Recently, The Paly Voice interviewed Barbara Klausner, a Board of Education member who voted for the calendar proposal that moved finals to before winter break. Here, the Voice interviews Melissa Baten Caswell, a board member who voted against the proposal. Caswell believes that the modified calendar will add to student stress rather than reduce it.

I understand that your background is in business. What made you decide that you were interested in education and wanted to be on the school board? 

In 2001 I was a corporate officer at a software company and my daughter was in kindergarten at the time and I wasn’t able to spend much time with her so I thought I’d take a break for a while since the market wasn’t particularly attractive. I ended up spending a lot of time at Duvenek and people saw that I was spending a lot of time there. I moved up through the ranks of the PTA there and by the next year I was president of the PTA at Duvenek. Two years later I was president of the PTA for all of Palo Alto and I started going to board meetings. I thought that the board could be helped by adding some business focus to the discussions. So I ran for the board and that’s how I ended up doing this.

What do you like best about your job on the board?

I feel like the work that I do has a very direct impact on the education opportunities of the kids in this district. And that’s very satisfying. There are very few jobs where you get to see the direct impact of what you do in a way that is life changing for people. The other thing that I like about it is it’s very intellectually stimulating, there are just so many things that need to be looked at to frame what our district needs to do.

And what’s hardest for you?

There are two things that I find very difficult. One is that it takes a long time for change to happen and you have to be incredibly patient and satisfied with taking small steps in the right direction. The other thing that can be frustrating is that sometimes proposals make sense at the idea level but the details can be very frustrating to work out. And the calendar can be one of those things.

Let’s talk about the calendar. What were your thoughts on the calendar when it was first proposed in September?

We had been working for a while to try and figure out a way that kids could have a real work-free break over winter break. We tried years ago to make a statement from the board that teachers should not be giving work over break, but it wasn’t enough. So in September when they proposed a calendar to make that happen my thoughts were, it would be good to do that, but what are the downsides? The downsides at that point were starting school substantially earlier. Potentially making first semester shorter than second semester. Making December a very stressful month for seniors. And we had to consider if it was smart to make a change for a couple of grades that could potentially cause hardship for other grades. Also, many of the elementary schools have a real ventilation problem and adding another two weeks of hot weather onto that would make things more difficult. Child care [at the end of the summar and during winter break] was another issue I was worried about. Having been a working parent I know how hard that can be to coordinate.

Do you feel that the group of parents that came to that board meeting and came to the last board meeting represent a vocal minority or do you think that they represent the feelings of the community as a whole?

I think it’s bigger than a vocal minority. We have a percentage of parents who don’t follow anything and are surprised by whatever impacts them when it happens. And let’s be honest, many busy working parents who are trying to juggle what they do and take care of their kids don’t pay attention to everything the school board does until it impacts them. I think there was, on this particular issue, a lot more parents that were aware of it and I don’t think the ones that came to the school board were just a loud minority, I think there were a substantial number of parents who had those concerns.

Do you think that pre-break finals would on the whole add to student stress because of the already tight December month?

I think that pre-break finals without any change in the workload would add to student stress. Something has to give, you can’t keep adding more requirements without giving up anything. I also think even if we changed the amount of work required, just adding exams to the December time frame would put stress on seniors, particularly those who may have applied early decision or early action who didn’t receive the decisions they were hoping for. And I think there are some things we can do to improve the situation, and it’s our responsibility to do those things. But I think that this kind of calendar creates an additional stress for students.

What did you think about Debbie Whitson’s idea for having a stand-alone unit after finals?

I loved that she and the other teachers came forward with a compromise. It was disappointing to me that we weren’t really able to talk about it. Clearly those teachers were looking out for the best interest of the kids, but also trying to figure out what could alleviate some of the issues that would be created by this calendar.

You were saying before that you were disappointed that there couldn’t have been more of a compromise or a dialogue about the options. Do you think that the Brown Act [which limits the time school board members can meet outside of board meetings] is an obstruction in that regard?

It is very challenging and with the encumbrance of the Brown Act then I would expect staff to work on compromises and bring compromises to us. I actually think it’s not the best work for the board to work out compromises on things like this. We can suggest ideas and we tried to suggest them — we suggested a shorter first semester so that we wouldn’t change the start date and we would still be able to get exams before break. But staff didn’t come back with a proposal that showed they could do that or how they could do that. What Debbie Whitson did is she came forth with, “this is how we could have done that.” For some reason it just didn’t get any support beyond the certain Paly departments that thought it was a good idea; Gunn didn’t pick it up at all.

Now that this calendar has been passed, what do you think is a good way for the board to reduce stress in order to compensate for what might be a more stressful December.

I’m going to staff and saying there are three issues I’m really concerned about and I need to them to be addressed and I need to hear a report on how you’re going to address them before the calendar goes into place. The first thing that needs to be worked out is that there are almost 20 less days this calendar first semester. Not school days, but calendar days. It would have started on August 28 but instead it’s starting on August 16, you took out one three day weekend and then you have winter break. All of that time could have been used for projects and other stuff and if you’re taking those many days out then you need to take a commensurate amount of homework and projects out. And that has to happen, there has to be a plan to do that, and I don’t think teachers are happy about that. The second thing that has to be addressed is December for seniors. College support and making sure that seniors have more college support particularly in December. So what can we do? I don’t have the answers, but I have some idea
s. One idea would be to start some support around essay writing junior year and to have you go into the summer of your junior year with at least a soild personal statement if not something more than that or at least a good concept of how you do first person writing. The third thing is we have to have some sort of solution for the classroom heat in the elementary and middle schools. So those are the three things that we really need to pound on, and if we’re successful with doing that I think it will solve a lot of problems even if we don’t keep this calendar long term.

Do you think the board would be willing to reverse its decision if staff gave unsatisfactory responses to those concerns?

I think it would be difficult for that to happen because it sets a precedent for decisions never really being decisions. I’m not saying it’s impossible I’m just saying I think it would be difficult and it would create a weird precedent.

Over the next couple of years, what do you think are the most important issues for the board?

I would like to see more consistency in what we’re doing. And part of that is making sure that our teachers have access to professional development and peer support so that they can find the best practices and we can model them across all of our classes. I think in the past, our professional development has been from a teacher’s perspective, “I go take a class.” And I don’t think that is what I would like to see over the next couple of years, I’d like to see how do we make sure our teachers are really excellent.

What do you think about the state budget?

I think the state budget is a huge issue. We spend a little less than $12,000. We can say we’re really efficient, which I think we are, but there is only so much you can do with efficiency. My nephew is in Cambridge, Mass. and they spend about $25,000 per kid, and Cambridge is sort of a blue-collar-mixed community, it’s not Palo Alto. So the fact that we’re underspending is a big problem. We may feel lucky compared to some other California districts that are spending $6,000 or $7,000 per student, but that’s just not appropriate either. I think something needs to change and unfortunately in the budget situation that the state has right now, it’s probably going to get worse before it gets better.