Palo Alto’s Board of Education, in its Tuesday, Oct. 14 meeting, approved two master-planning contracts for Paly campus renovation, slated a new food services contract for approval at its next meeting, and discussed, among other topics, the inequity between Paly and Gunn standardized testing scores, according to the board packet from the meeting.

One contract is held by Deems Lewis McKinley, an architecture firm that will, according to the board packet, assess the existing site at Paly and make recommendations as to what improvements are needed for existing buildings, how best to integrate new facilities, and how the campus ought to be organized.

DLM, according to the board packet, will provide models of the updated Paly campus based on its recommendations, specifying the size of each building or other feature, its proposed function, and the estimated cost for its construction. The summary of the contract in the board packet states that, for these services, the board will pay DLM $97,500.

The second contract that the packet outlines, for $25,030, is with Verde Design, Inc., one of the companies that, according to the letter from Verde embedded in the packet, PAUSD hired to assist in building the new fields at both Palo Alto high schools.

The proposal Verde sent to the board lists planning and design services with respect to renovations of the baseball and softball complex next to Churchill Avenue, the football and track and field stadium, the raised soccer field near El Camino Real, and the landscaping around the periphery of Paly campus.

The Verde proposal gives several considerations for each of the elements it mentions: for the baseball and softball facilities, Verde will look into potential field arrangements, as well as improvements to batting cages, bullpens, and dugouts.

With respect to the football stadium, Verde will set out plans for the grandstands, scoreboard, and entryway, in addition to a possible resurfacing of the track. Verde will also suggest designs for lights and small grandstands at the El Camino field.

Verde will also suggest positive changes to school perimeter fencing and landscaping, while making recommendations as to how to improve traffic flow.

According to the packet, the design stages will hopefully be complete in time to allow construction to take place between May 2009 and the fall sports season of the same year.

On a different front, the board added to the consent calendar for its Oct. 28 meeting a contract with the food services company Sodexo, according to board member Dana Tom. Sodexo, a company that has worked for PAUSD in the past, will, according to the board packet, provide catering for all PAUSD schools throughout the 2008-2009 school year.

The board packet notes that the PAUSD Student Nutrition Services program has lost an increasing amount of money each of the past seven years. According to the packet, the district hopes to reverse that trend through its partnership with Sodexo and keep this year’s deficit at or below $220,000.

To ensure its familiarity with Sodexo workers and improve its chance of success in turning around its food program, the district demanded the same Sodexo consultant, Alva Spence, whom it had employed years before, because, according to Tom, the quality of Sodexo’s work was remarkably high while Spence was their chief consultant for PAUSD.

“I think this situation is set up to be a good, win-win partnership,” Tom said of the contract with Sodexo.

According to the packet, the board received at this meeting the second part of a three-part presentation on various measures of PAUSD’s academic performance, which showed significant discrepancies between the Paly and Gunn statistics for both AP and SAT tests.

In AP testing statistics, the main difference, according to Tom, was the number of test-takers at each school: Gunn had many more AP test-takers than Paly, a fact that Tom attributes in large part to the absence of AP Economics at Paly prior to this year, citing the class’s popularity at Gunn.

In the SAT statistics, though, the scores differ: according to Tom, Gunn is doing measurably better than Paly. Tom said he believes the achievement gap, the discrepancy between ethnic majority and minority test scores, to be part of the reason for the difference between the Paly and Gunn SAT scores.

“It [the difference in SAT scores between Paly and Gunn] reflects the achievement gap in that Paly has a higher percentage of underrepresented minorities [than Gunn],” Tom said. “I think that it is a contributing factor.”

Tom emphasized that the board is working to close both the Paly-Gunn gap and the achievement gap.

The board has also, according to Tom, decided to leave unappropriated, for fear of mid-year state budget cuts bred of the current nationwide financial crisis, the money that is left over from under-budgeting for the 2008-2009 school year.

“Since it [whether or not there will be mid-year cuts] is unclear, it is good to keep that [the extra money] as a backstop,” Tom said.

Anticipating a cost of about $100,000, the board, according to the packet, approved the plan to add lights to the Paly aquatic center, which has the bases for the light poles already built in.

According to board member Dana Tom, the board also discussed the proposed changes to the 2009-2010 and 2010-2011 school calendars. Board members generally agreed that an assignment-free winter break would be a positive step towards alleviating student stress, Tom said, but differed on the merits of pre-break finals and an early end to the semester. The board also favored encouraging teachers to make special accommodations for students observing religious holidays that do not coincide with the calendar’s no-school days, Tom said.

Editor’s note: The Student Nutrition Services Consultant Contract for 2008-09 was not approved at the board’s Oct. 14 meeting. It was put on the consent calendar for the Oct. 28 meeting, when the board did approve it.