Singing Children - May, 26 2009 Meeting

First of all, school board fans (school boarders?) apologies for the late update. Sadly, internet issues have kept me from you until today.

I'll start off with some professional reports on the meeting. Palo Alto Online, correctly realizing the importance of the school board, has not one but two stories about the meeting. The first is about the slowing enrollment growth; the second about a small growth in class size for early-grade classes.

The Paly Voice, not to be outdone, also published two stories about the meeting. One is about the addition of AP Mandarin to Gunn and Paly next year, the other dealt with impending budget cuts.

As you can probably tell from looking over those links, Tuesday's meeting covered a wide variety of topics, and ran for over four hours. That's longer than a marathon. (Also, that's what she said.)

The low of the meeting was undoubtedly when the board and long-suffering audience members were serenaded by Mandarin Immersion students as a prelude to a presentation about the Mandarin program in the district. Maybe some people find the voices of small children adorable, but this board watcher would rather watch Kevin Skelly dance a jig. However, the discussion of the formerly controversial MI program was enlightening, and it was interesting to hear the progress that has been made in that program.

Other topics covered included a lower enrollment than projected, which caused the board to postpone Garland's reopening, and a discussion of budget reductions.

Meeting Highlights:

-Ohlone's principal is now a believer in MI.

- Some wonky capitalization: "Carl D. Perkins Vocational and applied Tech. Funds" Why is vocational capitalized and not applied? Why are tech funds capitalized if applied isn't? Does logic exist?