School Board Update

Several issues regarding the future of the schools, staff development, student achievement and student safety were discussed during the Palo Alto Unified School District’s second meeting of the school year, which took place on Sept. 10.
In order to create a better learning environment for students, the school board decided to focus on increasing the amount of small group instruction and improving students’ content mastery, creativity, communication, critical thinking and collaboration skills. This year, the school board will also concentrate on reaching out to struggling students.

Staff development and recruitment are also major focuses for this school year. Steps will be made by the school board to make sure that all teachers’ teaching techniques are collaborative and that teachers are improving their lessons based on teacher performance feedback evaluated by the board itself.

Also during this meeting, plans for the new Palo Alto High School gym were discussed, which the school board will be finalizing soon.

The most recent board meeting on Sept. 24 was focused on approving various warrant lists. Warrant lists detail all expenditures and show the purpose of a payment; furthermore, the school board must approve each transaction on the warrants list. By the end of the meeting, 11.01 million warrants were issued of the total 11.19 million requested.