Upfront EDUCATION
Palo Alto teachers, students back to school next week New buildings to greet students at five campuses, new principals on two by Chris Kenrick
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alo Alto’s 800-plus teachers return to work Monday morning to ready their classrooms for the first day of school Thursday, Aug. 15. Teachers and staff will convene for a 7:30 a.m. breakfast at Gunn High School for the annual “chow down,” a kickoff to the school year. They will hear a presentation from designer and inventor Brendan Boyle, a partner at the Palo Alto design firm IDEO and consulting professor at Stanford University, who will discuss how “design thinking” is used as a creative problem-solving method and the role of play in the innovation process. Boyle teaches a course at d.school, Stanford’s Institute of Design, called “From Play to Innovation.” They’ll also hear from Board of Education members, union presidents and Superintendent Kevin Skelly, who will honor employees marking major anniversaries with the school district. Two of the district’s 17 campuses — Palo Alto High School and Terman Middle School — open the school year with new principals. At Paly, Kimberly Diorio, assistant principal for the past six years, takes the helm, replacing Phil Winston, who resigned in June. At Terman, Pier Angeli LaPlace, a teacher and administrator at JLS Middle
School for the past 20 years, replaces Katherine Baker, who becomes the district’s director of secondary education. With property-tax revenues up, district officials for the first time in years say they have some financial breathing room. Board members in March approved $2.6 million in new spending — boosting principals’ discretionary funds and counseling budgets and adding teachers at middle schools and high schools as well as coaching and technology support for elementary teachers. They also allocated $5 million for staff “professional development” to be spent over three years. In addition, the district created a new position of “communications coordinator,” hiring former Santa Clara Unified School District Public Information Officer Tabitha Kappeler-Hurley at a salary of $130,000. Kappeler-Hurley was an English teacher and vice principal at Santa Clara’s Wilcox High School before moving into the public-information role in 2004, where she also directed career-technical education and a program to boost female participation in math and science. Major new buildings open this fall on several Palo Alto campuses, notably Gunn High School, JLS, Jordan and Terman middle schools and Fairmeadow Elementary
School. The buildings — including two-story classroom buildings and a new high-school gym — were funded through a $378 million facilities bond measure approved by more than 77 percent of district voters in 2008.
its twice-monthly meetings Aug. 27 after a two-month recess interrupted by brief special meetings Aug. 1 and Aug. 9. Upcoming agenda items include new school-district policy and procedures on bullying, sparked by a December 2012 settlement with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. The federal agency found that the district’s mishandling of the bullying of a disabled Terman student violated the student’s civil rights. The district agreed to revise its bullying policy as part of the settlement agreement in that case. Meanwhile, five other Office for Civil Rights cases involving the district have been filed or come to light. In the settlement of another case, the district agreed to adjust environmental factors at a middle school after parents filed a complaint. In another case, the Office for Civil Rights concluded June 14 there was insufficient evidence to support a finding of racial discrimination after a middle school minority student was searched by school officials after a substitute teacher accused the student of stealing $20 from her purse. Three other Office for Civil Rights investigations are pending. They include two cases filed by par-
Major new buildings open this fall on several Palo Alto campuses, notably Gunn High School, JLS, Jordan and Terman middle schools and Fairmeadow Elementary School. Construction disruptions continue at Duveneck Elementary School and Palo Alto High School, where the opening of a new Media Arts Center and a two-story classroom building have been delayed until at least December because of a dispute with a contractor. About $177 million remains in the bond fund for future projects, including a new elementary school and a new performing-arts center at Paly. The Board of Education resumes
ents — one at Duveneck and one at a middle school — alleging civilrights violations in the bullying of students with disabilities. In addition, the federal agency in June initiated its own investigation of whether Palo Alto High School complied with legal requirements designed to ensure an “educational environment free of sexual harassment, and whether it responds promptly and effectively to complaints or other notice of sexual harassment.” Also on the board’s horizon this fall is a vote — likely to be controversial — on district-wide academic calendars for 2014-15 and beyond. For the first time last year, the district shifted the calendar to a midAugust, rather than late-August, start date in order to complete the first semester before the December holidays. Though polling showed the work-free semester break was popular with high school students, some parents are dissatisfied with the change and are seeking alternatives. A calendar advisory committee of parents, school staff and students, representing a spectrum of views, was to analyze survey responses and generate options for the future. N Staff Writer Chris Kenrick can be emailed at ckenrick@paweekly. com.
HEALTH
‘Skin-to-skin’ and ‘rooming in’ are on the rise in maternity wards Efforts to boost breastfeeding make well-baby nursery a thing of the past
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n today’s hospital maternity wards, the growing practices of “skin-to-skin” and “rooming in” have turned the traditional newborn nursery into a relic of the past. Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford now routinely postpones a baby’s first bath in favor of immediate and sustained “skin-toskin” contact with its mother — and aims to expand that practice. Rather than whisking off a healthy baby for a bath and a checkup, as in the past, nurses place the undressed newborn on the mother’s chest and cover it with a blanket. “The initial goal is that the baby is left there continuously until it has had its first breastfeed,” Packard obstetrician Susan Crowe said. That practice, along with having the baby sleep in the mother’s hospital room, fosters successful breastfeeding and other healthful measures, she said. New statistics from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, released in conjunction with National Breastfeeding Month, show
a rise in breastfeeding in the U.S. as well as in hospital practices of “skin-to-skin” and “rooming in” — defined as the baby sleeping in the mother’s hospital room at least 23 hours a day. “These are two of the most influential things a hospital can do to support moms in reaching their breastfeeding goals,” said Crowe, also a clinical assistant professor of obstetrics/gynecology and maternal fetal medicine at Stanford’s School of Medicine. “Skin-to-skin has been going on at some levels for awhile, but we’re now making changes so we can uniformly offer this to families,” even after Caesarean births, she said. Rooming in has become so common at Packard that “there are very few babies in our well-newborn nursery,” she said. In cases where mother or baby must be taken for immediate medical attention after a birth, Crow said the hospital tries to promote skin-to-skin time later, when both
are medically stable. In the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, the practice of skin to skin has long been known as “kangaroo care.” Across the country, the percentage of hospitals where “most infants experience skin-to-skin contact” following birth increased from 40.8 percent in 2007 to 54.4 percent in 2011, the CDC said. The percentage of hospitals in which most infants room in with their mothers went from 30.8 percent in 2007 to 37.1 percent in 2011. Breastfeeding itself is on the rise, with California leading the way, according to the CDC. Nationally, the percentage of infants who were ever breastfed rose from 70.9 in 2000 to 76.5 in 2010. At age 6 months, 16.4 percent were still exclusively breastfeeding. In California, 91.6 percent start out breastfeeding — the highest of any state except Idaho (91.8 percent). At 6 months, 27.4 percent of California babies are still exclu-
Veronica Weber
by Chris Kenrick
New mom Metrri Jain holds her day-old son close to her chest at Stanford Hospital. Her son sleeps in her room, a practice known as “rooming in,” rather than in a well-baby nursery. Jain gave birth to her son on Aug. 4 and immediately engaged in skin-to-skin contact, which encouraged him to nurse. sively breastfeeding, the highest percentage of any state. In a 2011 “call to action,” thenU.S. Surgeon General Regina M. Benjamin suggested steps to remove barriers to breastfeeding — including education and employer support — for mothers who wish to do so. Breastfeeding protects babies from infections and illnesses including diarrhea, ear infections and pneumonia, Benjamin said. Breastfed babies also are less likely to develop asthma, and those who are breastfed for six months are less likely to become obese, she said. Mothers who breastfeed have a de-
creased risk for breast and ovarian cancer, she said. A study published in 2010 in the journal “Pediatrics” estimated the nation could save $13 billion a year in health care costs if 90 percent of babies were exclusively breastfed for six months. At the same time, Benjamin said, “The decision to breastfeed is a personal one,” adding, “No mother should be made to feel guilty if she cannot or chooses not to breastfeed.” N Staff Writer Chris Kenrick can be emailed at ckenrick@paweekly. com.
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