The ‘never-ending year’: Palo Alto education leaders look back on 2021

For Palo Alto Unified School District Superintendent Don Austin, the past 12 months have felt a bit like a “never-ending year” — with the pandemic’s disruptions to the education system making 2020 and 2021 blend together.

“It’s hard to separate out the last calendar year without going all the way back to March of 2020,” Austin said in a recent interview.

The pace of decision-making during the pandemic has meant there hasn’t been time to reflect in a typical way on all the changes that have occurred since the beginning of 2021, Austin said.

The year started with elementary schools open only in a hybrid model, meaning that some students had returned to campuses for a portion of the day or week, while middle and high school campuses were essentially closed. By the end of the spring semester, elementary schools had reopened for five days a week and middle and high schools were operating with some students on campus part-time.

Things changed this fall, when the district fully reopened and classes resumed in person. Safety precautions, such as mandatory masking, were still in place, but the normal pace of schooling largely returned.

Shounak Dharap, who served as president of the Board of Education this year, pointed to school reopenings as the biggest story of the year.

“This is the year that we brought all of our students back,” Dharap said.

Austin said it was “flat out emotional” to see all of the kids on campus again.

“I could hardly walk across a campus without having to choke back my eyes filling up with tears,” Austin said. “It was emotional on a level I didn’t expect.”

At the same time, Austin lamented that high school students hadn’t been able to return sooner. Although Palo Alto began bringing back elementary schoolers in the fall of 2020, it wasn’t until this school year that older students returned to a regular schedule.

The complexities of reopening a high school mid-year, with students rotating between classes throughout the day, just made it impossible to resume in-person instruction in the same way that elementary schools were able to, Austin said. He noted that this was a problem all districts faced but said it didn’t make it any less disappointing.

“There were plenty of wins; I just wish we could have had a spring with campuses full of life at the secondary schools,” Austin said.

He described guiding schools through the pandemic as a graduate-level course in adaptation, with unprecedented levels of uncertainty each day, Austin said. Administrators learned as they went and had to get used to the situation constantly evolving.

“If anybody thinks they had things all figured out a year and a half ago … then they just aren’t in a position that has to make decisions,” Austin said.

Dharap similarly said it was a challenging but rewarding year to be board president. School reopening decisions inevitably upset some people in the community, who either felt the district wasn’t moving quickly enough or was moving ahead without proper safety precautions.

With everyone stuck at home and grappling with personal challenges, people were feeling “constant anxiety, frustration and anger,” Dharap said.

“It was a pressure cooker of a year for everyone, and it makes complete sense that in those times you look to your decision-makers to make the decisions that are going to be the best for you,” Dharap said. “The people who were upset had every right to be upset. At the same time, it doesn’t necessarily make it any easier to make decisions that are going to result in some people being unhappy.”

Palo Alto was one of the earliest districts to begin reopening, when elementary schoolers started returning in the fall of 2020. California Gov. Gavin Newsom visited Barron Park Elementary School in Palo Alto in March, calling the district a model of how schools can reopen safely.

The district also advocated for teachers to be prioritized in the rollout of vaccines this spring, Dharap said.

‘If anybody thinks they had things all figured out a year and a half ago … then they just aren’t in a position that has to make decisions.’

Don Austin, superintendent, Palo Alto Unified School District

“The district pushing for reopening, and also lobbying for teacher vaccinations, I think helped move the needle on getting that moving, not just for our district, but districts in our county,” he said.

With campuses more fully open this fall, the district has had trouble filling certain positions, including substitute teachers and mental health clinicians. Those hiring challenges are likely to continue, Austin said, adding that it’s unknown for how long.

“A lot of industries are dealing with similar staffing issues,” Dharap said. “And while they have very local impacts, I think they are directly tied to the pandemic.”

Palo Alto Unified has also seen ongoing enrollment drops accelerate during the pandemic. The district’s enrollment declined 8.4% in 2020 over the prior year and then another 2.6% this fall. In prior years, the student body had already been shrinking, but more slowly — with 2.1% declines in 2018 and 2019.

The district may ultimately see enrollment rebound from its pandemic-induced fall, Dharap said, but added that he believes the overall decline will continue due to the area’s high cost of living.

“I think that trend has very much to do with the fact that people my age can’t afford to live in Palo Alto,” said Dharap, who is 31.

Looking beyond the pandemic

While the pandemic and school reopening dominated much of 2021, district leaders have also begun tackling other issues not directly tied to the pandemic.

In November, the school board voted to change its priorities for the 27 acres it owns at Cubberley Community Center. The city of Palo Alto owns the remainder of the 35-acre site.

The school board decided to set aside roughly 20 acres for a theoretical future high school and removed two of its prior goals: moving the district office to the space and having staff housing on the site. The board’s decision to name the number of acres it wants to retain for a future school constituted a “pretty definitive” first step towards outlining the scope of a potential deal with the city of Palo Alto, Dharap said.

‘It was a pressure cooker of a year for everyone, and it makes complete sense that in those times you look to your decision-makers to make the decisions that are going to be the best for you.’

Shounak Dharap, president, Palo Alto Board of Education

The city has previously expressed interest in creating a new community center on the land, while the district has been hesitant to give up acreage that it could use in the future. Dharap said he is optimistic that a deal can be struck, citing the possibility of the district either selling, leasing or land-swapping part of its acreage at Cubberley.

The district is separately participating in a housing development in Palo Alto spearheaded by Santa Clara County Supervisor Joe Simitian that will house educators.

District administrators and board members have also been working on creating a comprehensive equity plan for the district, aimed at reducing disparities, particularly for groups such as students of color, those with disabilities and those from low-income backgrounds.

“We’ve always … focused on equity as a priority, but the pandemic really opened those wounds and showed us how deep it went,” Dharap said.

The board saw a first draft of the equity plan this month and it’s set to come back for a vote during the spring semester.

This fall, the district has also faced claims from the families of six Gunn High School students, alleging that administrators failed to protect the youth from violent and racist bullying. Dharap said he couldn’t discuss specific cases but did say that the district has a good bullying policy and that the important part is making sure it is implemented and enforced, which he said is a district priority.

Looking ahead to 2022

With 2022 on the horizon, district leaders say they are looking forward to moving ahead with issues beyond the pandemic, while not forgetting what they’ve learned over the past two years.

Dharap called the present moment an inflection point when the district should take the insight they’ve gained out of necessity and apply it to future challenges.

At the same time, the emergence of the omicron variant has meant that the district, and society more broadly, may not be out of the woods yet when it comes to COVID-19. Austin said in a text that he, and educators more broadly, are concerned about the rapid spread of the new variant.

“It is our job to manage the numbers, adhere to best practices as identified by health professionals, and to work with our professional associations,” Austin said.

Routine testing is more important now than ever, he said, pointing to the free testing program that the district operates for staff, students and the broader community.

Even with some concerns on the horizon, Austin said that there’s never been a time in his more than 20 years as an administrator when he’s been more excited to start the new year.

“This year’s been fantastic — given all the challenges, I’ll take it — but I’m really excited about next year because I think we’re back to building some good momentum, some momentum that we were starting to hit right before the closures,” Austin said.

Palo Alto Online is taking one last look at 2021 all this week. If you missed any parts of our series, see the More Stories box, above.