At the Superintendent Student Advisory Group meeting on March 17, students met with Superintendent Dr. Don Austin to discuss the most pressing topics regarding PAUSD’s high schools. These included mental health, course delaning, artificial intelligence use and recent federal legislation. The forum was open to all PAUSD high school students.
Academic Stress
One of the large group discussions focused on academic stress. In his March 21 Superintendent’s Update Austin wrote, “In PAUSD surveys, students ranked academic stress as a leading risk factor for youth suicide.”
During the meeting he also said that district mental health professionals reported academic stress as the reason for over half of student visits. The advisory group discussion’s goal was to identify its causes.
Nearly all attendees contributed, agreeing that academic stress was primarily caused by the pressure to attend prestigious colleges, driven by fear of peer judgement or a desire to live up to both internal and external expectations. Junior Aman Solanki shared his experience with the latter reason.
“All of our parents worked really hard to get here,” he said. “All of us want to follow a similar path to them,so we can get the same life for our kids. For me, my parents got (into) UCLA, and I know they’re successful, so I really want to go (too) so I can follow the same path.”
Before the meeting, Austin wrote to Mental Health and Wellness Director Dawn Yoshinaga to survey wellness staff and counselors to see if student and staff perspectives align. According to him, if these perspectives align it will be easier to channel resources and target the roots of stress.
“(My) biggest takeaway is that a lot of students are feeling exactly the same way, regardless of the family or culture you come from,” he said. “I think we have underestimated the Palo Alto school system culture and, instead, try to think that there’s differences within subsets of students (which is) less true than most people think.”
Following the meeting, Austin carried these concerns into his update, where he emphasized hearing firsthand student accounts and addressed student mental health as a priority.
Biology ‘Delaning’
After the school board meeting on January 21, which approved the merging of honors and non-honors biology level classes, there has been discourse about the reasoning and efficiency behind this decision. Some students supported the decision, saying eliminating the “honors” label would reduce peer pressure and give students more confidence. Others had concerns about preparedness for more advanced science classes after removing the honors lane.
“I know a lot of people who struggled in (Chemistry Honors), and I can’t imagine now what it’s like for people who aren’t in Biology Honors (anymore) because we’re de-laning it,” junior Deven Sharma said. “Jumping to Chemistry Honors, I’m going to
imagine that’s going to be a pretty difficult jump for some people.”
According to Sharma, who is also a member of the advisory group’s Planning Committee, the discussion with students may not lead to any immediate changes but was originally intended to set a precedent for future initiatives.
“Ultimately, we just wanted to see what students actually thought of (the delaning),” Sharma said. “It’s just a way that
we wanted to (increase) student input on it because I don’t know that Dr. Austin received much input on it before.”
Federal legislation and AI
At the end of the meeting, students split up into two groups, each with an assigned topic.
One group discussed PAUSD’s reaffirmation to safeguarding families from the fear of increasing Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids on school campuses nationally since President Donald Trump’s presidency. Participants proposed distributing Red Cards, which inform students of their rights if approached by an agent, in an effort to support students without being in open defiance of the law. They also discussed the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s recent ban on transgender women competing in women’s sports. Participants spoke about the importance of treating athletes with respect, regardless of one’s political views.
The other group discussed how many students use free and accessible AI tools like ChatGPT to help their school work productivity, from simple searches to essay outlines. However, generative AI’s capabilities have implications for academic integrity. Students decided that teachers should make AI expectations clear on a per-assignment basis, emphasizing that whether AI is considered cheating should depend on the assignment’s objective.
