It all comes down to being school ready, regardless of language.

Children who are read to, in any language, will develop differently than a child who is shown cartoon videos and not enough time spent reading, singing, and talking with them (as they say in the tv commercials). Time was, when the words of popular nursery rhymes were printed on diapers to encourage this activity. Perhaps they should be doing this again, but rhymes in other languages could be included!

Thanks for this reprint from Edsource. For any education nerds out there, Edsource is a good place to keep up with California public ed.. I can understand why PA Weekly syndicated this article; it mentions PAUSD Trustee Collins and the work he does in literacy advocacy. However, I think this article needs to be read with an extremely critical eye. First, the claims of the report card are nebulous at best. If one looks at the methods used to generate the report card, they are poorly explained, if at all, on the CA Reads website. It’s doubtful whether the methods used would stand up to any meaningful academic scrutiny. In fact, PAUSD, in the course of 2 years, has gone from being one of the 10 WORST districts in the state, to one of the best? Has the methodology changed? It strains credulity. Is CA Reads putting its thumb on the scale for Trustee Collins? We don’t know, because this group is a complete mystery. The article states that Collins is the organizer of CA Reading Coalition. His name appears nowhere on the website. Is this a group you can join? No. There are no apparent members or governing bodies, of any sort. Cal. Secretary of State has no record of this entity. The website lists a number of partners. Many of these partners (Collaborative Classroom, Ignite Reading, 95% Group, Glean Education, Pivot Learning, Learning Ally and Core Learning) are for-profit entities with a vested interest in promoting their products. Does Collins have any financial interest in any of these entities? Has any of these entities done any business with PAUSD and has Collins voted on any of that business? PAUSD contracted with Benchmark Education recently, to the tune of several million dollars. Are they an unnamed “partner” of CA Reads? How have they (or any of the other for-profits) contributed financially to the running of CA Reads? PA Weekly needs to keep digging. There's more here.

I appreciate any article related to education but question those that rely largely on a single organization (CAReads) as the source, especially when the organization only lists for profit companies on its site. There’s no information available to make me think this is a credible or expert organization.

Whats with the paying attention just to one Demographic as oppose to leaving out others, because they don't register enough people?

CA Reads is NOT a well established or well vetted source! PA online, if you are not going to do your own investigative journalism maybe you should reference Gunn Oracle. They wrote a very thoughtful piece on the topic this fall.

With very little public notice, the Board of Education votes tonight to allow children of city of Palo Alto employees to attend PAUSD schools for free:

B. Proposed Options to Address Declining Enrollment in Palo Alto Unified School District. It is recommended the Board approve the following initial actions to address declining enrollment in PAUSD: 1) Invite full-time Palo Alto City employees to enroll their children in PAUSD and develop enrollment timelines, 2) Reduce the Full Time Equivalent (FTE) percentage required for PAUSD employees to enroll their children in PAUSD to 75%, and 3) Notifications of school placements will be sent to families no later than five (5) days prior to the start of the first day of school.Web Link

The DECISION the Board is being instructed to make is written in the subject line so it appears in 5.B., above, as the only choice the Board can make.

Only in reading the attached statement from Don Austin do we learn there was an "Ad Hoc Committee" that met. However, there is no Committee report. We are told there are 18 members, but not their names, to overwhelm the public so they believe so many people have met for so long and their conclusion must not be questioned. We are told ideas were vetted, leaders listened to, and a consensus reached that the Board is being told to approve. However, the Board item does not include reports of these meetings, criteria, leadership who spoke to them, or members of committee.

They do say, "biases were checked". What were thoses biases? How were they "checked"? Did this include district leaders motivation for large enrollment to keep power and prestige?

Board can only approve adding non-resident students.

There is no discussion as to if increasing enrollment is the desired goal, or if options such as smaller classes can increase kid's learning and connectiveness, supposed PAUSD goals. Residents pay directly for PAUSD schools with separate taxes.

@little notice Thanks for this comment. It speaks to the arrogance on display. We should demand more transparency. When someone says they are the "organizer" of California Reading Coalition, but their name is nowhere on the CA Reads website, one must ask: why? We have leadership right now that does not want to hear questions, and in fact, they prefer us all to be silent. It's all of our job to speak up. Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.