Silicon Valley Moms Blog

Why Everyone in Palo Alto Needs Measure A

This April, Palo Alto voters will be deciding whether or not to renew Measure A, a parcel tax that brings has brought in $9.4 million annually for Palo Alto public schools and is set to expire next year.  If approved, Measure A will extend our existing parcel tax for six years, providing the Palo Alto Unified School District with $11.2 million annually for 6 years.

With all the state funding reductions combined with growth in student enrollment, the revenue generated by this parcel tax is more crucial than ever.  Without it, we're risking larger class sizes and teacher layoffs, and we're endangering teacher training, arts and music programs -- all vital factors towards maintaining the high standards of our public schools. 

Your Child's First Car Accident - Is your Child Ready to Drive?

It's that moment you never want to experience.  Your novice driver's first car accident.  My 18-year old daughter was just days away from getting her California driver's license when a car rammed into her from behind.  A car colliding to her rear bumper means it was not her fault, as most of you know.  Nonetheless, it is nerve racking and scary to get that call from your child informing you that she's been in a car accident. 

My daughter was driving with another adult, getting some practice in before her test next week.  She's been driving well for months, getting highway and city traffic experience.  She's diligent, cautious and careful. 

My daughter wasn't one of those overly excited teens who at precisely 15 and-a-half years of age was eager to start driving.  She was more than happy to let me continue my role as her chauffeur.  But my husband and I encouraged her to get her license, not just so she could establish more independence, but so she could help out the family too.  We looked forward to her picking up her two younger sisters from school or taking them out to a movie and picking up a few groceries.

We've noticed a number of our friends whose children are of age, but not eager to jump on the driver band wagon.  Are our children becoming too complacent - is the thrill of driving and having that sense of independence gone?  It seems that way with a number of my friends' children.  Their children are happy to let mom and dad chauffeur them around town, heck I'd like that too! 

Book It can Suck It

It started last November when a flyer came home about the Book It Reading program.  Like many schools in the Bay Area, ours had partnered with Pizza Hut for a reading rewards program.  If my son read for 15 minutes every day in the month, then he could get a coupon for a free personal pizza.  From the start I wasn’t thrilled with the idea of rewarding with food.  Especially bad, unhealthy food.

Let’s face it, the ultimate goal of rewarding children is to help them internalize the positive behavior.  Sure, many of us used a jelly bean or an M&M to get our toddler to pee in the potty (in our house it was stamps, stickers, and when I got really desperate, Thomas trains).  But we also know that rewarding children in the home or in the classroom does not need to involve food.  Why else do you see so many moms clapping their hands and gleefully saying "YAYYYYY!!!" to their toddlers when they do something right?

There are big risks when rewarding with food.  The obvious is establishing potentially bad eating habits or over-eating.  But my bigger concern about rewarding reading with a high-fat, low-nutrient, fast-food pizza is that we are teaching the kids to reward themselves with food.  Which in turn connects food with mood.  And for those of us who’ve eaten a pint of Ben and Jerry’s Phish Food when our boyfriend dumped us in college know that it’s a dangerous game to establish your eating habits based on how your feeling.

Steamed at the Science Fair

I did a silly thing and agreed to co-chair the Science Fair.

Thanks to budget cuts, we no longer had a night custodian to give us access to the gym the night before the Fair. We sweet-talked the school secretary who lived nearby into opening it up for us, but soon realized we didn’t know the magic trick to getting the tables out of the wall. (We had the special tool, just not the right flick of the wrist.) The custodian the next morning didn’t take out the tables, either. Students and parents arrived with tri-fold project boards while the multi-purpose room still had a before-school Spanish class inside. Mothers shrieked about how their dear darling’s project had to be set up “just so” and stammered when I suggested that their son or daughter set it up themselves during their classroom’s visit to the Fair. (But they can’t do it!) One mom pointed to the cord on her son’s project, “This must be plugged in!” Yes, we can handle it. “I told you on the form that he needs and electrical outlet!” Yes, not a problem!

That sort of crazed panic is something I expected. Little glitches here and there always happen no matter how “well planned” the event. But what I didn’t expect was the narrow-minded view of two mothers who claimed that participation in our volunteer-run Science Fair should be mandatory, and that the kids who had participated were doing their experiments “wrong.”

Secretary of Agriculture Vilsack Speaks with Mom Bloggers

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is on a new health kick -- possibly the biggest in thirty years. This Fall, Congress will consider reauthorizing the Child Nutrition Act with a $1 Billion per year budget to increase the nutrient content of school lunches. A new Let's Move

campaign, fronted by the First Lady, will help provide a healthy nutrition environment at public schools and educate parents and kids about nutrition and the dangers of obesity.

In an exclusive phone call with Silicon Valley Moms Blog Group writers, USDA Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack explained that "eighty years ago, we were in subsistence farming mode, figuring out where our food would come from." Now that we have solved the food quantity problem, it is time to work on food quality and "the country needs to be engaged," said Vilsack.

In the 1980s, the USDA marketed a carb-heavy Food Pyramid during a period when grains had become cheaper than ever, leading to an abrupt change in how Americans ate. We substituted margarine and pasta for butter and burgers. Under a mistaken notion - dating back to World War II - that fat makes us fat, carbs were supposed to keep us thin. Unfortunately, this high-glycemic index diet resulted in a three-fold increase in obesity. Rates of diabetes and heart disease have shot up since the early 1980s.

"This is a different agriculture department than in the past," said the Secretary who recognizes it is time for American eating to change. With one-third of children now overweight, they are more likely to suffer serious chronic illness, making this the first generation of children who won't live as long as their parents. The USDA is renewing its efforts with children, with a goal of ending childhood obesity in a generation.

Cougar or Co-Ed? The Joy of Community College

My business partner/blogging buddy and I decided to enroll in a class at our local community college.  As photographers, we always feel we can continue our education and stay fresh and current with our cameras.  So we signed up for a creative photography class.

It's been years for me, 27 to be exact, since I've been in any sort of classroom other than my children's elementary school to help out during class parties.  So it's been interesting to sit in that hard, confining, wooden student desk once again, the kind that has the 1-foot by 1-foot piece of curved wood that acts as your writing platform and wraps around and hugs you to its connected chair.

When I went to the University of Maryland for college, I don't think I was ever in a course where there was anyone older than the instructor.  But Community College is a whole other ballgame.  It reaches out to people from more diverse backgrounds because of it's affordable nature and courses offerings that appeal to specific interest.  It's a way to update your resume if you're looking for a change in career, or like us, as a way of sharpening a skill. 

The first thing you'll notice is the classroom is it is full of people of all ages, from 18 to 80.  You may even see like we did, a mother and daughter taking a course together if they share a common hobby or interest. 

Picking a Kindergarten - Between Apples and Orangutans

The first school is lovely. Flower borders lovingly tended by little hands frame the rundown building. Children's artwork graces the peeling walls. Students race past us to bring attendance sheets to the office; their gleeful hellos to the parent representative ring with genuine affection and joy.

It's not a fancy place, but it's a happy place.

The kids in the classrooms are engaged, working hard with the room parents and the teacher. The books look well loved and very well used. As does every thing else stuffed into the cramped quarters.

The School Situation

Last autumn I worried about the OLSAT. I didn't worry because I thought my kid was "better" than other kids, but rather because I remember my GATE ("gifted and talented education") fondly, and really hope that my children are given the same opportunity. I hoped my eldest son would be "on his game" the day of the test. I wanted his true ability measured, regardless of the results; however, I feared that maybe he might goof off or otherwise not try his best, possibly losing his sole chance. Talk about pressure.

Luckily, he just thought he was doing a bunch of fun puzzles.

In "my day" - aside from walking to school uphill in the snow both ways and playing for hours with a stick and a piece of string -  GATE was in many ways more "inclusive." Sure, we had to take an IQ test to get in, but a good chunk of the class qualified. It was during those GATE sessions that we learned actual "life skills" like balancing checkbooks, how advertising can be quite deceptive, and other topics that both held my interest and ended up teaching me a great deal.

An Open Letter to San Jose Unified School District

Last year when you decided to cut 100 elementary school teachers and increase class sizes from K-3 to 30 students (that’s a 50% increase in kindergarten, if you can’t do the math), I did what I felt was the right thing for my family – I pulled my kid out of public education and placed him a private school.  Some told me that I lost my voice in public education the day I raised my white flag (and my checkbook).  But I’m still a law abiding tax payer.  I’m still a concerned citizen.  And I had still held on to the hope that, like the prodigal son, my child would return to public education when the district got its act together.

Sadly, that day hasn’t come.

Instead, San Jose Unified, you’ve continued to make cuts.  Now there is talk of more lay-offs for High School teachers and implementing ELEVEN furlough days for the entire district.  But let’s call that what it is really is.  You’ve increased class sizes to the point where kids are already falling behind and now you’re going to cut the school year by over two weeks?!?  This is beyond crazy.  It’s downright unethical, deplorable, and inexcusable.  Oh and don’t get me started in your idiotic attempt to recover some of that time by increasing the school day by 5 minutes.  FIVE MINUTES per day does not equal the same instruction time as ELEVEN DAYS.  Five minutes can easily be wasted, easily forgotten.  It can in no way, shape, or form replace eleven days of teaching.

Giftedness: The Third Rail of Public Education in California

I attended elementary school in the 1970s. I remember having a school nurse. I remember riding a bus on field trips. I even remember gifted programs. Due to education budget cuts in California, these are vestiges of the past. While my friend Darin's first grade son in New Jersey is identified as gifted and has an appropriate curriculum, the gifted curriculum in California doesn't begin until middle school.

For the past two years, our son has returned from school each day completely frustrated by a system that won't let him work at his level in math. Before I had kids I would have wondered why first and second graders even need a gifted education, but now I get it. My son has a huge, infectious enthusiasm for math. He's really good at it and he's proud of it.

In my son's first and second grade years, we worked with his teacher to adjust the curriculum to his ability, but our son has remained less than challenged. During the process, I learned a euphemism for teaching to all students - differentiation.This was supposed to be the answer to our problem.