Editorials

SUBSTITUTE SHORTAGE —Substitute teacher Marry Haddad guides juniors Maya Mukherjee and Felix Blanch through a physics assignment. " Substitute teachers do really hard and underappreciated work," Mukherjee said. Photo: Annum Hashmi

Substitute pay should be increased

WE APPRECIATE the commitment of substitute teachers in filling instructional vacancies following the transition back to in-person school and urge the Palo Alto Unified School District to pay substitutes the same salaries as neighboring districts.

The coronavirus pandemic has created health and safety concerns for substitutes, resulting in the number of substitute teachers in the district to decrease from 200 to 111 over the past year, according to Lisa Hickey, the director of certificated human resources for PAUSD.

“Subbing is actually twice as hard as teaching,” English teacher Kindel Launer said. “There's tons of job opportunities out there, so why risk your health and your mental health for a community in a society that doesn't value you?”

In an effort to attract more substitute teachers, the Mountain View-Los Altos Union High School District has increased the daily pay for substitutes from $180 to $225, while PAUSD recently increased daily pay from $165 to $180, according to Hickey.

As a neighboring district with a higher cost of living, PAUSD should match salaries for substitute teachers.

While the job of substitute teachers is traditionally unpredictable, recent years have required increased adaptability.

“Substitutes have to be flexible because there are so many last-minute assignments which substitutes have to take,” substitute teacher Ninel Kushchenko said. “In most cases, we are provided with guidance, but sometimes, maybe it's an emergency subbing, we have to go with the flow.”

Verde believes substitute teachers have a challenging role in the classroom and their contributions are critical to each class's success, as supported by sophomore Roxanna

Reid. “I imagine it's difficult to come into a classroom, not knowing anything about the kids or the format other than the plan you're given, and having to try and get everything under control,” Reid said. “I appreciate the flexibility and the willingness a lot of subs have.” Students may not recognize the work substitute teachers take on to assist in their education, according to sophomore Anuhska Junnarkar, “They're [substitutes] overlooked, but “Why risk your health ... for a community in a society that doesn't they are really vital to keep the school going,” Junnarkar said. Given the critical role substitute value you?” teachers play in our — KINDEL LAUNER, English teacher education, we urge PAUSD to raise the pay of substitute teachers to be equivalent to other school districts. v

Verde’s commitment to equitable journalism

IN 2018, VERDE PUBLISHED an editorial detailing the publication’s commitment to diversifying its sourcing and stories. The staff pledged to seek out underrepresented voices by using a diversity audit, a form used to track the age, race and gender of Verde’s sources.

The audit showed that adults and upperclassmen were overrepresented, while stories rarely featured underclassmen. Over half of Verde’s sources were white, and Black, Latinx and Pacific Islander sources were scarce.

In recent issues, we have made notable progress — increasing the frequency of our diversity audit from once per semester to after the completion of each issue, and using its results to guide our sourcing and coverage.

However, many of the problems identified in the 2018 editorial are still present.

A vast majority of our sources are still upperclassmen (89.8% of students appearing in our most recent issue). Severe underrepresentation of Black, Pacific Islander and Latinx sources persists. We still see uniformity in the perspectives shared by staff members as our staff continues to be overwhelmingly white and Asian.

Though we cannot change the makeup of our staff, we will actively seek out artists and photographers from underrepresented communities to contribute to our magazine, allowing us to visually represent

different voices. We are hopeful that the piloted intersection of AVID’s English curriculum with the standards of beginning journalism will allow future Verde staff to include more diverse perspectives, especially those Severe underrepre- of first-generation students and those with sentation of Black, Palower socioeconomic status. We will be updating our diversity aucific Islander and Lat- dit to include questions about the reporting inx sources persists. process, in addition to final outcomes. This will allow us to quantify our staff’s efforts in promoting equity. We will start publicizing the results of our audits on our website to keep ourselves accountable to our readership. As we strive to become a more equitable publication, we welcome feedback from our readers in the form of direct communication or letters to our editors at verdemagazine1@gmail.com. v

Art by BLAIR MIGDAL

Commending Kline’s approach to disciplinary action

EGG WARS" is an unsanctioned tradition between the Palo Alto High School junior and senior classes in which students meet at a designated off-campus location at night during Spirit Week to throw eggs at each other. The aftermath of the event and subsequent complaints have been, on occasion, serious enough to require the intervention of Paly administrators, who have differed widely in their punitory techniques.

We commend Principal Brent Kline for his response to the egg cleanup problems this year, a welcome departure from former Principal Jacqueline McEvoy’s disciplinary approach after the 2009 egg war.

In October 2009, upon hearing about the damage Paly students left on Gunn High School’s campus after holding egg wars there the night before, McEvoy took immediate action, handing out five-day suspensions to dozens of students who attended and participated in the event. Eventually, most suspensions were either shortened to one day or fully rescinded, but the contentious debate about the correct way to deal with the conflict continued.

Contrarily, when students failed to clean up properly at Peers Park and the surrounding residential neighborhood, the location of this year’s egg fight, Kline decided against penalizing the participants, instead opting to give a speech at the spirit rally the next day.

“Discipline was not the answer,” Kline said. “The answer was communicating what we saw, what we felt and what we heard from the community to the students.”

The Associated Student Body organized multiple cleanups at Peers Park, providing students with an opportunity to rectify their mistakes. Several took the initiative to help restore the park.

“What Mr. Kline really wanted for the

“future was to move forward with positivity, rather than just holding onto a ton of resentment, and we decided the cleanups would be one of the best courses of action to show that there are Paly students who do care about the community,” ASB President Johannah Seah said. In place of suspending a student, Kline said he prefers an honest heart-to-heart conversation because it ultimately leads to more character development and personal growth. “Even as adults, if we don’t see eyeto-eye or if there’s a misunderstanding, we don’t go away and never talk about it,” Kline said. “We work together to fix it by talking through things … instead of ignoring the problem by suspending somebody.” Given the delicate nature of this event, we appreciate Kline’s response to the egg war cleanup problems and community concerns this year. v