Palo Alto High School's News and Features Publication

Verde Magazine

Verde Magazine

Verde Magazine

School board to staff social-emotional learning committee

The newly formed Social Emotional Learning Committee is holding its first meeting on June 8, and will be discussing its goals for the upcoming 2016-2017 school year.

Palo Alto Unified School District Superintendent Max McGee initially proposed the creation of the Committee to streamline the Social Emotional Curriculum currently implemented across Palo Alto schools and to create the best program possible for students.

Currently, all the schools in PAUSD have different curriculums concerning social-emotional learning, which makes it difficult for students to adapt to new curriculums from school to school.

“We [school board members] wanted to accommodate for kids who do go through the whole district and need to know what to expect going into new schools,” board member Ken Dauber says.

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The current system also makes it challenging for the school board and administrators to measure how effective each social-emotional curriculum is. The committee’s job will be to come up with recommendations that will create changes across the district.

While the Board of Education will not directly take charge of the meetings, the members of the school board will be able to join meetings. The committee’s meeting dates and locations are posted on the PAUSD website, and members of the public are free to join.