How do you connect with the students in the Palo Alto Unified School District?
Chris Colohan, a candidate for the PAUSD school board says he has answered that question in many ways. He is a father of two PAUSD students, has subbed at all fifteen schools, and has been a member of the Parent Teacher Association for over seven years.
According to Colohan, his experience within the school district gave him the confidence to run for school board.
“I’m spending all my time serving the schools, and here’s a place where I can really help, where I can really make a difference,” Colohan said. “When I look around at all of the other folks that might have run at the time, I was looking and I was like, I’m probably one of the most qualified people to run.”
According to Colohan, he would aim to make sure every math skill-level was attended to.
“At the elementary level, the ‘Every Student Reads’ initiative improved the number of students who can read at grade level by 24%, which is huge,” Colohan said. “I’m hoping that we can use a similar effort in the math domain, to try and make it so that all of our kids are doing better in math.”
According to Colohan, many students aren’t prepared for middle school math.
“It looks like, from my cursory examination of the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress data, that there are a large number of students who are reaching middle school math who haven’t successfully learned the foundational skills that you would expect from elementary math,” Colohan said. “This is a problem if you’ve got them in a classroom where they’re expected to learn factoring or other middle school math skills.”
Colohan recounts a time when he was substituting for a middle school math class with a student struggling to do basic multiplication without a calculator. When Colohan asked a student “What’s six times seven?” the student responded by pulling out a laptop, opening it and typing six times seven into Google.
Colohan told The Paly Voice he believes that while relationships with parents, teachers, administrators, or other members of the PAUSD community are important, having knowledge of student feelings and opinions is best.
“Every single school board candidate is constantly talking to other parents, constantly talking to other politicians, and what they probably have less experience with is talking to a lot of different students,” Colohan said.
Colohan is endorsed by large organizations such as the Daily Post, Democrats for Public Education and Planned Parenthood. California State Representative Evan Low, U.S. House of Representative Anna Eshoo, and current PAUSD board members Shounak Dharap and Jennifer DiBrienza also support his candidacy. In total, over 130 groups and individuals have endorsed his campaign.
Colohan is one of five candidates running for three open seats on the school board. The other candidates are Rowena Chiu, Nicole Chiu-Wang, Alison Kamhi and Josh Salcman.
