In May, PAUSD identified the following PAUSD Promise priority areas for the 2023-24 school year: Innovation, Serve and Celebrate Others, Mental Health and Wellness, Early Literacy, and Equity and Excellence. The result of detailed reflection on annual reports and feedback from community members, the...

Palo Alto’s transportation services have become more environmentally friendly in recent years through ongoing efforts to promote sustainable practices. Palo Alto Unified School District has started by replacing some older diesel school buses for greener electric ones. The district recently received...

On April 1, Gunn’s annual Elimination came to an end with junior Kyra Xue as its winner. While Xue did not participate in Elimination in previous years, she remained competitive and enthusiastic. In the end, she survived  throughout the game’s entirety and had the most eliminations: 23. “Elimination...

Given the highly competitive nature of schools in the Palo Alto Unified School District (PAUSD) as well as others in the Bay Area, conversations surrounding GPAs, test scores and extracurricular endeavors are always present. In turn, many students feel the urge to go above and beyond in order to...

In the past year, billions of dollars in COVID-19 relief have been allocated to schools in order to provide students with safer learning environments. Now, the skyrocketing number of cases and transmissibility of the Omicron variant has led many Americans to once again ask schools to take extra safety...

Following the recent Omicron variant surge, the Palo Alto Unified School District (PAUSD) has faced a substitute teacher shortage due to increased staff absences. To continue in-person instruction, the district has implemented new measures to address the shortage, including calling for parent volunteers...

Along with other schools across the state of California, the Palo Alto Unified School District (PAUSD) has begun to provide free meals for all students for the 2021-22 school year due to new national and state policies. Free school lunches were initially offered by the federal government as part of...

Since March 9, the Palo Alto Unified School District (PAUSD) has reopened its secondary  schools, allowing staff to resume working from campus while giving students the option to attend Zoom classes on campus or at home. The initiative, first mentioned during a board meeting in February, hopes to bring...

Palo Alto Unified School District (PAUSD) Superintendent Don Austin announced a revised reopening proposal at Tuesday night’s school board meeting that could have 7th to 12th grade students returning to classrooms as soon as early March. For students to be able to return in-person, Austin said, Santa...

Transparency questioned For weeks, virtual classrooms buzzed with both worry and excitement about reopening elementary schools for in-person learning. On Sept. 29, hordes of students, parents and teachers alike powered on their Zoom applications to tune into a virtual Palo Alto Unified School District...

In a Tuesday press conference with The Oracle staff, Palo Alto Unified School District (PAUSD) Superintendent Don Austin cautioned it was “highly unlikely” secondary schools would be reopening due to Santa Clara County’s recent move into the purple tier of COVID-19 cases. According to Austin, middle...

Karna Nisewaner, a parent of two elementary school students in the district and former Chair of the Palo Alto Community Child Care board, is running for the School Board this November on a platform of district transparency. Nisewaner decided to run after feeling dissatisfied by the school board’s...