Santa Clara County Education Digest

Superintendents Donald Austin of Palo Alto Unified and Michael Gallagher at Sunnyvale School District, who earn $378,000 and $374,000 respectively, make more than superintendents in much larger districts in the state.

The California Faculty Association has announced it will strike in January at the state’s 23 CSU campuses. It’s part of an ongoing effort by the group to obtain a 12% raise for the 29,000 professors and lecturers it represents.

Following its typical rotation, the board picked its leadership for the coming year, unanimously electing Sanjay Dave as president, Esmeralda Ortiz as vice president and Thida Cornes as clerk.

Mountain View Whisman's board voted to approve the city's proposal for a new joint use agreement, putting the ball back in the city's court to give the final sign-off to a deal that has been the cause of significant tension.

The number of nursing students enrolling in high-priced private programs has nearly doubled over the past 10 years as the state’s public universities have stagnated in growth. Private universities charge up to seven times the tuition of public schools for a bachelor’s degree, but nurses say their starting salaries are worth the cost.

Despite a few improvements, results show students are still struggling on several fronts.

Minh Ngo was voted in as president, Kelly Yip-Chuan was voted in as vice president and Anu Nakka was elected to serve as board clerk.  

California Attorney General Rob Bonta has formally backed an August motion by two law groups to keep the Temecula Valley Unified School District from being able to notify parents about transgender children or censor instruction about race. A hearing for the motion is scheduled for Jan. 24.

A Stanford Medicine-led study has found a way to predict which organs in individuals will fail first, which could lead to early interventions that would improve health and extend lives.

Salaries for school superintendents in California have risen as much as 60 percent in the past decade. This comes as good superintendents have become more difficult to hire and retain.

A Cal Poly Humboldt professor is partnering with USDA researchers to study biochar, which results from heating dry plant-based materials at high temperatures without oxygen. The CO2 in the charcoal then stays in the soil for hundreds of years, rather than in the atmosphere.

Peninsula College Fund received a $10,000 grant from this publication's Holiday Fund campaign, which it used to bolster its services providing support for Bay Area high schoolers who are the first in their families to attend college.

“At Pomeroy Elementary, we have an amazing Garden to Table program,” said Kevin Keegan, principal at Pomeroy, in an informational video. “We have this amazing partnership with our families and outside resources as well to make this community garden a wonderful place. We call it the heart of our school because it’s a place where all kids, all staff, everyone can go to and they have hands-on experiences.”

Homeschool students in San Diego County are up by 88 percent since the 2017-18 school year, based on Washington Post data analysis. This tops an overall increase in the United States of 50 percent for this same timeframe.

Oakland School District teachers planned lessons for students related to the history of Gaza. District superintendent Kyla Johnson-Trammell emailed parents and staff to say the teaching isn’t approved or sanctioned by the district.

The California Faculty Association is seeking a 12 percent pay increase, while university officials counter with 5 percent in each of the next three years.

Faculty at four California State University campuses are striking this week for higher pay as part of contract negotiations. Walkouts at the first campus, Cal Poly Pomona, began Dec. 4.

In 2020, the state agreed to a settlement in a lawsuit that claimed too many students were not learning to read. As part of that agreement, the state spent over $50 million on 75 schools with the lowest reading scores.

A majority of Mountain View Whisman's school board expressed support at a meeting for electing Devon Conley as its president and Chris Chiang as vice president for the coming year, with a formal vote scheduled for next week.

Students and teachers alike are decrying the actions of the Temecula Valley Unified School District board, which became conservative in majority following the recent elections of three members. The board’s actions include banning critical race theory and mandating parental notification if their child is transgender.

After a contentious road to approve a new set of statewide guidelines on teaching students math, California officials must still figure out how to support school districts with implementation.

Most undocumented college students in California are not eligible for DACA anymore, creating new dilemmas for students and colleges around employment, financial aid and the threat of deportation.

A graduate student workers union and the University of Southern California have agreed to a three-year labor contract that averts a looming strike. The deal calls for pay increases each of the three years.

State officials passed a 1,000-page document in July outlining new guidelines for teaching math in California. Funding has not been allocated, though the state superintendent intends to introduce legislation that could change this.

The race for the District 2 Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors seat continues to grow more contested, with education trustee Van Le announcing her candidacy.

The number of homeless high school students and families in one East San Jose school district has increased threefold in just three years. 

When it comes to the Santa Clara County Office of Education's performance, parents, teachers and residents are giving it a failing grade.

The city of Mountain View has given the Mountain View Whisman School District its terms for a new joint use agreement to share operations of school fields, with a year-end deadline to accept the offer.

Two members of the Sunol Glen Unified School District board have been served with recall notices. This came after the board approved a resolution that banned schools in the Alameda County district from flying the LGBTQ+ pride flag.

For nearly 40 years, the SETI Institute, a non-profit research organization in Mountain View, has been searching for intelligent life forms beyond Earth. A philanthropic gift of $200 million is bringing this quest closer to reality.

The Palo Alto Unified School District Board of Education declined to decide on a flexible student mathematics-acceleration program for its middle schools, instead leaving the decision to school administrators.

Lacking power at the state level, conservatives are leaning into local governance to protest California’s progressive politics. The fight in Huntington Beach could be a harbinger of what’s to come.