The administration has implemented many new changes designed to support students, Principal Jacqueline McEvoy said in her annual State of the School address to the Parent Teacher Student Association on Thursday.
Changes in policy included emphasizing curricular mapping, the new truancy policy, and the creation of a school-wide College Awareness Day. McEvoy explained that these policies all shared the same goal of helping students both academically and behaviorally.
McEvoy highlighted the importance of curricular mapping, or the process of coordinating lesson plans among different teachers of the same subject.
“We want our instructional practices to be consistent across all boards so that students have the best experience possible,” McEvoy said. “This provides good training for new teachers and an assurance that students will be adequately prepared for the next level in their curriculum.”
In addition, McEvoy cited the preliminary results of the new Saturday School consequences for truancy . Based on statistics compiled by the Attendance Office, the number of truants has fallen dramatically.
“I’ve been comparing this year’s number of truants to last year’s truants around the same time, and the reduction is significant,” McEvoy said. “Instead of looking at eight or nine pages of names, I’m just paging through one-and-a-half.”
However, Paly parent and former Western Association of Schools and Colleges committee member Lucy LaPier pointed out the need to assess the qualitative aspects of cutting when thinking about any policies geared towards reducing truancy.
“From the WASC report last year, the parents on the committee and I noticed that a large proportion of kids who have six to ten cuts have GPAs of 3.0 and above,” LaPier said. “These are the kids the Saturday School policy is targeting, but the time and effort of the administration would be better spent on the 20 percent of truants who are clearly struggling with school and accumulate a large number of cuts.”
With the large number of truants be high-achieving students, LaPier explained that the current policy not only harms well-meaning students but also fails in helping address the real reasons behind cutting.
“For the high-achieving kids who are choosing to selectively cut, they simply believe that they are making a better use of their time by cutting an easy class to study for a math test,” LaPier continued. “Even if this is a problem, it’s not as significant as the problems of kids who actually require academic help. Saturday School provides none of that assistance and misses the heart of the issue.”
McEvoy responded that teachers, guidance counselors and the administration are attending to struggling students as much as possible. She also acknowledged that even though there are problems with Saturday School, it still had a deterrent impact on the student body.
“[Saturday School] probably isn’t going to solve the problem entirely, but kids are getting the message that being in class is important,” McEvoy said. “Saturday School is not intended to be a replacement for academic and emotional help.”
McEvoy also cited statistics showing that students’ GPAs dropped after truant periods, while another parent stressed the need to manage time correctly.
Additionally, McEvoy hopes to expand the PSAT test day into a school-wide College Awareness Day this year. Believing students should take both the SAT and the ACT exams, McEvoy introduced ACT preparation for freshmen and sophomores.
“Freshmen and sophomores will take preparatory assessments for the ACT, while seniors will attend a series of college education workshops put on by the CCC [Paly’s College and Career Center],” McEvoy said. “It’ll also be a minimum day so teachers can capture that afternoon for lesson planning.”
“We want to send a message that students of all grades should prepare for college,” McEvoy added.
Editor’s note: The original version of the story attributed a quote to McEvoy that LaPier said. The current version of the story reflects the change.