Every priority, in detail

Dual-enrollment access has grown across subjects like Administration of Justice, Architecture and Engineering, Digital Media, Business, Psychology, Kinesiology, Interior Design, and Early Childhood Education.

At the same time, the district's own data shows the share of students accessing at least two college-level courses by senior year fell from 63.4% to 52.1% this past year — a real dip I'm not going to paper over. Growing dual enrollment is part of the answer; so is revisiting graduation requirements so students have room in their schedule for rigor, not just CTE.

"CTE" stands for Career Technical Education — hands-on classes in fields like healthcare, business, and the trades. A student "completes a pathway" by finishing a sequence of 2–3 connected courses in one field, not just trying a single class.

Since I began raising this, the district has stood up a CTE Coordinator role, approved new course outlines, and launched new pathways using Golden State Pathways and Strong Workforce grant funding — at no new cost to local taxpayers. Nearly all students (95%) now take at least one CTE course; the next challenge is pathway completion, where only about 5–10% of students finish a full sequence. I'm also continuing to press on the pay gap that makes it hard to hire CTE teachers with real industry experience.

Before these changes, students with the most significant cognitive disabilities had no real pathway to a diploma, and many students with IEPs were on track to age out without one. The state convened a workgroup to address dismal postsecondary outcomes for these students and opened the door to an Inclusive Diploma option; our Board paired that with a reduced-credit pathway so an IEP team can determine, student by student, whether it's the right fit.

My priority now is making sure every eligible family actually knows this option exists.

The Board studied this for months, including surveys of teachers, parents, and more than 4,000 students, before voting unanimously in March 2026 for a "bell-to-bell" policy — no phones for the entire school day, not just during class. San Mateo High has run a similar policy successfully for years, which helped inform the districtwide approach.

The task force wrestled with a hard question: what should AI never replace? Everyone agreed it should never replace real relationships between teachers and students. My focus has been on the incentive problem — if a tool gets a student a better grade with less effort, how do we make sure they're still learning something, not just shortcutting the work?

ETA launched at Hillsdale High in 2018 and now supports more than 200 students there with tutoring, mentoring, family support, and the Peace Pantry, which feeds about 140 families a week. In June 2025, the Board voted to expand that model — as Empower San Mateo — to San Mateo High, Aragon High, Bridge Academy, and Abbott Middle School, backed by nearly $1 million in state grant funding and about $500,000 in nonprofit support over two years. Rollout began in early 2026 and continues through the next several years, including new middle school partnerships.

Two new Pacific Islander mentoring groups launched at Aragon this school year as part of that expansion — more in the Area 3 section below.

The district now runs MAP assessments in reading and math twice a year at every school, giving teachers and counselors a real, ongoing picture of how each student is progressing — instead of one snapshot at the end of 11th grade.

Teachers and counselors now review this data together several times a year to flag students who need extra support early, rather than waiting for a single end-of-year test to tell us who struggled. My next priority is making sure every school follows through with fast, consistent intervention whenever the data shows a student is falling behind.

A routine state compliance audit found SMUHSD had kept Multilingual Learners in separate designated classes longer than state law allows. In response, the district moved students into standard classes very quickly — sometimes before they were ready, and before their new teachers had the training to support them well.

I only found out how this was playing out because I was in the room at a teacher professional development day — one of the advantages of having the flexibility to actually show up during the school day. I followed up with more conversations afterward, checked our policy against the real Education Code requirements myself, and worked with legal counsel to get it right before bringing a fix to the Board.

Before this change, PE was mandatory in 9th and 10th grade with no exceptions, even for students already logging hours of physical activity through school sports or dance. Some student-athletes were getting hurt from doing too much, not too little, and losing study time they needed to keep their grades up.

I raised this directly with our Superintendent and PE staff and helped design a fix: 10th graders playing a school-sponsored sport can take a study hall period in place of PE during their season, without cutting a single PE section or breaking state education code.