The Board of Education will be asked to vote tonight on “site plans” for guidance counseling services at Gunn and Palo Alto high schools.
The two high schools employ different counseling models, with Gunn using a traditional counseling structure and Paly using a “teacher-advisory” program, with more than 45 teachers augmenting its small professional counseling staff.
The difference between the programs has been a source of controversy in the community for at least two years, with some calling for Gunn to adopt a teacher-advisory system and others, including school board members, expressing tolerance for the different models so long as they deliver “comparable services” to students.
Counselors from both high schools, as well as from the middle schools, conferred last week and will meet again in September and October to “clearly articulate what services all students will receive relative to academics, college and career preparation and personal development,” including how the services will be measured under the differing models.
Paly’s latest plan for guidance counseling, to be presented tonight, aims to refine the school’s 20-year-old teacher-advisory program with goals such as “building stronger student-adult relationships” and developing an evaluation system for teacher-advisers.
Gunn’s new plan includes more than 60 “implementation steps” for the March 2013 recommendations of the school’s Guidance Advisory Committee, under headings such as “a systemic approach” for supporting students, a “welcoming school climate” and “creative scheduling.”
Gunn Principal Katya Villalobos has said the school may have to change its daily “bell schedule” in 2014-15 in order to make time for the regular, small-group meetings of students with adults that are at the heart of the advisory committee’s proposed reforms.
In other business Tuesday, the board will discuss a proposed operating budget of about $169 million for 2013-14; vote on a recommendation by Superintendent Kevin Skelly to postpone for a year a decision about location for a new elementary school to handle enrollment growth; discuss a food-services-management contract for 2013-14 and consider a number of items related to school construction under the $378 million “Strong Schools” bond passed by voters in 2008.
The regular meeting begins at 6:30 p.m. in the boardroom of school district headquarters, 25 Churchill Ave. It follows a 4:30 p.m. closed session in which the board will discuss real estate negotiations, employee discipline and anticipated litigation.
— Chris Kenrick
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