New School Calendar with Pre-Break Finals Squeaks By at PAUSD Board Meeting

It was standing-room only at Tuesday night’s meeting of the Palo Alto Unified School District Board of Education, where roughly 60 parents and students filled out comment cards to address the board in anticipation of its planned vote on whether to approve a new school calendar for years 2012-13 and beyond, shifting first-semester finals to before winter break in December.

After six hours of debate and public comment, the board voted 3-2 to approve the new calendar. Board members Barbara Klausner, Barb Mitchell and Dana Tom voted favorably; Vice-President Camille Townsend and President Melissa Baten-Caswell dissented.

Though Superintendent Kevin Skelly admitted he looked forward to the issue finally being decided upon and no longer appearing on the board’s bi-weekly meeting agendas, many board members still appeared struggle over which way they would vote as of the start of the meeting.

During board members’ initial comments at the start of the pre-vote discussion, board member Barbara Klausner, last year’s president, said teachers need to take into account the impact a new calendar will have on students, and take time to learn students’ perspectives.

Therefore, the board turned its attention to student board member Pierre Bourbonnais from to hear a student’s perspective, straight from the horse’s mouth.

Bourbonnais said he had taken the time to talk to many fellow Paly students over the past several weeks to get their opinions on many of the alleged “trade-offs” of a pre-break finals calendar.

Interestingly, Bourbonnais shot down several concerns that have been brought to the table during this contentious, months-long debate.

In regards to the concerns over uneven semesters and having enough instructional days in Advanced Placement classes prior to testing, Bourbonnais said, AP classes are just fine, and suggested they would need no special accommodations with a new calendar.

He named several AP classes, including a handful he has taken, such as chemistry and physics, and said that every one of them had finished covering their curriculum anywhere from four to six weeks prior to the AP testing dates, allowing students to spend the last several weeks doing comprehensive reviews before the tests, rather than tackling new material.

“Therefore, I don’t think APs should matter in this [calendar] discussion, at all,” he said.

He went on to say that he had also had discussions with many students regarding the issues of a “work-free break” and the college application crunch in the month of December. He said most students he talked to said they did no more than 2½ to four hours of schoolwork or studying over the winter break, and that most students he knew procrastinated on their college applications and completed them only a day or two before the deadlines.

“Most of them were finishing them up at the last minute, like on Jan. 1st,” he said with a laugh.

Townsend echoed Bourbonnais’ comments about AP classes being just fine.

She pointed out that PAUSD ranks high in the country as far as the number of AP classes the average high school student takes, as well as the number of high scores earned and awards earned—all of this, within the current calendar system.

“If the reason we’re changing the calendar is so that we do better on APs—well, we’re already doing so well,” Townsend said. “So, if people are looking at that as the reason, we’re doing fine just the way we are.”

As many anticipated the end of the calendar debate and looked ahead to a final decision its aftermath, a desire was expressed by many to come up with a plan for addressing concerns and easing the transition, should the calendar pass.

“I know I speak for all the students and staff when I say that when the decision is made tonight, we will work hard to make whatever calendar that is adopted work here,” said Skelly. “Even if folks disagree with the decision, it’s [everyone’s] job to carry out the wishes of the board.”

"This is way more complicated an issue than I think anyone expected, on the surface,” said Baten-Caswell. “If we can find some way to mitigate some of the issues people are bringing up, I would be very pleased. I don’t want our students to feel as though we keep piling and piling work on them. I also don’t want families to feel as though we are asking them to make major sacrifices every time we need to change something.”

Klausner said she would not vote to approve the new calendar unless she was given a guarantee that teachers would design a plan to reduce students’ workload, particularly in the fall semester, to allow breathing room to complete college applications, and to accommodate a fall semester that is inevitably shorter than the spring, because of the shifting of first-semester finals to December.

Klausner asked for a promise from the board that teachers would be required to present a plan to the board by this fall that indicated how they planned to reduce the number of assignments, projects and tests due from their students, should the new calendar be approved that night. She went so far as to ask for the option of revoking the board’s approval of the new calendar later, should that report from the teachers be found to be less than satisfactory.

“I’m asking for a commitment to a process. I can’t vote for this calendar without that promise,” she said.

Bourbonnais agreed that students’ workloads could do with a little scaling back. He used his English class—which is a semester-long class that would be affected by the calendar change—as an example. He said that in his English class, students read a total of 20 books, yet when he compared stories with a friend who attends high school down in Los Angeles, he found that his friend’s class read only two. In addition, on the AP English test, Bourbonnais said that a specific book was referenced in a question only once, and that most questions allowed the test taker to choose from a list of roughly 25 books for the subject of an essay question.

“So, obviously, we could do with [less work],” he said.

As the 60 members of the public each took their two minutes to address the board with their feelings over the proposed calendar change, as usual, opinions were fairly evenly split. However, the earlier school start date on the new calendar was met with a majority of passionate and overwhelmingly negative arguments, both by .

Reasons for opposing the earlier date included the disruption of family vacations, particularly by families whose jobs conflict with taking vacations earlier in the summer; sports practice schedules; and concern over the intense heat Palo Alto experiences during the month of August, and the fact that so many district classrooms have no air conditioning.

Debbie Whitson, a teacher at Paly, brought forth a proposal that she said was a group effort with fellow Paly teachers, to suggest what she called “Calendar B with a Twist.” It suggests a pilot of sorts during next year’s rollover calendar, that would include pre-break finals within the current calendar structure. In other words, having finals before winter break, but keeping school start and end dates the same, and using the first few weeks in January either for engaging projects or for a short additional unit of material and a smaller test to finish out the semester.

It was just before 11 p.m. by the time board members began giving their final comments, stating their reasons for why they would be voting the way they chose.

Though many members of the audience pleaded with the board to explore alternative calendars that might include pre-break finals but include fewer “trade-offs” such as an earlier school start date, Mitchell said she still felt as though the new calendar featured more benefits than negatives—in particular, it would offer the benefit she said was her No. 1 goal, which is giving students and staff a true “period of rest” over winter break.

“I am less optimistic than many in the community about the possibility of finding a calendar [with pre-break finals] that eliminates the trade-offs,” she explained.

Mitchell did say she supports the idea of forming a calendar advisory committee comprised of parents, students and staff, tasked with keeping an eye on how people adjust to the new calendar structure, and determining if there are any possible ways to improve upon it over time. The majority of board members supported that idea.

Tom said the positive experiences of neighboring schools that have pre-break finals helped him make his decision.

“I think pre-break finals have been very successful for schools in our neighboring counties, and I expect that it will work very well for us,” he said.

Townsend remained staunch in her opposition of the new calendar. She cited surveys such as the city of Palo Alto Youth Council’s, conducted within the last two years, that suggested homework was students’ biggest stressor.

“It’s not the calendar. So, why are we [considering] this calendar?” she asked. “We’ve been discussing calendars like this for many years, and you know what? We’ve been rejecting them for many years. We should not do this.”

 Klausner expressed her support of the idea of pre-break finals in general, but said she struggled too much with the trade-offs. She spoke in favor of Whitson’s idea of “Calendar B with a Twist,” but since the “twist” was not one of the night’s choices they could vote on, when it came time to vote one way or the other, she voted in favor of Calendar A, though reiterating the desire to continue to assess and make changes as families adjusted.

In his final comments, Bourbonnais said, “I think the only thing Calendar A is trying to accomplish is the idea of a ‘carefree’ or ‘work-free’ break,” and added that, in his opinion, the only thing that can make for a true work-free break is the students themselves. He said the district should get more serious about mandating no assignments during winter break, but in the end, said some students will work and study anyway, and that is up to them. He continued and said that, in his opinion, addressing the homework load of students would be a better avenue for reducing student stress.

Baten-Caswell, who had been fairly silent throughout the night about her personal opinion of the issue, said in her final comments, “I really am reluctant to vote for a calendar that asks families to make so many sacrifices.” She added that the reason she thinks a calendar with pre-break finals has been rejected so many times by boards in the past is that one that meets people’s needs has not yet been introduced; she said pre-break finals as a concept may be a good one, but it has not been introduced yet in a way that makes it a viable choice.

In the end, the calendar passed, 3-2, with Townsend and Baten-Caswell giving the dissenting votes. A plan from teachers as to how to address student workload concerns, which optimally will include student input, will tentatively be due to the board by November.