Palo Alto Unified School District Governing Board
Nicole Chiu-Wang
As a School Board Member, I would work to ensure all our students feel valued for who they are, proud of who they are becoming, and able to thrive both in school and beyond. We need to support families by providing quality, affordable childcare including early childhood education, after school care, special education, and disability services.
-
In a recent poll by Choose Children 2022 of likely general election voters, more than half of parents with children under age 18 say they are likely to move out of the Bay Area in the next few years. What do you think are the top three issues affecting our children and families and how will you make our region a place where all families can thrive?
The biggest issues are lack of affordable housing, the disappearing middle class, and the high overall cost
of living that creates insurmountable challenges for lower wage workers and their families.
I will advocate and work for affordable housing, including workforce housing for teachers and school
staff. I would work with our City Council, Stanford, and California School Boards Association to add more
housing at all levels. I will ensure that all employees, vendors and contractors in our district are paid a
living wage. And, I will work to identify and address issues of systemic inequity within our public school
district. -
As we have learned over the past three years, without quality, affordable, childcare, parents can’t go to work. What will you do to address challenges accessing childcare and preschool programs in our diverse communities?
I am committed to bringing universal preschool and quality, affordable childcare to our school district. I
will work to provide free and subsidized quality childcare to those students whose families cannot
otherwise afford it. I will focus on finding funding to support this increase in services so that we don’t
have to funding from other valuable programs, ensuring that we pay living wages to the workforce
providing childcare and early childhood education, and designing these programs to serve working
families with the hours of childcare that they need. -
Much of the student achievement gap has been linked to the opportunity gap that children in low-income families and children of color confront (e.g., lack of access to healthy food, preschool, tutors, and enrichment activities). If elected, what will you do to increase equity of opportunity?
If elected to the Palo Alto School Board, I will identify areas where the opportunity gap is greatest and
push forward programs to close the gap in those areas. PAUSD has done this with the Every Student
Reads Initiative focused on literacy by age 8. We need to use this framework to expand our efforts to
close the opportunity gap. In addition, we need to provide universal preschool, increase our tutoring
services, reduce the cost of our enrichment activities and improve the quality of the free meals we
provide to all of our students. -
What steps will you take to support inclusion and outcomes for children with special needs or with disabilities and their families to be fully included in our community?
Although a 2018 PAUSD survey showed that 85% of special education families are satisfied with their
experience, I hear from many families that the assessment process is unnecessarily challenging to
navigate, it is also incredibly difficult to get an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) laying out the services
their special education student is entitled to, and that their student’s IEP did not full address their
student’s needs. I would start by focusing on these three concerns and I would ensure that all of our
stakeholders - parents, teachers, staff, students, and administrators - are included as we think through
solutions to these issues. -
There is a mental health crisis among children, youth, and those who care for and educate them. If elected, how will you use the resources of your new role to improve access to mental and behavioral health services?
While PAUSD has begun integrating mental health and wellness services, opened wellness centers, and
hired mental health professionals for all our school sites - we are still understaffed which results in our
students not being able to receive the care that they need when they need it. In this regard, I would
focus on hiring and ensuring that those hired are representative of our diverse community. We have not
spent nearly as much time or money on the mental health of the rest of our school community - our
teachers and our staff. I would start by creating a committee of teachers and staff to help design
programs that will address their mental health and wellness needs.