This agreement will be voted on by the teachers’ union from May 13 to 17 and the result will be announced on May 17. It has also been added to the agenda for the upcoming school board meeting on May 21 to be discussed by the district officials and school board members, where the entire contract is slated to be ratified.

Every year, PAUSD negotiates new terms with PAEA, which represents the certified staff such as teachers, and California School Employees Association Chapter 301, which represents the classified staff such as aides and custodians. Usually in this district, negotiations end in an agreement after early discussions. However, this year, the district and union could not come to a compromise after initial negotiations, setting the precedent for the first impasse between PAUSD and PAEA.

A closer look at the numbers

The original proposal by PAEA included an 8% increase from the 2022-23 teacher’s salary which was responded with 2% counteroffer from PAUSD. PAEA’s best and final offer was 5.5% which is 2% higher than PAUSD’s final offer of 3.5%. The tentative agreement reached on May 6 proposes a 4% increase for this year.

According to PAEA’s website, PAUSD has significantly lower salary growth and maximum salaries than neighboring districts. Going into this year’s negotiations, PAUSD’s salary growth from 2021 to 2024 was 10.2%, compared to the 15.8% increase in the Mountain View and Los Altos district, the 15.8% increase in the Los Gatos and Saratoga districts, and the 19.0% increase in the Santa Clara School District. If the tentative agreement is approved, PAUSD’s salary increase would become 15.2% for this year.

PAUSD’s current maximum salary is $154,366, which is 24.8% lower than Mountain View-Los Altos School District, 9.8% lower than Fremont Union High School District and 7.1% lower than Santa Clara Unified School District. PAEA President Teri Baldwin stressed that this gap plays a significant role in communicating the value of teachers.

“We always want our community to know that we are trying to recruit and retain the best teachers for our students, and we’re falling behind in salary in the area,” Baldwin said. “If we’re the number one district, we should be the number one or at least close to the number one in salary in the area.”

Beginnings of negotiations

In the context of these district negotiations, the impasse was prompted by a disagreement from PAUSD and PAEA’s final offers regarding the teacher’s contract for the 2024-25 school year. As a result, a third-party mediator stepped in to aid both sides to come to an agreement. The mediator assigned to this case was from the California Public Employment Relations Board. According to Superintendent Don Austin and Baldwin, both negotiation teams are separated and the mediator worked with both parties to reach an agreement.

The negotiations cover a variety of topics including class size, working conditions, evaluations, and salary — the subject cultivating the most discourse. The negotiations, which happen every year between PAUSD and PAEA, are not open the public. This year, the union and district called for an impasse, prolonging the negotiations for another six months.A the school board meeting on April 23, PAEA members expressed dissatisfaction during the open forum about the PAUSD salary schedule, and their experiences in the district. CSEA 301 Chapter President Mrigendra Steiner announced CSEA’s alliance with PAEA in hopes for a quick resolution of the negotiations that honors the professionality of the teachers. Retiring Gunn math teacher Kathy Hawes spoke about her 32 years at Gunn and the salary gap between MVLA and PAUSD.

“I’m concerned that people aren’t going to stay (in PAUSD) because (I talked to) my good friend who left for MVLA, and if I was there now I’d be making 37 thousand more a year,” she said in the meeting. “I love my department, I love my collaboration, I love the people I work with, but at some point I have to think about what would that $37,000 do for my retirement? What would that do for my cost of living? Can I afford to keep working in Palo Alto? And if we lose our experienced staff, how are we going to keep our traditions, culture and history?”

Teacher librarian Daljeet Gill also compared his current position to a higher salary at MVLA, but decided to stay at Gunn because of his long term affection for the school. In his opinion, the negotiations are not just about money but about convincing teachers to stay.

“If all we cared about was money, none of us would be in education,” he said. “The people that I see on campus, this staff, is incredible. They do so much for students that go above and beyond. But the more the pay gap increases, (the more that) you don’t necessarily feel like you’re able to do these things (for the students and) support yourself and your family as easily. Maybe there’s a little bit of not feeling as valued, and that maybe you’re more valued somewhere else.”

PAUSD Budget Reserves

A popular solution suggested by the teachers union is to pull from the district’s large reserves to fund a salary increase since PAUSD does not have an upper limit on the reserves, and its size has increased 187% since 2021, currently containing $135 million. According to the district website, PAUSD’s $135 million reserve is 34% of its operating budget, which is two times more than the 17% recommended by experts. PAEA members made the argument that a fraction of these funds can be allocated towards teachers’ salaries. However, according to Austin, drawing money from the reserve is not as simple or advisable as it may seem.

Austin likens the reserve to a savings account, asserting that regularly drawing from it for an ongoing expense is unsustainable because it won’t replenish itself if the district spends at a deficit from relying on the reserve. PAUSD Chief Business Officer Carolyn Chow provided an example for this analogy, explaining that the reserve is used for one-time costs and budgeted purchases.

“In your savings account, you might have to (pay for) a new washer and dryer, tuition for college and a vacation, right?” she said. “Once you spend it, it’s gone, you have to resave again. So in our case, we have a whole list of things that are in the reserves. So for example, we have textbook adoptions that don’t come up every year but we have to set aside money for so in our budget, maybe every five or 10 years we try to save up for it.”

PAEA negotiations team member and Gunn economics teacher Jeff Patrick agrees that it is unwise to use the reserve funds for an indefinite amount of time, but he thinks that the analogy of a savings account isn’t accurate to this situation.

“I think it’s a sort of disingenuous analogy given that the district’s not saving that money for retirement or college expenses, whatever it is that families typically save money for,” he said. “So we further don’t understand, and I would say have not been adequately given an explanation of why the district continues to expand that reserve over time.”

Patrick thinks that regardless of how the reserve is spent, the important next step is to address how much money is being added to it.

“In my personal view, and this is reflected by a lot of people that I’ve talked to about it, (it’s like), ‘Fine, you’ve got the reserve and it is what it is, let’s (just) stop making it bigger,’” he said. “So (going forward) making sure that any surplus money that the district has gets put into compensation or something that’s going to directly affect students rather than to sit in the reserves.”

Public Reception

Throughout the negotiation process, PAEA has aimed to raise visibility by organizing rallies and encouraging teachers to wear their PAEA shirts on Fridays and during events to show their support for the union.

One such example is on the morning of April 30, when teachers at all PAUSD schools assembled by school entrances and held signs such as “honk for teachers” or “supporting PAEA = supporting students.” Baldwin thought this rally was a great success and received a lot of community support.

“I think it’s been great,” she said. “Students have been out here and I’ve seen them out at different sites as well. And parents seemed very receptive. And even if we aren’t asking, they’re honking and showing their support.” PAEA and PAUSD have both been committed to keeping the public informed about this process. All negotiations prior to the impasse, which must legally remain confidential, and the current proposal of the tentative agreement are published on both websites. Each website has summaries of the proposals to make it more digestible for the public, however, due to the complexity of the negotiations Austin emphasized the importance of keeping the discussion contained so that its nuances are not miscommunicated.

“(Students) can have opinions, but really, this is between two negotiating teams that have a total of 10 people (and) that’s where it should stay because it’s impossible to explain every nuance,” he said. “I have concerns about involving students in this negotiation because if the question is ‘do you love your teacher,’ I’m going to hope the answer is always yes. I love our teachers. Everyone should love our teachers.”

School Board President Jesse Ladomirak echoed Austin’s sentiment.

“If your teacher is telling you something, our hope is that you trust your teacher,” she said. “If your teacher is telling you something, we don’t have a lot of interest in trying to get you to think the other way.”

These negotiations have been the subject of many campus conversations and for good reason: PAUSD, which has never been at an impasse for teacher contracts, may be the outlier in district negotiations. According to Chow, the district and union requests were farther apart than normal this year, but mediation is a normal and helpful part of many similar negotiations.

“I’ve been in other districts where they’re at an impasse all the time, every day of the year they’re in there at impasse,” she said. “It’s just what happens when you’re negotiating and you get stuck and need a mediator and come in and help parties (with) out of the box thinking.”

Although this impasse is a rare and complex topic, both the union members and district officials are committed to maintaining professionalism and respect in the midst of this negotiation.

“If (people) take anything away (from this), it’s not a fight, it’s a negotiation process which happens every year,” Austin said. “This year, we’re bringing in somebody to help us work through the tension. And it’s all going to be fine.”

A correction regarding the percentage of the reserves has been updated from the print edition.

Ethnic studies at Gunn will be a sociology course examining the societal landscape of different ethnicities’ experiences and the historical context behind current events.

The current plan for the course, officially adopted during the Oct. 9 staff-development day, replaces the first semester of ninth-grade world history with the ethnic studies course. The content of the removed semester will be distributed across two semesters of ninth- and tenth-grade world history. District staff are preparing the curriculum to be presented to the school board this December.

The timeline — which was also recommended by the Ethnic Studies Committee, comprising social studies teachers at Gunn and Paly — allows the district to implement the course as soon as possible while still granting time to collect student and community input, according to Board Vice President Jesse Ladomirak. “The only thing worse than not talking about stuff is talking about stuff in a way that does more damage than being silent,” she said. “I would like to take the time and make sure we do it safely.”

With a date set, a student focus group led by Social Studies Instructional Lead Jeff Patrick met during PRIME on Oct. 18 to discuss what the skills, takeaways and content of the ethnic studies course should look like. The meeting served as a precursor to larger community meetings that will happen during the rest of the school year.

In preparation for the changes, world history teacher Christopher Johnson plans to start condensing his curriculum and incorporating more skill-based learning next school year. “Part of the push is to focus more on various skills such as sourcing, recognizing bias and opinion, and observational skills, but maybe one of the losses (is that) the content won’t be quite as rich as (before),” Johnson said.

The course’s placement aligns with that of many other districts in the state and is backed by a 2021 peer-reviewed Stanford University

Patrick, who taught the ethnic studies elective last year, said the new, required class will be altered to better suit freshman needs. It will center around four new Essential Learning Outcomes — historical thinking, writing, conversing and citizenship — in five units: identity, race and ethnicity, history and migration, language culture and learning, and action and civic engagement.

Gunn alumna Madison Yue, who took the elective last year and is a former features editor for The Oracle, emphasized the importance of engaging with diverse narratives early on. “I wish I had the option to take ethnic studies as a freshman,” she said. “I think it is important for freshmen to take this class because (they) can learn about these different narratives and perspectives at an earlier point in high school (to) help unify our community.”

The course, however, does not come without controversy: Community members have noted that a single semester might not be not enough time for both content breadth and nuance, while others have concerns that the new class could provide an excuse to exclude material on underrepresented groups from other social studies classes.

These concerns were brought up during the Oct. 18 focus group. Some countered these arguments by saying that ethnic studies would equip students with the mindset and skills necessary to further explore diverse narratives in their future social studies classes. Patrick also noted that the course will focus on local demographics, with opportunities for students to learn about specific ethnic topics that interest them, such as through the final unit’s action project.

At the Sept. 12 school-board meeting, PAUSD Superintendent Don Austin addressed other concerns. Instead of adopting the state’s model curriculum, he said that PAUSD is creating its own curriculum, which will be built around topics brought up by the Ethnic Studies Committee and in future community focus groups. “The controversy is around some elements of the model curriculum,” he said. “We’re not adopting that, so we need to be super clear about that.”

The current plan is for district staff to present a curriculum to the school board this December. “If we go with this timeline, we might have some revision time, both from students who are in that class and as we continue to look at it,” Austin said.

According to Patrick, the ethnic studies elective will remain on the course catalog so that Gunn students graduating before 2029 can still take it.

Yue also highlighted other opportunities to get involved for students who are interested in the ethnic studies material. “I would take advantage of the resources at Gunn — for example, getting involved in affinity groups or the student equity committee,” she said. “Even if you’re not of a specific culture, check out those different cultural clubs and participate in the cultural events that SEC hosts.”

Given the variability of case numbers and the number of people students are in contact with on campus, it’s important for families to fully understand and have access to information regarding the spread of COVID-19. Not only does COVID-19 data provide community members with an idea of the safety of their nearby schools, but it also plays a crucial factor in the implementation of public health policies.

In order to view information regarding the number of COVID-19 cases in PAUSD schools, one must go to the main PAUSD website and click on at least two consecutive hyperlinks. With the importance of reliable COVID-19 data, the information should be as easily accessible as possible. A simple solution would be to add a direct hyperlink from the PAUSD homepage directly to the data, as many neighboring districts—San Francisco Unified School District, for one—have already done.

Not only that, but in the weeks leading up to the height of the Omicron wave, PAUSD’s COVID-19 data page was made entirely unreachable during a period of technical difficulties. Case numbers and general COVID-19 information should be easily accessible to any parent, student or community member, not hidden away in a long, confusing list of hyperlinks.

In addition to being inaccessible, the district’s COVID-19 data is not representative of the current number of cases. As of Feb.3, PAUSD has planned to report cases every Tuesday at 10 a.m., but the district’s inability to post the data more frequently suggests their inefficiency in reporting cases. Given the variability of case numbers from one day to the next, cases should be updated more frequently. At the height of the Omicron wave, over 15,300 new cases were reported in Santa Clara County in a single day, but community members had to wait an entire week to see if a similar surge was happening at PAUSD schools.

The Los Gatos Saratoga Union High School District (LGSUHSD) is located in Santa Clara County and reports positive cases within 24 hours. Since both LGSUHSD and PAUSD are school districts within the same county, what prevents PAUSD from reporting cases on a more frequent level? In Washington, D.C. schools, the lack of case transparency led to the implementation of a bill requiring school districts to update case numbers within 24 hours of a positive case. “The consequences of a delay in notification could be dire,” wrote the D.C. City Council in the bill. “Notification within 24 hours of a positive case would allow families and teachers to take proactive steps to take a test and limit contact with vulnerable populations while robust contact tracing is taking place.”

Currently, the COVID-19 case dashboard remains vague and provides the reader with little information besides the reported student and staff cases for each PAUSD site. While it is understandable that the district cannot disclose any private information regarding each individual person, there is still a host of possible data they could easily have access to and share with the community. By adding more details—such as the rate of positive cases to the total number of people tested, a visual representation comparing current data to that of previous weeks or an indication of whether or not the county health department has been notified—the district could provide valuable insight into the virus’ current spread within their schools, as well as their approach in regards to it.

With its highly-transmissible nature, the Omicron variant presents community members with another level of uncertainty. In response, the data PAUSD reports should reflect case fluctuations to stay as transparent as possible.

Nationwide, school districts are experiencing similar staffing shortages; according to an EdWeek Research Center survey, over three-quarters of school districts have at least moderate levels of staffing shortages.

PAUSD Director of Certificated Human Resources Lisa Hickey noted that the rise in COVID-19 cases has raised safety concerns for older substitutes, decreasing the number of available candidates. “The district has struggled with substitutes since the beginning of the pandemic,” Hickey said. “But it’s certainly worse now with so many more teachers out.”

Since elementary school teachers often teach for an entire day instead of for specific periods, the district prioritizes finding substitutes for elementary over secondary schools. As a result, secondary schools must improvise by finding replacements for each period. According to Assistant Principal Leonel Argumedo, it is much easier to find a substitute for select periods than for a full day. Secondary schools also often have more teachers and administrators who are able to help out than elementary schools do.

Since substitutes are not chosen specifically for each class, however, having a smaller pool to choose from means that substitutes likely have no prior experience in the subject they’re assigned to teach. The lack of substitutes also leads to an inconsistency in teaching style, especially when teachers are out for an extended period of time. Sophomore Dana Kim has experienced this change when her Spanish teacher was absent. “My regular teacher would have a lot more activities between students and more interaction in class,” she said. “But my substitute would just take notes on the whiteboard.”

To combat the substitute shortage and to keep schools open, Superintendent Don Austin announced 1 Palo Alto, a district initiative that calls for vaccinated parent and high school volunteers to help with custodial work, COVID-19 clinic testing, food services and classroom support. In his unveiling of the plan on Jan. 8, Austin expressed that the worker shortage is unprecedented. “Our biggest challenge is staffing right now,” he said. “We can’t keep up: there’s no labor pool, and no amount of money can solve this issue. We need your help. Until the surge passes, we need our community to volunteer like never before.”

The initiative has been successful: in the first two days, over 150 parent volunteers stepped in as classroom aides and front desk workers. According to Hickey, some parents are undergoing training to earn an emergency 30-day substitute teaching permit, which is valid for a year. “We have close to 10 parents who are working through the process, and some are already active subs,” she said.

To encourage teachers to help, the district has increased the hourly rate of teachers who substitute for absent colleagues during their free periods. “We plan on extending the increased teacher pay through the end of February and will reassess this in mid-February,” Hickey said.

Art teacher Jordan King is one of the teachers who has substituted for other classes and found the extra compensation worthwhile. “I want to help teachers who are out due to COVID-19 issues or whatever else because I’m grateful that people came in and helped me out,” King said. “But also, the money is attractive, and I feel like it’s worth capitalizing on.”

PAUSD has also raised substitute salaries to involve high-quality teachers and maintain competitive rates within Santa Clara County. According to the Oct. 19 school board meeting documents, the full day rate for substitutes was raised from $165 to $180, the rate for long-term substitutes (15-79 days) was raised from $220 to $300 and the secondary school resident substitute rate—a new position—was set at $250 per day.

The district’s new resident substitute position works full-time at one site to safeguard against emergency teacher absences. “[Resident substitutes] are not assigned to cover a teacher who calls in [absent],” Hickey said. “Instead, they are used to cover unfilled absences. The resident subs often have a personal connection to the school they are subbing at and are willing to do whatever they need to do to support the school.” School administrators have also stepped in to cover classes when necessary. “During the first week back from break, we had about 20 unfilled absences across the district,” Hickey said. “Everyone stepped in to cover classes, including other teachers and administrators.”

According to Hickey, the district now has nearly all absences filled on a normal day, which minimizes disrupted student learning. Hickey also said that PAUSD is faring better than many around the nation. “I’m hopeful that we’re going to be able to fill all of our [staff] absences in the next few weeks,” she said.

Principal Wendy Stratton echoed Hickey’s optimism. “We’ve been in really good shape,” she said. “We thought [the impact] was going to be a lot heavier.”

The pipe break was a result of the parking lot construction project. While redirecting an irrigation line, workers accidentally struck the old water pipes. District Facilities Construction Director Eric Holm was on site surveying the efforts to fix the pipe break. “They were boring through this area, which is typically a less destructive method when you do water utility lines,” Holm said. “They checked the area with a ground penetrating radar, but it seems that the concrete pipe was so old that it could not be picked up by [the radar].”

According to Assistant Principal Leonel Argumedo, the admin discovered water bubbling out of the ground in the morning. Because it came from the main line, they had to shut down the water supply to the rest of the school. “There is no water anywhere,” he said. “The restrooms are inaccessible.”

In addition to the logistics of keeping 2,000 students on campus without bathrooms, the administrators were concerned about student safety. Both factored into the decision to end school early for the day. “God forbid if there was a fire,” Argumedo said. “We would have nothing to put it out.”

Construction workers on site are already working to replace the broken portion of the main line. “Right now they’re digging down to expose the line,” Holm said. “They’ve got a guy who’s already gone out to the store to buy the replacement pipes. We hope to have it finished by today.”

Even if the pipe is not fixed, administrators are optimistic of reopening the campus for class tomorrow with alternatives. Palo Alto Unified School District Superintendent Don Austin was on scene as construction workers peered into the ground. “We’re still going to be open tomorrow,” he said. “We’re going to bring portable restrooms, but obviously we don’t have that right now.”

Posts will be sent out via Schoology to students and staff about class and on-site sports, which will also be cancelled today.

Updated safety protocols:

Back in February, when campuses first opened to PAUSD students, safety protocols on campus were strict: six feet of social distancing, mandatory mask-wearing, daily screenings and more. In this upcoming school year, however, safety protocols have been reduced to just indoor mandatory masks. “Whatever the Center of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Santa Clara County tell us is mandatory, so we mirror it,” PAUSD Superintendent Don Austin said. “Some school districts started making up their own rules. We never did that. We follow the CDC and county explicitly.”

Safety protocols encouraged by public health officials remain essential to ensure the safety of everyone on campus, especially as COVID-19 cases are back on the rise. “We’re ensuring that everyone is masked indoors,” Assistant Principal Leonel Argumedo said. “Outdoors, it is optional, but PAUSD highly encourages that everyone remains masked whenever possible … [and] that people maintain a safe distance when they’re socializing or eating.”

Despite the relaxation of safety measures in various communities, COVID-19 remains prevalent in most areas. According to The New York Times, an average of 295 COVID-19 cases are reported in Santa Clara County daily, more than double the amount reported in March 2021, when PAUSD in-person instruction first resumed. With the increasing presence of the Delta variant, vaccinations are imperative for all populations.

For youth eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine who are attending in-person learning, vaccination is especially important; without it, the risk of putting themselves as well as others in danger increases significantly. According to the CDC, vaccination is the leading public health prevention strategy to end the COVID-19 pandemic in K-12 schools. “Promoting [it] can help schools safely return to in-person learning as well as extracurricular activities and sports,” the CDC wrote.

Although vaccinations are not legally mandated, over 80% of the county is vaccinated, according to the Santa Clara Public Health website. Furthermore, most district employees have received their respective doses. “As it stands, we’re over 95% [vaccinated],”

Austin said. “If the state says K-12 schools need to have all employees vaccinated, then we’ll work through it.” Thus far, the safety protocols set in place have proven effective despite the increase in cases. Throughout the summer, over 600 students simultaneously attended summer school on campus—three times the number of people that had previously taken classes in-person in the spring. Assistant Principal Courtney Carlomagno, who also served as a summer school principal, observed the efficiency of current safety protocols. “Students really did great with the masks and wore them all the time indoors,” Carlomagno said. “Classrooms were very much operating and looked just like previous school years. The only difference was that students and staff wore masks indoors. The best part is that we had in-person instruction for six weeks and [had] zero COVID-19 cases.”

Bell schedule changes:

The new bell schedule, announced early this year, is another change this year. Following a modified A/B format, classes will meet every other day. On Mondays, or anchor days, all classes will meet for 45-minute periods. On “A” days—Tuesdays and Thursdays—students will attend their first throughfourth period classes. On “B” days—Wednesdays and Fridays—students will attend their fifth through seventh period classes. After seventh period, Titans will attend Personal Reteaching, Intervention, Mentorship and Enrichment period (PRIME) on Wednesdays and Social Emotional Learning and Functionality (SELF) on Fridays.

PRIME will be a period where students can choose what activities they want to attend depending on the week. For instance, on a given week, students will be given the choice of checking in with one of their teachers or attending a wellness activity. On a different week, students will be given a different selection of activities to choose from. “PRIME lends itself to this notion of having a variety of uses,” Principal Wendy Stratton said. “Primarily, we’re looking at it as an academic support time with targeted support. It is a sort of reteaching opportunity where students won’t see brand new content and won’t be held accountable academically.”

Another change to the 2021-22 bell schedule is the implementation of a later start and finish time. While classes meet at 9 a.m., they will usually finish anywhere from 3:30 p.m. to 4:10 p.m. depending on the day. “The process [leading up to the implementation of the later start time] included representation of students, parents and staff at all of the secondary level schools,” Stratton said. “It’s going to be different for everyone; we’re all going to have to adjust. We’re not really sure what the impacts will be, but I think it’ll be interesting to see what the pros and cons turn out to be.”

So far, students have had mixed opinions regarding the decision to have longer, 90-minute periods. “More class time means more work can get done, thus less of that becomes extra homework,” junior Aaron Novick said. “However, I wouldn’t want a teacher that just lectures for 90 minutes because I wouldn’t be able to focus for that long.” The administration hopes the application of longer periods will, in fact, enable more flexible teaching plans for teachers and engaging opportunities for students. “The longer periods really allow teachers to either do some out-of-the-box projects with [their] students or build in that reteaching and intervention time for all students,” Carlomagno said.

Many have different opinions regarding the new schedule. Despite that, there is still a lot of flexibility when it comes to altering the schedule in the future. “We’ll definitely seek feedback,” Austin said. “Nothing in bell schedules is permanent.”

New learning options:

On July 20, in an email sent to all PAUSD parents and guardians, Austin introduced a new learning option available to all PAUSD students: the Remote Independent Study program (RIS). Slated to operate as soon as school starts, the program provides an alternative to in-person learning for students who otherwise can’t attend classes on campus and one that students can opt in to, or out of, at any time.

The alternative is primarily tailored for students with medical conditions, though students who do not feel comfortable on campus can still enroll. “The governor, president and health departments all want students back on campus,” Austin said. “That’s the default. Students who select that they’re not going to be attending classes in-person are supposed to have medical reasons.”

Contrary to distance learning this past year, PAUSD teachers will not be instructing the students enrolled in the RIS program. Rather, non-PAUSD educators on K12 Stride will be teaching the classes. “We want our teachers to be teaching students in-person,” Austin said. “What we can’t have is another year of dividing our teachers. For students that really need to have a remote option, it will be provided.”

Moreover, compared to the distance learning option all PAUSD students had last year, the independent study program will have significantly fewer synchronous meetings and course options. “If people think that selecting distance learning is going to look like last year, they’ll be very disappointed,” Austin said. “It’s not going to be like that at all.”

While the program meets all baseline requirements, various honors, AP, elective and sports classes will not be taught by K12 Stride. “This is a district that has high level classroom instruction with a lot of options for courses,” Austin said. “We can’t replicate either of those two things through a thirdparty distance program. It would be more of a minimum-level program.”

This raises equity concerns that students with medical conditions will not have the same access to education as other PAUSD students. “Right now, with the offerings that are being created through the partnership with an outside vendor, the district will do everything they can to make sure services are provided to the students and that their needs are met,” Carlomagno said. “For students who have more documented needs, we will continue to provide the additional services through different departments.”

Superintendent Don Austin’s reopening plan was first introduced at the Feb. 9 PAUSD board meeting, but is contingent on Santa Clara County being in the red tier of California’s COVID-19 tracking system for at least five days. If carried out, the plan would allow students to choose whether they would like to return on campus two days a week.

According to Assistant Principal Michalis Gordon, the opt-in and opt-out system will offer students with last names beginning with A through K the option of attending school in-person on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, while the remainder of students will be able to choose to attend school in-person on Thursdays and Fridays. During the day, students will move between classrooms; however, classes will still be held on Zoom. 

Principal Wendy Stratton emphasized that in-person attendance is voluntary, but whether a student’s decision must be made for the entire week or just the day is still undecided. Ladomirak, too, highlighted the voluntary aspect of the plan. “I cannot stress enough that this is a personal choice for every student,” Ladomirak said. “Every student has different needs.” 

While the master schedule will not change, students are required to stay on campus during the school day. Stratton confirmed that students leaving campus for the day would not be able to return except for sports practices and other after-school activities. 

Students that have a prep during the day (periods 2, 3 or 6) are required to remain in a designated space on campus during their prep; students with preps at the beginning or end of the day (periods 1, 4, 5 and 7) are allowed to arrive at the start of their first class or leave early. Gunn Together and SELF will alternate between Wednesdays and Fridays each week so that students will have an opportunity to attend SELF in-person if they choose to. In between classes, students will be asked to walk in designated directions and maintain all social distancing protocols. 

According to Assistant Principal Leonel Argumedo, PAUSD has implemented a variety of safety precautions for both students and staff during this reopening. “There’s been a lot done to ensure everyone’s safety on campus,” Argumedo said. 

Each morning, students, teachers and staff will be required to fill out a health screening questionnaire to ensure that they have not been experiencing symptoms of COVID-19 or been in contact with people that have been. In addition, desks with plexiglass dividers will be assigned and be spaced six feet apart. Each class will also have upgraded HVAC systems or air purifiers, hand sanitizer and a variety of masks. Furthermore, starting on Feb. 28, teachers who live or work in Santa Clara County can make an appointment to get vaccinated for COVID-19. 

In the event that a student or staff member contracts COVID-19, PAUSD has a 3-scenario plan. If a student or staff member presents symptoms of COVID-19 or answers “yes” to any of the questions in the daily health screener, they will be sent home and asked to be tested. Classroom instruction will continue for the remainder of students. If someone (like a family member) in close contact with a student or staff member tests positive for COVID-19, the student or staff member will be sent home and asked to be tested. Even if they test negative, they will still be required to quarantine at home for 14 days or until the infected person completes their quarantine to prevent any future infection. If a student or staff member tests positive for COVID-19, they will be sent home and asked to quarantine for 14 days or seven days after symptoms have disappeared. Any school-based close contacts will be notified, instructed to get tested and asked to quarantine. Both the school administration and the public health department will be notified.

To enforce these protocols, there will be at least three supervisors and teachers on campus during breaks to monitor student behavior; however, Gordon stressed the ultimate responsibility fell to the students to adhere to guidelines. “We are going to rely on you, the student body, to enforce these protocols you know and for you to set the example for those who might forget to wear [their] mask when we quickly step out of the classroom,” Gordon said.

By dividing the student body into two groups and allowing them the option of attending classes over Zoom while on campus or staying home, the reopening plan aims to return students and staff to secondary school campuses as early as March 1.  

Staff members were dissatisfied by the fact that the district chose to not consult them in formulating the revised plan. “It seems irresponsible to me to come up with a plan without consulting the two people it affects the most, the student and the teacher,” English teacher Kate Zavack said. “We’re the ones who are going to be living with this reality.” 

Palo Alto Educators Association President Teri Baldwin was similarly dismayed at a lack of teacher and student voice in the decision-making process. “From what I heard from the students that called into the [Tuesday night] board meeting and from the two student board members, it did not appear that students had much of a voice in this plan at all,” she wrote in an email. “I know that teachers did not have a voice in it. We have many safety questions, [including one] about their plan to keep so many people on one campus without any cohorts.”

Baldwin, who was not involved in the planning process, said she found out about the reopening plan a few hours before the plan was announced to the public. 

Many staff members are also unsure whether the health precautions mentioned by Austin will effectively address risks tied to returning. “We still see everyone, so if one of the teachers gets COVID, then it’s easy for us to spread to other people,” social studies teacher Warren Collier said. 

Math teacher Rachel Congress echoed Collier. “I want to be back on campus as much as I think most people do,” she said. “However, I have concerns about my safety; I have concerns about [students’] safety.”

For some teachers, getting vaccinated is a determining factor in returning to campus; under Austin’s plan, teachers do not have to be vaccinated before resuming in-person instruction. “I would have liked at least the guarantee [that] all teachers and staff are vaccinated before anything happens,” Collier said. “It does not feel like [the district has] our safety as the first priority. Also frustrating is why they are so adamant about getting back to school when it’s very clear that a lot of people are not comfortable with that.” 

English teacher Mark Hernandez, also raised concerns about the reopening plan. “If all teachers had vaccines, this would be a much different deal.” 

Ultimately, teachers spoke to a sense of being unprepared to reopen—and “betrayed,” as Congress put it—given that Austin previously announced in-person instruction would be “highly unlikely” to resume for the remainder of the school year. “For distance learning, we went to trainings [and] to professional development,” Congress said. “Now we’re going to do this totally new thing. We can’t just turn on a dime; we need to have time to plan this all out.”

Hernandez agreed. “I think a lot of us took what Dr. Austin said about having distance learning for the remainder of the school year—we took him [to] his word,” he said. “So this was shocking. We’re unready for this, that’s for sure.”

According to the plan, which Austin stressed was drafted with the support of the teacher’s union, the student body at each secondary school will be split up into two groups alphabetically; each group will be assigned two days of the week where they can attend Zoom classes while physically on campus. Attendance will be voluntary on a day-by-day basis, and students will be able to choose whether or not they attend classes on campus or at home on any assigned in-person day. According to the superintendent, the plan will not lead to schedule or teacher changes for students, and the Mondays will remain virtual.

During his presentation of the reopening plan, Austin also stressed the fact that he was “aggressively” moving to implement COVID-19 testing procedures and that this plan would only apply to the spring 2021 semester. 

The new plan unveiled Tuesday night was different than the district’s original plan to reopen secondary schools. Previously, only English and social studies classes would have been permitted to return in-person, and attendance would have been mandatory instead of on a voluntary, day-by-day basis. The original plan was scrapped in mid-November, however, following Santa Clara County’s move into the purple tier.

This is a developing story and will be updated as more details become available. 

Correction: a previous version of this article stated the plan is pending board approval. Because the board has already approved a version of the reopening plan, the plan will be allowed to proceed without a board vote. 

Yet, at the same time, physical safety has come at the cost of mental wellbeing, as child psychologist Dr. Wendy Froehlich recognizes. “I’d love to say that safety is the top priority, but you can break safety down to include physical safety and mental health safety,” Froehlich said. “And we have competing interests right now within those two areas.”

Froehlich’s words point at the deeper issue of maintaining a careful balancing act between mental health and physical health amidst the pandemic. According to a recent Harvard study, strict lockdowns and curfews have led to widespread feelings of isolation, causing children to experience symptoms of depression, anxiety and misbehavior. Similarly, the Journal of the American Medical Association reported significantly higher levels of depression and anxiety in students who had been quarantined for 30 days due to COVID-19.

In short, the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a far more invisible mental health pandemic, especially amongst adolescents and teens. “Without a doubt, the pandemic has been hard for a large majority of individuals I work with,” Froehlich said. “From a general social perspective, [since] high school teenagers are at such a transitional period in life, it’s been really, really difficult to live through this pandemic.”

New Challenges

At Gunn, things are no different. According to counselor David Leftwich, since Gunn shifted to virtual learning, there have been an increased number of meetings arranged for students requiring interventions to support them academically. Leftwich noted that student anxiety has been an underlying theme in all of these meetings. “I think that those meetings have anxiety underneath them, where [students are] saying, ‘I don’t know if I can do this, I need some help. I’m worried about getting through all this. It feels so different. It feels so scary,’” Leftwich said.

Mental Health and Wellness Coordinator Genavae Dixon noted a similar trend, citing the fact that there have been more students reaching out for support. “We definitely have more students reporting about depressive-like symptoms than we have had before,” Dixon said. “Especially for students having these situations happen for the first time, [I hear them saying] ‘wow, it’s really hard for me to get out of bed, it’s really hard for me to have some level of motivation and to finish my schoolwork, or to even interact with my family or text my friends back.’”

Teacher-student relationships have also felt more distanced. According to Leftwich, it’s considerably more challenging for adults to detect when a student is struggling in a virtual schooling format. “[Counselors] get a lot of our referrals through teachers,” he said. “In the classroom, they can look out over the class and they can see when a student has their head down. But online, students just have their camera off, so it wouldn’t be a red flag for that teacher.”

Even when students meet with counselors, it has become harder for counselors to fully understand a student’s mental state. “On campus, it’s easier to get a feel for a student,” Leftwich said. “When I talk to a student, I’m reading their body language in a different way than I do when I do a Zoom meeting with them. I can hear their voice differently, or they speak differently to me in my office than they do when they’re in their living room. Understanding the mental health challenges of students on campus is easier when you’re on campus and meeting with students face to face.”

For its part, Gunn has recognized the need to take steps in supporting the mental wellbeing of students inside and outside the classroom. Since on-campus support is no longer available, new virtual support systems are being developed and offered to students.

The Wellness Center staff, for instance, has been coming up with different online initiatives to provide support for students in a variety of different ways. There is now a Bitmoji classroom where students can drop in 24 hours a day to get different types of resources. Students can also receive direct assistance during school hours from wellness professionals (These resources can be accessed at tinyurl.com/gwellness). These new resources have helped some students adjust to online learning; according to Reach Out, Care, Know (ROCK) President Kate Williams, who is a senior, school-led activities have helped her feel more comfortable in the online environment. “I think Gunn has really helped us by using the Gunn Together times and the SELF times to really talk about mental health,” she said. “I feel so supported, especially by [Wellness Outreach Worker Rossana Castil], who is really helping by posting things on Schoology—ways that you can continue to work on your mental health.”

A Reason To Reopen

Given the challenges distance learning poses to maintaining wellness, it’s no surprise students’ mental health has been cited as a reason for reopening schools to resume in-person instruction. The Palo Alto Unified School District (PAUSD) school board has strongly encouraged reopening and unanimously approved reopening plans for both elementary and secondary schools. Chief among the reasons for reopening, according to PAUSD Superintendent Dr. Don Austin, is mental health. “Students have been isolated for nine months, and are starting to have issues,” he said. “When you get to be around people that you know care about you, your mental health improves naturally, and that’s my belief system. I think the board is, as a whole, pretty aligned with that.”

School Board Member Jennifer DiBrienza echoed Austin. “I know a lot of students that are doing absolutely fine academically, but some are depressed or are just disengaged,” DiBrienza said. “There are some kids that we know of who are struggling with isolation. I think that there’s a disappointment of not being able to open in January [given the] real academic concerns and mental health concerns.”

Under the PAUSD reopening plan, students would only return in-person for their English and social studies classes, leading Dixon to voice uncertainty on whether the plan would effectively support students. “I think that for our students that truly need the structure of school to be able to get their work done, that it would be helpful,” she said. “But, overall, it would still be that most of your classes would still be in distance, so there still would be some discrepancies and some issues around that.”

While PAUSD’s secondary school plan has been shelved due to the county’s spiking COVID-19 case count, if students do go back to school in the near-future, Dixon worries about potentially new forms of student anxiety. “I think it does add or it brings in a level of health anxiety,” she said. “‘Now I’m coming to school, is everybody taking their precautions? Is everyone wearing their masks? How do I interact?’ My colleagues that I work within other [reopened] schools say that has been a big point of stress for students.”

At the end of the day, there’s no right answer in what to prioritize when reopening schools, according to Froehlich. “I don’t know that there’s a way to say that there’s just one most important variable to be looked at [in reopening],” she said. “I think there are a multitude of variables that have to be weighed, and the challenging part is they’re probably different for each individual and each family. That’s where this creates such a challenging situation because there is no great one-size-fits-all.”

In looking toward the future, regardless of how reopenings will look, Dixon emphasized reaching out for support. “Reach out to Wellness [staff]—we are here to support you,” she said. “We want to be here to support you with those things and talk through strategies and be really individualized with our support for our students.”