New to the neighborhood La Boulange joins café scene WEEKEND | 20 AUGUST 17, 2012 VOLUME 20, NO. 30
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MOVIES | 22
Big changes this school year KAHN ACADEMY, NEW GRADING POLICY, MORE STUDENTS By Nick Veronin
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s students at Mountain View and Los Altos high schools were busy adjusting to their new class schedules and evaluating each others’ back-toschool outfits, their teachers were preoccupied with adjustments and evaluations of another kind. Monday, Aug. 13, was the first day of the new school year in the Mountain View-Los Altos Union High School District. And along with the new teachers, more students and many new courses, the day also marked the start of a brand new grading policy — a retooled system for assessing student performance that district administrators said is nothing
short of revolutionary. Grading policy “There are very few districts, if any, that have a put a policy like this in place,” said Brigitte Sarraf, associate superintendent of educational services for the district. In all the meetings she has had with other high school district administrators throughout the state, she said she has never come across a grading policy as “progressive” as the one her district has adopted. A new MVLA board policy, approved late last school year, dictates that a student’s letter grade must solely reflect his or her mastery of the academic material and not take into account behavior, attendance or work habits. The new policy also requires that all classes taught within a given department are
MICHELLE LE
Students at Mountain View High School zoom past rows of lockers on the first day of school, Aug. 13.
taught in a similar fashion, so that no student feels that he or she has the “easier” — or “harder” — teacher. The policy follows the recommendations made by the Assessment Task Force, a group composed of district administrators,
Six qualify to run for City Council Emily Efland
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wo incumbent City Council members and four newcomers will compete for four seats on the Mountain View City Council this November, as the city clerk confirmed that all six filed their candidate nomination papers and were qualified as of Fridayís 5 p.m. filing deadline. Apart from incumbents John Inks and Mike Kasperzak, four other candidates are vying for a spot on the council. Chris Clark and John McAlister, who both served on the Environmental Planning Commission, ran for seats in the previous election but
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trict’s board of trustees in April. “Students have the right to receive course grades that represent an accurate assessment of a student’s achievement of content and performance standards,” See BACK TO SCHOOL, page 9
A long road to Olympic gold, says water polo coach By Nick Veronin
did not win. Also facing off are Margaret Capriles, a data quality consultant who worked for Hewlett-Packard, and IT administrator Jim Neal. A seventh potential candidate, Paul Sanders, Jr., pulled nomination papers last week but did not file them by the Friday, Aug. 10, deadline. All six candidates said they will agree to the city’s voluntary campaign expenditure limit of $21,388 this year. Incumbents Laura Macias and Tom Means are finishing their second, four-year terms on the council and are not eligible to run again, due to term limits.
teachers, parents and students, which spent a year considering how MVLA’s grading policies could be improved. The task force interviewed students, parents and teachers while working on its official list of recommendations, which were delivered to the dis-
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n his scramble to take in every bit of the gold medal ceremony at the London Olympics, Gary Krikorian missed witnessing a touching scene — all the players on the U.S. women’s water polo team took off their medals and, one by one, hung them around his son’s neck. He said he and his wife would have liked to see the gesture made by the women on the team, but if they had, “we would have melted into tears.” Krikorian’s son, Adam, is the team’s coach. The Mountain View native, who now lives in
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Southern California, led the team to win its first-ever Olympic gold medal at the London games. Reached by phone after returning from London, the coach called the moment “one of the greatest of my coaching career.” Adam Krikorian said that it had been a long 3 1/2 years since he began coaching the U.S. women’s team. “I don’t think anyone — unless you’re in it, and you’re part of a team — I don’t think anyone has any idea of the adversity that our team See WATER POLO, page 13
Adam Krikorian