hope that they will be reported on in the aftermath report on this meeting.
It is the responsibility of the reporter who attends this meeting to report what happens and what is said, not rewrite this article as if it was a report on a meeting.
It is now 10.12 am on Wednesday morning. As yet there is no report on the meeting last night.
Was there a Weekly reporter there?
Was it well attended?
What was discussed about enrollments?
What happened at Open Forum? Were there many speakers? What were their topics?
A newspaper should be reporting this news. Thank you.