Juana Briones Elementary School Principal Matthew Nagle announced Tuesday, May 15, he will leave the school at the end of the school year to work on projects in the Palo Alto school district central office.

Nagle, who is finishing his third year as principal of the 415-student K-5 campus, broke the news in an email to parents and staff Tuesday afternoon.

The announcement followed tensions at the school apparently precipitated by Nagle's controversial recommendation not to renew the contract of a popular school librarian. The dispute led other staff members, with support from a number of parents, to come forward with complaints, sources said.

In his e-mail, Nagle said he had "nothing but gratitude" for his three years as principal at the school.

"I know that the district will find another principal talented enough to lead this school into the next year and beyond."

Nagle was hired to lead Juana Briones in August 2009, replacing principal Michael O'Neill, who resigned in late July after two years at the school to take a job on the East Coast.

Nagle had been an elementary school principal for seven years, having previously served at Blackford Elementary School in San Jose and Marshall Lane Elementary School in Saratoga.

In Palo Alto's high-flying high schools, it's crowded at the top.

So many students earn stellar grade-point averages that the school district years ago quit reporting a student's class rank to colleges.

Beginning next year, for similar reasons, the district will stop reporting a student's decile ranking -- that is, the student's standing on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being the highest, when compared with classmates.

With the top decile bottoming out at 3.947 GPA, school officials decided that decile sorting harms more students than it helps.

A very respectable 3.55 GPA, for example, puts a Palo Alto student squarely in the middle -- the fifth decile. A 3.0 relegates the student to decile eight.

"Our 'twos' would be 'ones' in most other places," said Director of Secondary Education Michael Milliken.

Getting ranked below the second decile is "not helpful to students" -- particularly when that same student would rise to the top in most other school populations.

And students in Palo Alto's top decile "have such strong academic profiles that they speak for themselves," Milliken said.

College admissions officers are under pressure to select applicants from top deciles because of college-ranking systems like that of U.S. News & World Report, , Milliken said.

"A lot of these colleges want kids stacked up one to 10 so they can scoop off the top two. Have we helped our kids by putting them into these bins?

"I don't want to invoke Lake Wobegon analogies, but we have an incredibly strong population of students," he said.

More than 24 percent of current high school seniors, for example, were recognized as National Merit Semifinalists or Commended Scholars -- placing them in the top 3 percent of students nationally based on their scores on the Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test.

And SAT data shows that students ranking in Palo Alto's 25th percentile -- with a combined score of 1,740 -- would rise to the 75th percentile if compared against seniors across California or across the nation.

The Palo Alto City Council kicked off a community discussion on the fate of Cubberley Community Center Monday when members backed a set of principles to guide the discussion.

The principles will also be considered by the Board of Education as the two bodies contemplate the possible joint use of the 35-acre site in the future.

In the decades since Cubberley High School closed in 1979 due to falling enrollment, the school district has rented the campus to the City of Palo Alto for use as a community center, garnering about $7 million a year in lease revenue for schools.

That lease is up for renewal in 2014 but, this time, school officials have indicated they may need to take back at least part of the campus because of rising school enrollment, particularly in the southern part of town.

A San Francisco architect has drawn several "conceptual plans" for a future Cubberley, several of them showing shared use between schools and community groups.

Officials stressed those sketches are nothing more than informal concepts to see whether multiple interests could be accommodated in the 35-acre space, eight acres of which is owned by the city.

The guiding principles and concept plans will be discussed Friday in a meeting of a Cubberley "policy advisory committee" on Cubberley, consisting of three City Council members and two school board members. The Cubberley discussion also will be augmented by a "community advisory committee" consisting of representatives of more than 20 community groups.

Children and parents at Fairmeadow School are wondering why a beloved tree, which had been fenced for protection during a school construction project, was cut down over spring break.

School officials, who ordered the tree removed despite construction plans directing that it be saved, say they also are "very sad the tree came down" but insist there was no other choice once an arborist reported it was unsafe.

The half-century-old double-trunk redwood tree sat at the edge of Fairmeadow's grassy play yard, next to the elementary school's border with Jane Lathrop Stanford Middle School.

Its shade and crooked, gnarly base made it a popular spot for "fairy play," said parent Ruth Gordon, whose two children went through the school.

"They created their own little world in there," she said.

Gordon, a landscape architect, sat on Fairmeadow's parent-staff committee that spent more than a year refining modernization and construction plans for the school.

Those plans include a new, eight-classroom, two-story building now being laid out in the vicinity of the tree. The new building, designed by San Francisco architect Lisa Gelfand, is slated to be occupied by fourth- and fifth-graders in spring 2013.

Committee members discussed the tree and -- both sides agree -- plans called for it to be preserved, and protected during construction.

"The two-story building was going to have that tree as a backdrop, and the second story would've looked into the tree," Gordon said.

"I talked to the architect about it and said it's a really nice nestling of the new building. Another benefit of the tree was it was going to screen the looming, two-story building from JLS," she said.

Gordon said kids and parents were astounded to return from spring break and find the tree gone and its stump already ground.

"I still can't believe it," she said.

Palo Alto would build three new schools at Cubberley Community Center as part of a new concept that top city and school officials unveiled late Thursday, April 5.

The proposal, which the City Council is set to discuss Monday night, April 9, includes four concepts that a committee of top city and school officials have been considering since late last year. All four concepts include a new elementary school at 525 San Antonio Road, site of a recently closed day care center (the school district purchased the site last year).

The new plans also call for a middle school and a small high school, which would accommodate 600 and 500 students, respectively. While in the first option, the middle and high schools would stand alone, the other three options call for land swaps and shared uses between the city and the schools of gym, theater and classroom spaces.

A new report from Deputy City Manager Steve Emslie aims to establish the parameters for one of the most complex ongoing discussions between the Palo Alto Unified School District, which owns 27 acres of Cubberley, and the city, which owns 8 acres. The school district leases its space to the city under an agreement that is set to expire in December 2014.

Both sides have stressed the critical importance of Cubberley, a bustling but run-down center at 4000 Middlefield Road that currently includes a Foothill College campus and an eclectic mix of gyms, athletic fields, day care facilities and artist studios. Emslie's report calls it "a significant element of the City's complete infrastructure needs," while school officials see it as crucial to accommodating the district's surge in student population, particularly in south Palo Alto.

At the same time, both sides acknowledge that the center's dilapidated condition will require expensive upgrades. The new report pegs the cost of ongoing maintenance and anticipated capital improvements at $10 million over the next four years. The high costs of upgrading Cubberley were a major factor behind a recent recommendation to the city from the specially appointed Infrastructure Blue Ribbon Commission to terminate the lease.

The city and the school district are trying to reach a consensus by the end of this year about whether to renew the Cubberley lease. They plan to spend much of 2013 discussing the details of the potential lease renewal. In addition to discussing the new concept plans, the council will consider Monday approving a new advisory committee composed of stakeholders to work with the two sides on a solution.

This "Community Advisory Committee" was appointed by City Manager James Keene and includes former mayors Lanie Wheeler and Mike Cobb, various Cubberley tenants, PTA representatives, neighborhood leaders and local commissioners. The group will advise another new committee -- the "Policy Advisory Committee" -- which will include members from the council and the school board. Both groups are scheduled to kick off discussions this summer.

So far, most of the discussions have occurred at the top levels of the city and school district. In the past three months, Keene, Superintendent Kevin Skelly and architects from the group Gelfand Architects have been considering the district's needs and possible ways to accommodate them. The new concept plans, which the council will look at Monday, are the first publicly released byproduct of these discussions.

"The preliminary options developed jointly with PAUSD and their architect should be considered conceptual drafts intended to present alternatives for subsequent discussions," the report states. "The options only provide some high level detail as to a foundation and starting point for the Cubberley vision process."

The council will also consider Monday a set of "guiding principles" relating to the Cubberley discussion. These include a commitment to transparency; an agreement for the city and the school district to equally share the planning and architectural costs; and consideration of neighborhood concerns and transportation issues in discussions.

The proposed principles also acknowledge the importance of keeping recreational facilities and community uses at Cubberley. Many of the center's users, including day care providers, artists and dancers, attended council meetings last year and urged city leaders to retain space to meet their needs.

"The city types of programs offered by the City and its contractors and subtenants at Cubberley enrich the community and should be preserved and enhanced wherever possible," the proposed principles state.

Palo Alto students are about to see a big cash infusion into local schools.

Palo Alto Partners in Education (PiE) will tonight announce a $4.4 million grant to the Palo Alto Unified School District at their board meeting, according to a statement by PiE Communications Director Andrea Fleming.

The money comes from more than 4,500 parents, community members and businesses, and represents an annual tradition for the education foundation, which benefits Palo Alto public schools.

The gift comes at a crucial time for local schools, which are facing budget cuts caused by a statewide budget shortfall.

PiE foundation’s annual education grants to PAUSD fund both programs and dozens of teach and staff positions. The 2012 grant will pay for classroom support and science and art specialists in elementary schools; student counseling, teacher coaches and elective enrichment in middle schools; and college and career counseling, student guidance and technology education at Gunn and Paly, according to the statement.

All students will benefit from the grant since PiE dollars are allocated on a per student basis, according to the statement.

“On behalf of the district, I am both grateful and inspired by the generosity of this community in its support for our schools,” said PAUSD Superintendent Dr. Kevin Skelly.  “In these tough state-wide economic conditions, donations to our schools via the PiE education foundation fill many gaps and keep our schools well rounded and competitive.”

“This grant demonstrates a community-wide commitment to preserving Palo Alto’s high caliber schools," said Elaine Hahn, president of PiE. "Parents and community members alike trust PiE as the central, accepted and sustainable way to preserve school funding. I am tremendously grateful to our donors – and enormously proud of PiE’s more than 100 volunteers.”

Focus on Aides, Arts and Science at Elementary Schools

Palo Alto’s 12 public elementary schools and Young 5s program will benefit from $2.35 million in classroom support, arts instruction, and science enrichment. The grant will pay for 100 percent of PAUSD’s funding for Spectra Art, the district’s elementary art program.

The grant will also fund classroom aides and support, which will allow for unique instruction for small groups. And PiE’s supplemental science funding will enable “hands-on discovery for budding elementary scientists,” according to the statement.

Middle Schools to receive Counselors, Electives, and Mentors

The three Palo Alto middle schools will see a combined $850,000 in funding for student counseling, teacher coaches and elective enrichment.  The PiE grant money will make more counselors available to students, allowing counselors to ‘loop, ’or stay with the same students throughout their middle school years, according to the statement.   

The money will also go to pay for electives such as chorus, creative writing, public speaking and an accelerated industrial tech.

Counselors, Guidance, and Electives at Gunn and Paly

PAUSD’s two high schools will get a combined $1.2 million for college & career counseling, student guidance, and career/technology education. PiE funds will support additional college and career counselor time, which PiE says will help all students plan for their future. 

The grant will also fund LinkCrew at Palo Alto High School, a program that unites students by training select juniors and seniors on leadership, then pairing them with freshmen at orientation and all year long, according to the statement.

Additionaly, career and technology electives like Engineering, Biotechnology, and an online Java programming class will receive funding. The classes are designed to help prepare high school students for unique opportunities beyond which they may be prepared for by traditional classes.

Mid-year school budget cuts were approved by the Board of Education Tuesday, March 13, as officials described an ever-changing financial outlook.

About $2.1 million in mid-year cuts to the schools' $162.4 million operating budget came atop $2.7 million in reductions made at the start of the 2011-12 budget cycle.

Cuts approved this week include $889,000 in personnel, utilities and food service; $389,000 in "routine maintenance allocation"; $200,000 in staff development budget for summer activities and $338,000 in per-student allocation of school site funds.

However, the site-specific reductions will not affect this year's classrooms because they will come from site reserve funds, the district's Business Official Cathy Mak assured board members.

Mak will return to the board in May with proposed cuts for the 2012-13 school year.

School funding for Palo Alto -- excluding locally raised money -- has declined by $808 per student, 6 percent, since 2008-09, Mak reported Tuesday -- even more than the $788 per student she reported on Feb. 28. The current per-pupil allotment is $12,215.

The per-student reduction is a consequence of enrollment increases outpacing growth in property tax receipts, as well as state funding cuts.

Mak said she expects the school district will face "large structural deficits" for the next five years, particularly if proposed tax measures expected to be on this November's ballot are voted down.

However, the district has squirreled away surpluses for the past three years, growing its "undesignated fund balance" from $3.1 million at the end of 2008-09 to $12.9 million at the end of 2010-11. The source of those funds were one-time windfalls such as federal stimulus funding.

The district has used the surplus to cushion the reductions and uncertainties in the state income and property tax picture.

Gunn High School sophomore Arjun Parikh just got his start-up funded -- an initiative that combines his love of soccer with an impulse to give.

Parikh is one of eight student grant recipients of Gunn@Your Service, a kind of parent booster club for community service that awards grants to "social entrepreneurs."

He plans to use the $200 to help launch a youth soccer camp at Cubberley Community Center this summer -- and donate proceeds to Right to Play, an international charity that provides coaches for 700,000 low-income children in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and South America.

"This is my first endeavor into entrepreneurship and philanthropy. We'll see how it goes," Parikh said of the project he started with six friends, Laces Soccer Camps.

The other seven student recipients of Gunn @ Your Service grants, this year, are:

• Freshman Leland Wei, who will buy a rototiller and vibration plate for his Eagle Scout project to renovate a beat-up path near the Palo Alto Duck Pond, which he hopes to complete over spring break in April

• Sophomore Divya Saini, who plans to mount an earthquake-education campaign in Palo Alto

• Junior Tatiana Grossman, who will use the funds to help Gunn's African Literacy Club ship children's books for primary schools in sub-Saharan Africa

• Junior Sungkook Peter Kim, who will provide sheet music and music stands for Gunn musicians performing for patients at the Palo Alto Veterans' Health Care Center

• Junior Praniti Sinha, who will help Gunn's Asha Club run a fundraiser for Asha for Education, an organization that provides computers, food and education to orphans in Bangalore, India

• Junior Lily Tsai, who will buy flutes to loan to music students in an afterschool music program at Costano School in East Palo Alto. In the program, Gunn Music@Costano, eight Gunn students go to Costano once a week to teach music, including flute, piano and trumpet, to more than 20 participating Costano students.

• Senior Natasha Allen, who will ship academic books to South Sudan in cooperation with Sudan-American Foundation for Education and STAND, the student arm of the Genocide Intervention Network.

Tsai said she and her sister Stephanie began teaching piano and violin at Costano three years ago, after Stephanie Tsai visited the school with the Gunn orchestra.

"Last year, we decided that since so many students in the afterschool program wanted to participate and we, as only two people, didn't have enough time to teach them all, we would try to bring in more Gunn music students to teach.

"Thus was the start of Gunn Music@Costano," Tsai said. "This year we have eight students participating."

Tsai said she'll try to buy four flutes, which would enable half the Costano flute students at a time to take the instrument home. The Palo Alto Unified School District has lent the program violins and cellos, she said.

Allen said she got interested in Sudan after taking a class at Gunn called "Facing History and Ourselves: the sociology of genocide," with teacher Ronen Habib.

"We not only learned about the causes and terrible effects of genocide but also about genocidal acts that are being committed even now," Allen said.

She started a STAND Club at Gunn, aimed at spreading the word against genocide through efforts like letterwriting to politicians. The club plans to collect books around town to send to schools in South Sudan.

"Due to the high cost of shipping, we can only send high-level books, such as college and AP textbooks," she said.

Grossman will use her grant to augment her long-standing project of helping establish libraries in primary schools in sub-Saharan Africa. That effort which she launched at the age of 12 has grown into the award-winning nonprofit Spread the Words. The organization has established libraries serving 99 African villages and primary schools where before there were none.

Grossman's mother, Lauren Janov, organized Gunn@Your Service two years ago, and this is the group's second round of grant-making. Funds are raised through an appeal letter that goes out to parents early in the year and through a Yahoo group email list.

"Our mission is about making it easy for kids and families to do community service, promoting it and building community," Janov said.

"Different kids want to do service in different ways."

Breaking a long silence on their plans for Cubberley Community Center, Palo Alto school officials have recommended postponing consideration of school facilities on the property until 2019.

The recommendation comes in a document summarizing enrollment projections and facilities planning to be discussed at 9 a.m. today, Tuesday, Feb. 28, in a special meeting of the Board of Education at school district headquarters, 25 Churchill Ave.

In a regular meeting tonight, the board will vote on proposed new classes at Palo Alto High School, hear an update on efforts to promote student mental health and consider a host of facilities projects.

That meeting will begin at 6:30 p.m. in the board room of school district headquarters.

There probably aren't many of you who'll remember G.E. College Bowl, a television show from the 1960's.

The idea was pretty simple. Two four-member teams representing various colleges and universities from around the country answered questions tossed out by a moderator. Think Jeopardy, only by team, rather than an individual.

This Saturday, there's a similar event, only it's for high school kids, and it's right here in Palo Alto.

The Bay Area Regional Science Bowl will be held Saturday at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory's Panofsky Auditorium.

Last year's winner was Palo Alto High, beating out Homestead HS and Harker HS.

SLAC Media Manager Andy Freeberg tells us the Science Bowl is an event that has never really been pitched to spectators.

Says Freeberg, "It turns out that it actually is open to the public, and (it) sounds like the last few rounds can be pretty exciting but we’ve never really advertised it to the public in the past; mostly it’s the students and their parents."
 
Freeberg says each round lasts about 30 minutes, 20 minutes plus a 10 minute buffer. He says the real tournament starts at 1:00 p.m. and runs until it ends. The public can come any time between 1:00-3:00 p.m. to Panofsky Auditorium, which has plenty of seats and is right next to the visitor center. The final round will likely occur sometime around 3:00 p.m.

Freeberg says that when visitors arrive, they should notify security at the front gate that they’re at SLAC for the Science Bowl, show photo ID and park in any of the lots near the Visitor Center and Panofsky Auditorium.