During the meeting, racial equity consultant Dr. Lori A. Watson discussed the historical roots of systemic racism.  Throughout the presentation, she provided opportunities for students to share in table groups or with partners about their own identities and experiences in relation to race — including colorism and the idea of race as a social construct. 

Attendees were all members of the Student Equity Committee, which comprises 50 Gunn students who work with the administration to recognize, discuss and act on equity disparities. There are currently six members on the committee board, and students can join the committee after introductory training. The committee also has six subcommittees — cultural event planning, curriculum planning, review and audit, outreach to middle schools, shared learning experiences and communication — that target different aspects of equity to achieve the committee’s larger goals. The committee holds quarterly meetings in addition to the equity trainings. 

According to Assistant Principal Courtney Carlomagno, who advises the committee, the group works on projects to raise student and staff awareness, discusses larger equity-related decisions with administrators and makes the committee’s vision statement. This year, the committee also created the See Something, Say Something form, which allows students to report discrimination and harassment.

The Student Equity Committee has worked with Watson — founder of the organization Race-Work, which aims to cultivate anti-racist leadership — for three years.  Two trainings held earlier in the school year, as well as the March 14 training, comprise Watson’s “L.A.W. Three-Phase Transformation Approach” to address racism and improve representation. 

According to Watson, the first phase is the “learning” phase, in which students think more closely about  race in their lives. The second phase, the “articulating” phase, equips students with the language and tools they need to talk about race. The last phase is the “working” phase, in which students  transform their insights into actionable plans.

In this meeting, part of the “working” phase, students reflected on foundational principles introduced in the two previous meetings, which focused on “learning” and “articulating.” They were encouraged to think deeply about the causes of racial inequities and brainstorm potential action projects.

As in past meetings, Watson aimed to hear from students with different backgrounds.

“What they’re describing are a lot of experiences that they’re having where they do feel marginalized or discriminated against, but they just haven’t had a space to be able to talk about it in a real way,” she said. “And so what this does is give them a space to share, and for us to just be able to process through some things so (students) realize there’s nothing wrong with them.”

According to committee board member junior Nia Porter, the broader agenda of the training is to equip students with tools for activism.

“We always talk about the different parts of activism (and we have) a couple of alliterations for us to remember, like ‘dodge discomfort’ or ‘lean in to listen and learn,’” she said. “We also look at this intersection with mind, body, spirit and heart, and then talk about where we already are in terms of interactions (to) make sure we’re centered.”

The racial equity training meetings will continue to occur three times per school year as the Student Equity Committee gains further traction. Committee member and attendee junior Deegan Trainor believes that meetings can be more impactful with increased student input.

“The meeting broadened my understanding about the magnitude of equity issues, especially their prevalence at Gunn among both students and faculty,” he said. “However, expanding the reach of the committee to a broader audience and encouraging participation from students less familiar with the committee can benefit and enrich these discussions more.”

Ultimately, Watson’s primary goal at Gunn, in cooperation with the Student Equity Committee, is to cultivate anti-racist mindsets. 

“My attempt with the Equity Committee is to really help them become anti-racist,” she said. “It’s just about developing some racial literacy and elevating their own personal racial consciousness, (like) being able to recognize how racism shows up on campus and the world around them and collectively be a capacity to disrupt how racism flourishes untouched.”

This program is the first of the wellness initiatives Âé¶č·ĆÓłĂâ·Ń will be investigating in a continuation of its 2019 “In the Pursuit of Wellness” series.  The objective is to better understand the efficacy of Gunn student-wellness approaches. Our question: Are these measures working, and how can we further promote student wellness?

The creation of SELF 

Intended as a space for students to build connections with trusted adults and peers, SELF classes meet biweekly — in rotation with Study Hall — during the school year. This model, adopted during the 2022-23 school year dueÌęłÙŽÇ teacher compensation issues, marks a shift from the program’s original weekly structure. As before, however, cohorts remain together during all four years of high school.

SELF Coordinator Kathryn Catalano noted that the program’s goal is to promote students’ emotional regulation, communication and empathy.

“Creating that structure where students have opportunities to practice those things is really important in terms of long-term growth,” she said. “I think our school is very lucky to be able to offer a program like this.”

The SELF curriculum is based on California’s Social and Emotional Learning Competencies, or the T-SEL Competencies, which include self-awareness, social-awareness and relationship skills. Gunn’s SELF curriculum also draws on sources such as private-school curricula; Project Wayfinder, an organization that provides packaged grade-specific SEL curricula to schools; Stanford professor Linda Darling-Hammond, a social scientist who advised the curriculum’s development in 2016; student organizations such as the Gender Sexuality Alliance and Title IX Club; and proposals from individual students.

Currently, SELF is designed to suit different grades’ needs. For example, ninth graders begin with lessons on “Founding a Community,” which includes identity development and community-building, while second-semester seniors focus on “Life after Gunn.”

According to Assistant Principal and former SELF Coordinator Courtney Carlomagno, the SELF curriculum constantly evolves based on feedback from feedback forms, focus groups, administrators and SELF Advisory Board students (whose names students can see on the SELF feedback form in the Schoology SELF course). For instance, the Community Circles activity — in which students take turns sharing in a circle — was implemented in response to students’ suggestions in feedback forms to have more discussion, and freshmen were sorted into SELF cohorts with their World History class starting in the 2022-23 school year to enable more frequent connections.

Student sentiments

Data from the Panorama surveys, which are administered every spring and fall to all secondary-school students, shows improvement in students’ cultural awareness and emotional regulation from 2020 (the first year the survey was administered) to 2023.

Students’ satisfaction with SELF, however, has roughly remained the same. In the SELF feedback form, sent to students every fall from 2020-23, students were asked to rate on a scale of 1 (“not effective”) to 5 (“effective”) the SELF program’s effectiveness at reaching five goals: “spending time on team-building and relationship-building,” “broad-ranging conversations during check-ins,” “exploring topics that matter,” “hearing a variety of student perspectives” and “having fun as a community.”

For all of the goals, the most selected rating was a “3,” and the second-most selected was a“4.” “Having fun as a community” and “broad-ranging conversations during check-ins” were considered relatively more effective compared to goals such as “building relationships.”

Additionally, many students feel that they are not especially connected with their SELF cohort and mentor. According to the results of the SELF feedback form from fall 2020 to fall 2022, many students felt that their connectedness to their SELF cohort was the same as with their regular classes: An average of 49.3% of students felt about as connected to their SELF cohort in fall 2020, 53.0% in spring 2021, 49.6% in fall 2021, 58.4% in spring 2022 and 44.8% in fall 2022.

Similarly, over the years, many students felt that their connectedness to their mentor was the same as to their teachers in regular classes. Sophomore Elizabeth PĂ©rez feels that SELF has not supported her social-emotional skills. While she understands the community-building purpose of the program, she has found that the lessons often feel forced.

“(SELF) feels like it forces interactions between students when most of them don’t really want to do it,” she said. “Some think it’s kind of useless, like, ‘What are we supposed to do here, when I could be doing other stuff?’”

Similarly, senior Benjamin Vakil believes that SELF’s content is not always practical or helpful for students. Seniors, for example, watched Yale University psychology professor Laurie Santos’ videos about the science of well-being.

“I don’t think students are interested in the theoretical things about happiness or Yale’s classes,” Vakil said. “I think that that’s not been beneficial to that vast, vast, vast majority of students, which is unfortunate because Gunn needs students to be well mentally.”

However, SELF has strengthened Vakil’s relationship with his mentor.

“SELF definitely doesn’t help me content-wise, (but) what is good for me is having a connection to a teacher throughout all four years, (and) I’m lucky enough to have had the same teacher,” he said.

Similarly, Freshman Class President Nathan Yoon has appreciated the peer relationships forged during SELF, although he finds the four-year format restrictive.

“I enjoy SELF and the time that I get to spend with the people in my SELF group,” he said. “Knowing you’re going to be with them for the next four years encourages you to befriend them. However, I think it is also kind of rigid to be stuck with the same group for all four years.”

When a self-selected survey conducted by Âé¶č·ĆÓłĂâ·Ń in December 2023 with 133 responses asked students what the most important thing they learned in SELF was, responses varied. Some students said SELF nurtures student-mentor relationships and positive thinking, but others described SELF as ineffective.

“We’ve been learning about happiness this year, but even though I think it’s interesting, I feel like most people don’t care and don’t think it’s useful,” one student wrote.

Another wrote, “While the objects and goals of SELF are good, the implementation of SELF is poor and the curriculum is like it was written for kindergarteners.”

Causes of disengagement

Freshman Class President Nathan Yoon believes that students’ negative responses stem from a failure to understand SELF’s purpose: to foster students’ social-emotional skills, such as empathy and resilience, and to provide a space to build trusting relationships. Contrary to some students’ beliefs, the program does not focus on providing counseling services.

“I say a lot of students don’t really recognize SELF for what it’s trying to be,” he said. “There’s a lot of antagonizing of it because people don’t see what the creators are trying to do with it.”

In the fall 2022 SELF feedback form, 51% of students selected “sort of communicated” when asked about how clearly the purpose of SELF has been communicated to them.

According to Catalano, another possible reason students don’t place importance on SELF is their tendency to focus on rigorous work, causing them to place less importance on soft skills, including many elements of self-care. Some may define success by the traditional path — acquiring a prestigious job and making a lot of money — which focuses on the importance of the individual rather than the community.

“SELF (is) about our larger community and supporting each other, which I think is not really how our community usually operates,” she said.

According to SELF Advisory Board member junior Julia Lee, students — hyper-focused on the present — may also fail to consider SELF’s long-term benefits. Lee believes that SELF will only be effective when students are willing to pay attention to the lessons and recognize educators’ intentions. “If we are not willing to engage in this topic, then there’s really no purpose because we are the ones who have control in whether we want to engage,” she said. “Think about the perspectives of those who are making these lessons, because if we think about why they are creating these lessons for us, the only intention is for our good.”

Looking forward: Improvements

Moving forward, SELF will continue to evolve, and administrators and teachers are open to student suggestions for improvements, especially in the wake of Feb. 20’s student death. Catalano says that adults on campus care deeply for students and are open to hearing any suggestions and concerns.

“We want to support everybody, and I hope that this experience leads students to feeling like there are more adults on campus who care about them instead of less,” she said. 

SELF teacher David Bisbee says his priority is to make his SELF class a comfortable environment and serve student needs. 

“I’m interested in what students want,” he said. “What I think the program has done well over the years is listen to students and have an opportunity for students to talk and share what’s working (and) what’s not.”

Students have also proposed SELF lessons. Lee has been active in proposing and implementing new lesson plans for SELF, such as one on non-violent communication and positive thinking, which is expected to show up in spring 2024. 

“I thought maybe implementing lessons on non-violent communication could be something that students relate to,” she said.

Focus groups have also been hosted periodically, in which one student from each ninth- and 10th-grade SELF class volunteers to gather and give feedback to questions such as “What types of activities have you enjoyed most in SELF?” and “What has worked well to build connections in your cohort?”  

Other students can give feedback to the SELF Advisory Board, which students can apply to join every May. The SELF Suggestion Box Google form is also available on each student’s SELF Schoology course.

SELF will continue to adapt to optimize student wellness, which is the top priority, through student feedback. 

“It is important to get negative feedback,” Catalano said. “Because we want it to be a program that works for everybody, not just the kids who are excited to be there.”

Assistant Principal Courtney Carlomagno, counselors Myesha Dickson and Lorenzo Gomez, English teacher Danielle Whichard, and Gunn’s Safety and Family Specialist Joey Ordonez (non-chaperoning) organized the trip, which consisted of a UCSC tour and a presentation on UC college admissions.

This year marked the resumption of the programs’ college visits after a temporary hiatus due to the pandemic. Students had previously explored the University of San Francisco and San Francisco State University in the fall.

Taught by Whichard, the AVID elective course closes the achievement gap and prepares students for college. Run by Dickson and Gomez, the College Pathways Program is geared towards supporting first-generation students who will be the first in their families to attend college. 20 students from AVID and 30 students from the College Pathways Program participated in the college visit, which aligned with both programs’ purposes: to initiate the college research process early and equip students with information to plan their futures.

Sophomore Keefe Aidan Punzalan, who attended the trip, joined AVID to better prepare himself for and understand what to expect in college and beyond. Gunn’s college visits have served as stepping stones for his academic journey.

“Visits like this make me less scared of what to expect in universities and provide the necessary perspective to understand campus life and attending classes,” Aidan Punzalan said. “I managed to strike up conversations with a few of the college students. They gave me all kinds of input on what elements they do and do not enjoy (in college).”

Led by a UCSC guide, students learned about the school’s expectations, culture, housing situations and student life. A presentation by a UCSC admissions representative also provided students with a glimpse into UC college admissions, according to Carlomagno.

“(The admissions presenter) shared a lot of great insight with our students about what exactly they’re looking for, and how it’s not always about grades, but about other things that students are involved in, such as programs like AVID,” Whichard said.

The tour and presentation were followed by lunch in the cafeteria and UCSC student-led visits to the Art Building, libraries and museum. UCSC dining hall staff even brought out their ice cream machine for the visiting students, according to Aiden Punzalan.

Coordinators typically solidify fall college visit plans before summer break. In December, prior to winter break, the team decides on spring college visit timings and then reaches out to the colleges. However, the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted this process.

“We could have started last year, but it was hard to get back into the routine of planning trips,” Whichard said. “The way college campuses run their tours has gotten more strict, and we ran into an issue last year where we weren’t finding availability for a big group.”

Aiming to expose students to a wide variety of universities, the team plans to schedule one last trip to a community college before the end of this school year, according to Carlomagno.

“We chose UCSC, a University of California school because we’d done a California State University and a private school in the fall,” she said. “We try to offer all the different types of schools, so students have a good idea of the difference in colleges, and can make their own informed decision based on their experience when they do apply.”

Gomez hopes that visits like these can assure students that college is an achievable goal.

“Being able to provide information to these students in these programs on Gunn campus, and then actually visiting a college campus puts everything that we preach (into perspective) and paints a picture of the reality of how higher education looks like,” he said. “We hope that you pursue it.”

District Communications Coordinator George Pinckney told NBC Bay Area that the spaghetti had contained moldy, burnt bell peppers. According to Pinckney, a new oven in the central kitchen — where all elementary school meals are prepared — alongside temperature increases from malfunctioning refrigerator fans caused the problem.

Since then, PAUSD has worked to prevent further meal spoilage. According to Pinckney, the district has been measuring the temperatures of all foods and closely monitoring expiration dates to mitigate future incidents.

“We will definitely continue to improve our protocols and make sure that our kitchens are safe and the food we serve is also safe,” Pinckney said.

The district’s spoiled-food situation, alongside its adjustments to post-pandemic regulations and mandated nutritional guidelines, raises questions about whether its current food programs fully serve its students.

Free Meals

To ease families’ burdens after the COVID-19 lockdown, on July 9, 2021, California Gov. Gavin Newsom included the Universal Meals Program as part of Assembly Bill 130. The program requires all public schools to provide students with two free meals each school day, without consideration of their financial background or eligibility for federally funded free or reduced-price meals. According to PAUSD Student Nutrition Director Alva Spence, the district currently offers free breakfast and lunch to students.

The bill also authorizes the California Department of Education to reimburse schools for the cost of the meals. PAUSD logs expenses for monthly reimbursements from the federal government, and the state government covers remaining costs.

Currently, the contract between PAUSD and Sodexo USA, a consulting and food-services company, has PAUSD paying $1.37 and $1.89 for breakfast and lunch supplies per meal, respectively. PAUSD has contracted with Sodexo for over a decade to help maintain adherence to local and federal food laws and ensure that students receive the correct portion sizes and nutritional components, per the California Department of Education’s guidelines.

Sodexo provides training for PAUSD’s 39 Student Nutrition Services employees, who learn knife-handling skills, from-scratch cooking and procedures for providing new vegetarian options. All meals are reheated or cooked in PAUSD facilities, according to Gunn Kitchen Lead Melanie Gomez.

Dietary Concerns

The PAUSD food program has followed the Biden Administration’s guidelines on added sodium and sugar levels in meals. Still, many parents and students remain displeased with the current quality, quantity and portion sizes of school-provided meals.

Sophomore Jules Nagayama noticed a decline in quality since the switch from paid brunch and lunch at the middle schools to free meals at Gunn.

“I liked lunch a lot better when it was before COVID, and we still had to pay,” Nagayama said. “The quality and portions were way better — you could even get two lunches if you wanted to. Now, I don’t feel like the food is enough for me.”

However, according to Assistant Principal of Wellness Courtney Carlomagno, PAUSD is restricted by the state program’s guidelines for caloric values per meal: School breakfast must remain within 450 to 600 calories and lunches between 750 and 800 calories.

The number of meal choices has also dropped post-COVID. According to Carlomagno, there are currently only three lunch options per day, down from four or five before the pandemic.

“We were able to charge for lunches (pre-pandemic), which meant we had a surplus of money, and that meant we were able to put that back into the food we were serving,” she said. “We were able to offer more options.”

Despite the decrease in overall entree options, Spence stated that the number of vegetarian options has remained constant since pre-pandemic times. Under the current program, students with dietary restrictions can struggle to find suitable lunch options. Sophomore Hannah Baum, an athlete and vegan, has always chosen to not eat school lunch, both pre- and post-pandemic times, and instead chooses to bring her own lunch every day.

“I don’t think they give enough food, and the food they do give isn’t necessarily healthy and also vegan,” Baum said. “(I’ve seen) vegetarian options, but they’re all like cheese and crackers, so I don’t think that’ll give me enough food.”

Creating Solutions

In response to these concerns, PAUSD has enabled students with dietary needs to submit requests on the Gunn website for special meals, according to Carlomagno.

“Not all of them are approved, but it’s definitely a way to put it in and have the district review it,” she said.

PAUSD is also working with Sodexo to add more food options in the 2024 spring semester, including chana masala over rice, vegetarian chili with cornbread, smoothies, parfaits with granola, General Tso’s chicken and tofu, teriyaki burgers, and quinoa salads.

In addition to expanded options, Spence anticipates fresher meals in the coming months: The district has bought three more trucks to minimize delivery times, and construction on the new kitchen facilities in the A- and B-buildings is expected to be completed in fall 2024, resulting in warmer, fresher meals.

To provide more locally grown food, PAUSD is partnering with Ag Link, an organization that helps PAUSD access organic produce from farms in Merced, Fresno, Salinas, Stanislaus, Butte, Yuma and Kern.

Students have also taken initiative to address the inconveniences of the government-implemented program. According to Principal Wendy Stratton, a student helped facilitate the addition of vending machines to campus. Located near the K-building, Main Office and Bow Gym, these vending machines provide additional options to students seeking food on campus, such as chips and beverages. Their items have undergone a review process — certain items, such as soda and candy, cannot be served.

Community members can provide feedback on the Gunn food program at the monthly menu advisory meetings, usually held on Thursdays from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m. via Google Meet.

Parent Kanda Ishihara noted the connection between subpar lunches and the overall culture of food waste on campus.

“They should do a better job of making (lunch) healthier and tastier, because otherwise the kids don’t even eat it — they throw it away and it’s a big waste of money,” Ishihara said. “It’s convenient, it’s a great resource, but it’s just such a waste.”

Administrators adopted this measure after noticing an upward trend in discriminatory behavior. According to PAUSD’s Uniform Complaint Procedures logs, there was a 21.6% increase in logged reports and complaints of discrimination at Gunn last year, from 37 reports in fall 2022 to 45 reports in fall 2023.

Assistant Principal of Student Equity Courtney Carlomagno, who helped create the initiative, noted that the new reporting method will allow administrators to respond to incidents more quickly and effectively, as well as gauge the true number of cases on campus.

“We (wanted to) take away the obstacle of having to come to the office and speak to an administrator right away,” she said. “Instead you can access this form at any time of day, and you could access it whether you were the one who was impacted by something that occurred or you just observed it.”

This approach also addresses students’ and community members’ dissatisfaction with the administration’s apparent lack of response to discriminatory behavior, according to Principal Dr. Wendy Stratton.

“The perception I think within our community is like, ‘Oh, nothing really happens,” she said. “You hear something, and there’s no visible evidence that we stand against that and that we don’t tolerate that. We need to do more on this to make it really clear that behavior along the lines of hate speech or something like that is really not acceptable here.”

Cases reported to the form through the QR code are submitted to PAUSD Title IX Coordinator and Compliance Officer Robert Andrade, who reviews the report and determines whether it should be further pursued as a district investigation or if the case should be handled at the site level.

The consequences for those who are reported to the form vary, depending on the context. They range from suspension to restorative meetings, in which offenders can learn how to repair relationships with those they have mistreated. As part of the initiative, corrective action focuses less on punishment and more on education and growth.

“The growth is so rich if you can turn around and have a conversation and really get something out of it,” Stratton said.

As of Feb. 6, the form has not yet been used to document any cases of harassment or discrimination. Still, Co-Diversity Commissioner junior Nia Porter anticipates that the form can improve student experiences at Gunn.

“I was pretty happy to see that they had something, because I’ve heard a lot of people sharing their experience and talking to me about how it wasn’t handled well by admin,” she said. “They don’t really know how to ask for help, but I think the form is going to help with that a lot.”

Stratton noted that the initiative emphasizes the importance of educating students at Gunn outside the realm of academics.

“A really important part of being an educated person is to recognize that you can have free speech, … but you need to be respectful of people around you, and that’s part of being a community member,” she said.

Report cases of hate and discrimination at

However, recent trends have shown a reversal to this growth. Out of the state’s 58 counties, 53 experienced a decline in student populations during the COVID-19 pandemic, with public school enrollment falling 2% since the 2019–2020 school year. According to the California Department of Education, Bay Area public schools have lost 6.5% of their students, with Palo Alto Unified School District (PAUSD) seeing a 10.5% decrease in students since 2019.

Impacts on Enrollment

Pandemic-era learning has led some students and their families to reconsider public schools. Junior Ella Holsinger, a student at the Castilleja School, attended Gunn for her freshman year before enrolling in private school as a sophomore. “The distance learning that Gunn did [at the end of] my freshman year was pretty sparse,” she said. “We didn’t have to go on Zoom calls and the asynchronous work didn’t benefit me at all. Ultimately, my family and I made the decision to go [to Castilleja] together.”

According to Assistant Principal Courtney Carlomagno, public schools faced more barriers than private schools when it came to adapting throughout the pandemic. “Public schools are larger than most private schools so sheer size can cause protocols to be larger to manage,” she said.

Parents and students began to notice the different transition protocols offered by private and public schools, including their hybrid options and dates for full in-person instruction. “I went back to [in-person school] in Nov. 2020,” Holsinger said. “[At Castilleja,] we ended up going to a model where it was one week of online and one week of in-person which was amazing.” In contrast, PAUSD high school students were not offered a consistent in-person learning option until March 2021, in which they could choose to come on campus for two days of the week.

Other students such as sophomore Zefan Feng chose to move to private schools for reasons outside of pandemic restrictions. “The student-teacher ratio was quite important,” he said. “There are around 40 kids per grade [at the Pinewood School] so we have more individual attention from the teachers. I think that it’s easier to get better grades if you have more attention.”

Although private schools are a factor in declining public school enrollment, they themselves have also experienced dropping student populations, indicating that they aren’t the primary cause for the exodus from public education.

Another main contributor has been California’s overall decreasing population. According to the California Department of Finance, the state lost 117,600 people in 2021, with the San Francisco Bay Area population declining by 50,400 people. Although the region only makes up 19.4% of California’s population, it accounts for 42.9% of the decline statewide.

Many, including English teacher Diane Ichikawa, point to the area’s comparatively high costs of living and pandemic trends as the reason why people are leaving in record numbers. “There are a precious number of people who can actually afford [to live] someplace like Palo Alto, let alone any of the coastal regions in California,” she said. “The ability for people to work remotely made it so that people could live in places like Montana while still making the same kind of money that they would [make] if they were in California.”

According to the Public Policy Institute of California, most families have relocated out of the state for housing, jobs or family-related reasons. Junior Riku Sakai moved to Gilbert—a suburb of Phoenix, Arizona—during the summer of 2020. “[We moved] mostly because of my dad’s job and also our financial situation,” he said.

However, some, such as sophomore Julie Chen, have used moving as an opportunity to take advantage of alternative academic pathways. “We decided to move to Bellevue, Washington partly because of the International Baccalaureate (IB) program [offered there],” she said. The IB program is a rigorous, two year course of study that culminates in a student receiving an internationally recognized diploma. PAUSD currently does not offer an IB program at either of its high schools, and there are no plans to implement one in the near future.

Another trend amplified by the pandemic is homeschooling. Data from the U.S. Census Bureau shows that 5.4% of families reported choosing this option in the spring of 2020, compared to 11.1% in the fall of 2021.

Sophomore Justin Lee decided to try homeschooling instead of attending Greene Middle School for his eighth grade year. “My mom wasn’t working at the time so homeschool was eventually an option that we started to consider,” he said. “As an eighth grader, I was able to love learning again. If I had known at all how homeschool [was before], I don’t think I’d have ever chosen to go to public school just because I like it so much.”

Even before fully transitioning, Lee’s family had some experience with learning at home. “Almost every summer, my family would do a version of homeschooling, and I would follow a curriculum developed by the homeschool community,” he said.

Funding Consequences

The California state government establishes a funding goal—known as the Local Control Funding Formula—for how much money a district should receive per student enrolled. If the area’s property taxes are insufficient to provide the necessary funding, the state comes in to cover the shortfall. While most schools are funded through a combination of state and local revenue, around 8% of districts—including PAUSD—are considered basic aid. Basic aid districts are areas where property tax revenues exceed the funding threshold set by the government, meaning that they receive minimal state funding.

Because property taxes do not fluctuate based on how many students are enrolled, declining student populations have had few financial impacts on districts like PAUSD. However, those relying on the state for revenue have had to make some difficult choices, since their funding is determined by enrollment. According to district records, Alum Rock Union School District in San Jose decided to merge two middle schools after losing over 1,000 students since the 2019–2020 school year while West Contra Costa Unified School District currently faces a $24 million deficit and is looking to cut staff and student programs.

At Gunn, the decrease in students has still led to noticeable impacts, according to Social Studies Instructional Lead Jeff Patrick. “For the last couple of years, there’s been a steady decline of students,” he said. “The interesting thing is that it’s not just a smaller incoming freshman class, each of the grade levels are losing students. Next year’s 12th grade class is smaller than this year’s 11th grade class, meaning that not all of the students are coming back.”

Even though PAUSD doesn’t face the same dire consequences as other districts, Ichikawa points to initiatives that could help retain students. “PAUSD doesn’t even have to shrink in terms of its number of teachers and the resources that we have,” she said. “We have millions that are locked away in our reserves and we’re not going to go poor over everything that’s happening. We can use this as an opportunity to have smaller class sizes and more arrays of programs to find a really good fit for our changing population.”

Free school lunches were initially offered by the federal government as part of COVID-19 pandemic relief. While this program was initially meant to be temporary, the United States Department of Agriculture has committed to providing free lunches through the 2021-22 school year due to hardships that many families still face. In California, the state plans on continuing the universal lunch program as part of a $123.9 billion education package in hopes to combat youth food insecurity.

Despite the implementation of free lunches, new guidelines have restricted the meal options that schools were once able to provide, according to Acting Lunch Supervisor Normalyn Bato. While choices like pasta and baked potato bars were offered in the past, current lunches in the district usually consist of a prepackaged main entrĂ©e such as a chicken drumstick or a veggie burger along with a few sides such as fruits, vegetables or a bag of chips. “Before [the pandemic], we could make a lot of choices, but now we are limited,” Bato said.

According to Principal Wendy Stratton, the district has had to modify its traditional meal options to comply with new requirements. “It’s not something we have much control over,” she said. “The district has to follow very strict guidelines on what they can offer, and it’s more limited than it has been in the past.”

Even with the limitations around free meals, the district has been working on offering a more diverse array of options. Before the school year began, Assistant Principal Courtney Carlomagno and other administrators experimented with providing pho as a potential free meal option. “As we all get settled in, the district is working hard and putting their culinary knowledge forward to bring more offerings based on the current situation,” she said.

An area of concern shared by administrators and students including sophomore Stella Manning is the small portion sizes of the free lunch. “The portion sizes of the main meals are way too small,” she said. “The added vegetables and snacks aren’t filling, so I end up still feeling hungry when I finish eating.”

Stratton shared similar thoughts on the free meals. “It’s not a lot of food for an athlete or somebody going to after-school sports,” she said. “It’s just to get you through the day. A lot of times, you have to supplement that with something else.”

A logistical issue the district is facing regarding the free lunches is determining the number of meals to order in advance. Since nearly 500 students take advantage of the free lunch, there are not always enough entrĂ©es for everyone, leaving some like sophomore Sean Li without a hot meal. “If you’re at the end of the line, a lot of the good food is gone, and they just have to give you a small protein box,” he said.

Compared to a main entrĂ©e, these protein boxes provide significantly less food for students, consisting of fruit, sunflower seeds and other snacks. Protein boxes are distributed once the initial stock of prepackaged meals has been depleted. “We really don’t have choices anymore, so that is all we can provide,” Bato said.

District staff are in the process of solving this issue. “We have been adjusting the amount of what we are ordering and what we’re bringing in because more students wanted free lunch than we anticipated,” Stratton said.

According to Stratton, school administrators have listened to student feedback and have already adapted the lunch process. During the first few weeks of school, the lunch line often stretched around different buildings due to challenges with scanning student IDs. While administrators had temporarily lifted the ID requirement to search for a more efficient mechanism, they have since returned to requiring students to show their ID.

While the lunch program has its limitations, but students have had a generally positive reaction to the free meals. “Free lunch is probably the best thing the district could have done since it allows everyone to just get lunch,” Li said.

Junior Ethan Liang echoed Li’s outlook on the future of free lunches at Gunn. “The best people to give feedback on such a thing are the people who are experiencing it,” he said. “If the process can be improved over time steadily with student feedback, it’ll get better and better.”

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 activitiesÌęłÙŽÇ choose from. “PRIME lends itselfÌęłÙŽÇ 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 teachersÌęłÙŽÇ 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.”

In many regards, the rushing highway traffic represents affluence and comfortable middle-class life: the fleet of sedans and SUVs making their way up and down Highway 101 boast passengers working in the world’s most affluent tech companies and high-end San Francisco businesses. Indeed, Palo Alto, the common destination of such travelers, is itself a hotbed of wealth—in 2018, city residents’ median household income was more than double the national median.

Yet less noticeably, Highway 101 remains the de facto divide between affluent Palo Alto and East Palo Alto, a city with an estimated poverty rate of 12.6% and a place known as the per-capita murder leader of the U.S. in 1992. Although East Palo Alto has made encouraging progress in safety and decreasing the city’s poverty level, such vast disparity is far from a coincidence. In fact, this artificial divide is caused by an extensive history of racial segregation that has long infiltrated the community.

A multitude of discriminatory housing practices, such as restrictive deeds and redlining, have contributed to vast educational and socioeconomic inequalities—and the implications of such practices, far from being relics of a bygone era, threaten to rear their heads once more in the current debate over who should have access to Foothills Park.

A history of housing segregation

Despite spurring quintessential Silicon Valley innovation and laying claim to a seemingly progressive community, the Bay Area was not—and still is not—immune to the gentrification and racial segregation that plagued cities all over the country.

During the economic boom following World War II, minority families began flooding into the Bay Area to look for a place to settle. However, they were met with widespread resistance: in Palo Alto, certain properties in multiple neighborhoods subdivided from 1925 to 1950 had deed restrictions specifying that “no person not wholly of the white caucasian race shall use or occupy such property unless such person or persons are employed as servants of the occupants,” according to the website Palo Alto History.org.

Social studies teacher Laurel Howard, a Palo Alto resident since childhood, recalls that bylaws embedded in the deeds of nearby houses were surprisingly commonplace. “My parents own a house in Palo Alto,” she said. “When they bought the house, [it was] actually written into their deed that they can’t sell the house to a person of color.”

A similar practice of barring property sales to people of color was in place near Stanford University’s campus. During World War II, the Peninsula Housing Association of Palo Alto purchased a large amount of land to build 400 houses in response to the housing shortages at the time. In their bylaws and deeds, the association incorporated a quota system promising that the proportion of Black homeowners on their land would not exceed the proportion of Black individuals in all of California. Later, they sold their land to a private developer with a Federal Housing Administration (FHA) agreement detailing that no properties could be sold to any Black individuals.

As a result, people of color were prohibited from settling in most Palo Alto neighborhoods. Left with no other options, minority families turned to a nearby area, the soon-to-be called East Palo Alto, where housing prices were lower and housing restrictions were less frequent.

Although these types of racial restrictions were outlawed by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1948, de facto restrictions nevertheless persisted through bylaws and deeds. The effects have cascaded to from the modern-day divide: houses were often passed through generations, creating the segregated community seen today.

Discrimination and FHA redlining

Of course, these practices of racial segregation weren’t just limited to Palo Alto. In 1934, the FHA was established on a nationwide scale. Originally, the agency was created to improve housing standards and increase employment in the midst of the Great Depression; in order to do so, the FHA worked with real estate companies to provide loans to potential homeowners.

Real estate companies, however, wanted a guarantee that potential homeowners would actually pay back their loans; thus, the federal government marked out neighborhoods to provide “risk ratings” that would judge which neighborhoods would pay back loans on time, resulting in a process marred by racism. “The neighborhoods that tended to be the most safe investments [for real estate companies] tended to be neighborhoods with that very strict, stereotypical cookie-cutter white family, because those were socially seen as more respectable and safer,” Howard said. Neighborhoods seen as “high risk” were outlined in red lines, leading to the term of “redlining.” Neighborhoods of color were outlined in red more often than not, leaving such areas deeply segregated for years to come.

In nearby San Francisco, for example, 87% of previously redlined neighborhoods are still classified today as low-income, according to the Urban Displacement Project. Other nearby cities subjected to redlining policies in the past include San Jose, Oakland and Berkeley.

Some neighborhoods in Palo Alto, however, were less segregated than others. “The Greenmeadow neighborhood was more integrated,” Howard said. “However, just because they would sell the house [to people of color], doesn’t mean that [they] had equal access to it.”

Setbacks faced by minority families, such as the lack of access to loans, still played an influential role in housing settlement; even if families were allowed to live in a neighborhood, they often could not afford to do so.

Redlining was ultimately made illegal with the Federal Fair Housing Act in 1968, a ban that was later reinforced by the Âé¶č·ĆÓłĂâ·Ń Mortgage Disclosure Act of 1975, which required banks to report their public loan data. Yet the damage was done: only 1.6% of Palo Alto residents are Black, according to the 2019 U.S. Census estimate.

East Palo Alto gentrification

Through both discriminatory deeds and illegal redlining practices, the divide between East Palo Alto and Palo Alto widened in the years following World War II. During the 1960s and 1970s, Palo Alto began to thrive. The technology industry was booming and Stanford University became a premier institution, attracting professors, students and innovators alike. However, housing prices remained steep, and the discriminatory practices kept many from settling in Palo Alto. “East Palo Alto, right next door, became the space where people who are coming to this region, either to work as domestic servants or even people who are coming to be graduate students at Stanford, [lived],” Howard said.

Yet East Palo Alto was not incorporated as a city until 1983, denying it the money and resources that would have helped it advance. Former Stanford Dean of Freshmen Julie Lythcott-Haims argued the decision it left East Palo Alto free to be preyed on by developers. “[Developers thought,] ‘There’s no land left on the Peninsula, so we better start buying up East Palo Alto,’” Lythcott-Haims said. “And then East Palo Alto got gentrified.”

Gentrification is the practice of reforming an area or neighborhood to conform to the current taste of society; in other words, developers change the character of the neighborhood in response to an influx of affluent residents or businesses and make it more appealing to those with power and money.

As tech powerhouses began settling in the Bay Area, especially along the southwest border of East Palo Alto, the community began to change accordingly. “[Facebook] employees [were] like, ‘Oh, we’re in East Palo Alto. This is a sketchy area,” social studies teacher Haley Perkins said, illustrating a common viewpoint held by nearby tech corporations.

As such, companies longed to make the community “safer” for their new employees to live in; for instance, Facebook–whose headquarters lie on the Menlo Park and East Palo Alto border–currently funds a branch of the Menlo Park Police Department specifically for policing the area surrounding their headquarters.

The consequence of gentrification was a rise in already expensive housing prices. Some East Palo Alto residents, especially those who settled in the city after being denied housing elsewhere, were displaced. One University of California at Berkeley study found that East Palo Alto “lost thousands of low-income black households” from 2010 to 2015, with no similar effects reported in predominantly white neighborhoods in the same time period.

Yet gentrification does not inherently have to create a negative impact, according to Perkins. “I think that, philosophically, when people are removed from their homes because they can no longer afford to live there or because of other governmental policies, that’s a moral wrong,” she said. “Gentrification isn’t necessarily a bad thing if what it’s doing is investing in communities for [those] that exist there, and making the community better for existing [individuals living there]. But what gentrification tends to do is invest in communities so that other communities can thrive in that community.”

Lythcott-Haims echoed Perkins. “We ought to be able to bring opportunity and look after the needs of those who are already there,” she said. “Otherwise it’s just another form of colonization.”

Impact on the education system

The effects of Palo Alto’s extensive history of racial segregation has compounded to form clear disparities in the quality of education offered by East Palo Alto’s Ravenwood School District and the Palo Alto Unified School District (PAUSD). In 1986, the Tinsleys, an East Palo Alto family, filed a class action lawsuit against eight local school districts. “East Palo Alto schools were so incredibly underfunded that a lot of people sued, saying that their children were not getting adequate education,” Howard said.

The lawsuit also cited the discriminatory practices that prevented the Tinsleys from settling in more affluent areas in the first place. PAUSD pled no contest. In response, the district created the Voluntary Transfer Program (VTP), also known as the Tinsley Program, which allows 60 East Palo Alto students to take a bus into the city and attend Palo Alto schools.

According to Assistant Principal Pier Angeli La Place, the reason behind the program’s founding is largely—and unfortunately–unknown to the community. “It’s more viewed like it’s just this benevolent, kind thing that Palo Alto is doing to allow these kids from East Palo Alto to come over,” she said. “Whereas, in fact, the history of it is that it was a very racially motivated decision to create this boundary that would prevent those students from being a part of [PAUSD]. And as a result, that is why we have that program.”

According to La Place, historically underrepresented students are still not receiving the attention they deserve and are often overlooked in favor of the majority of PAUSD students. “85% of our students are doing fantastic,” she said. “[People then think,] ‘That’s good enough; we’re clearly a successful district because we have a high performing record for most of our kids.’ And so it becomes easier to sweep aside the 15 to 20% [of students] who, on every statistic you could possibly name, are not successful academically.”

Special Education teacher Courtney Carlomagno adds that the socioeconomic status of students’ families often determines the voice they have in decision-making. “The parents who have more capital and live nearer to the school are going to be the ones who are making the demands on the educational system,” she said. “They’re going to be the ones speaking at the school board, and so they’re going to gain a lot more access and rights that’s in line with what they want for their students, from their white homes.”

Similarly, there seems to be a lack of community acknowledgement toward these socioeconomic disparities, according to Perkins, making any efforts to resolve them more difficult. “This kind of divide between East Palo Alto and Palo Alto is so known to the community but so unspoken,” Perkins said.

Even as diverse groups of students are brought together in educational environment around the Bay Area, the social and cultural divide deepens, according to Carlomagno. “A lot of our Black and Brown students don’t see themselves in the school community or see themselves in the teachers they have, or they just don’t feel like they’re represented,” she said. “I’ve had students tell me that the only way it’s going to change is if we find a way to increase our enrollment of Latino and African-American students, or to increase the staff we have that are people of color, specifically [those who identify as] Latino and African-American.”

Howard cited the distance between the two communities as yet another factor dividing students. “If you are living in East Palo Alto, you have to take this really long bus ride,” she said. “You’re not close to any of your school peers, because you’re coming from this other region.”

Perkins believes focusing on creating resources is key to lessening the education gap between students from low-income families, including those from East Palo Alto, and students from affluent Palo Alto homes. “One of the big solutions would be to pay attention to and where they’re going to,” she said. “Are the resources being allotted to the students who need them the most? Or are the resources being allotted to the students who already have the most?”

A nature preserve for a select few

Educational inequalities aren’t the only modern-day remnants of Palo Alto’s history with racial segregation. Even today, a debate is raging over who exactly should access Palo Alto’s Foothills Park. Foothills Park, a large nature preserve owned by the city of Palo Alto, has limited park access to Palo Alto residents ever since it was purchased in 1965. A recent lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and other plaintiffs has threatened this policy.

According to Palo Alto City Council candidate Greer Stone, the plaintiffs’ rationale is that the current policy violates non-residents’ rights to freedom of speech, travel, protest and assembly. “If you’re a non- resident, you can’t go into the park to protest the park being closed [or say] that it should be a public space and the public should have the right to be able to enter the vehicle to enter the park,” he said.

While there is no direct evidence that the decision to close off the park was made with racist intent, the ACLU also cites Palo Alto’s history of racial segregation in their lawsuit.

Indeed, the stated intent behind the residents-only policy, according to Palo Alto, is associated with the park’s purchase. In 1965, when the city was making plans to buy the land, Palo Alto reached out to neighboring cities to see if they were interested in splitting the cost. No one cared to chip in. Since then, Foothills Park has been open to Palo Alto residents only—in other words, only to those who pay taxes to keep the park open.

In that vein, some Palo Alto residents argue that opening the park up to non-residents would sharply increase maintenance costs due to the required presence of a full-time ranger and the potential increase of garbage collection needed.

Yet this past summer, the City Council approved a pilot program to open the park to select non-residents willing to purchase a permit. Lythcott-Haims hopes that Palo Alto will ultimately open up the park. “I’m ashamed to live in a city that restricts access to this open space that was never originally belonging to Palo Alto,” she said.

Despite numerous efforts to bridge the gap between the two cities, especially in light of recent nationwide equality movements, much work remains. “It’s clear that we do have the vestiges of the systemic inequities within this community from these various housing policies in the 1950s and 1960s,” Stone said.