Piedmont Pulse
Piedmont USD - Week 3 Update >>>
September 22, 2025
Dear PUSD Families & Staff:
Last week I had a chance to attend the 6th grade new family night, the 7th grade new family night, and the City's new families night. Building community is at the heart of Piedmont, and I firmly believe that when we bring our parents together, our kids also build stronger relationships with each other.
Speaking of our kids, I hosted a lunch for our high school students to hear their thoughts on how the cell phone policy is going at PHS/MHS. Our kids are so wise and had many effective arguments for the use of phones at the high school level. Some students (well...only a few) also commented that the new policy is something they can live with, but expressed concern about a more restrictive policy next year.
Hearing the experiences of parents and our students reminds me of the importance of listening to all members of our school community: students, staff, and parents, in our efforts to offer the finest education possible. I encourage our families to continue to engage in the many community opportunities below to share perspective on our school programs. Your voice matters.
In Partnership,
Jennifer Hawn, Ed.D.
Superintendent
Two weeks ago, I wrote about the challenges of the high school schedule of courses, including our efforts to offer courses according to student interest and need. To further improve our efforts, we held a Board workshop on September 12th to explore options that could improve course opportunities for students, including transitioning to graduation requirements that reflect the UC A-G course admission requirements. At this workshop, we defined courses according to the California State high school graduation requirements, the UC A-G course requirements, and reviewed our PUSD high school graduation requirements. All three sets of requirements are different, and we discussed PUSD courses that we may want to change from a requirement to an elective option. Semester courses under consideration include the following:
- Computer Studies
- Ethnic Studies
- Health
To be clear, the rationale for moving these courses from a requirement to an elective option is to allow students more flexibility to pursue courses that reflect their interests and needs.
At the workshop, we also reviewed enrollment in elective courses, with consideration of criteria to use when we determine we should not offer a course. We currently have under-enrolled elective courses that prompted a discussion of the cost to offer a course, which comes to a minimum of 24 students. That is, when we offer courses under 24 students, the revenue we receive for each student does not cover the cost of the course. We already cover the cost of many courses that have under 24 students for some core and other required courses, and so it is not financially sustainable to offer elective courses that are under-enrolled. In order to ensure a balance between providing robust course offerings and financial sustainability, we are developing a rubric to use for elective courses. This rubric will take into account various criteria, including course requests, lab courses, access for alternative learners, new courses, cost, and actual enrollment in the current year and over time.
A review of this year's course options revealed challenges for students to access the courses they requested. Enrollment for some elective courses is unsustainably low; however, we have heard from teachers that enrollment does not reflect student interest. Conversely, we have courses that have high demand, sometimes over-enrolled and unavailable, leaving students forced to choose courses they did not request, including "Unscheduled" free periods and/or TA periods instead of electives students want.
At the September 24th Board meeting, we will follow up on information the Board requested. No decisions will be made at this meeting; however, we will provide additional information from the 9/12 Board workshop on how we can move forward with improving our process for offering high school course options that meet the interests and needs of our students.
We will continue our focus this year on community engagement opportunities, including meetings planned throughout the school year on topics related to our District goals. We invite you to consider joining any of the meetings this year on a range of topics, which will be held online and in person. Be on the lookout for invitations to follow from each Committee leader. The community meeting schedule for 2025-26 is linked HERE.
October Meetings:
October 6 - District Technology Advisory Committee (DTAC) - Tech Plan Development
October 7 - Parent Night - ELA Adoption Implementation
October 9 - Budget Advisory Committee (BAC) - Revenues: A Deep Dive
October 16 - Superintendent's Advisory Committee (SAC) - Cell Phone Policy Feedback
October 20 - Diversity Equity Inclusion and Belonging Committee: DEIB Program & Goals
October 23 - Curriculum Committee - Elementary Performing Arts
October 29 - Facilities Steering Committee (FSC) #2 (tentative)
Thank you to the students and parents who who wrote to AC Transit officials and/or attended the AC Transit Board meeting two weeks ago to restore Bus 33 service to upper Piedmont. To those surveyed families, I recently sent out an opportunity to write to AC Transit to restore service. If you would like to join in this letter-writing effort, we could use your help to advocate for this critical transportation need.
Linked HERE is information below to assist you in sending a letter via email to the AC Transit staff and Board. We believe advocacy from our PUSD community can make a difference in calling attention to this important matter and potentially leading to the restoration of bus service to upper Piedmont.
Piedmont Unified School District
Email: communication@piedmont.k12.ca.us
Website: www.piedmont.k12.ca.us
Location: 760 Magnolia Avenue, Piedmont, CA, USA
Phone: 510-594-2600