In the first draft of its 2025-2026 mission statement, the Palo Alto Unified School district suggested a new emphasis on “academic access and excellence.” 

The Palo Alto Unified School District (PAUSD) board presented the first draft of its mission statement in a Tuesday meeting which adds a new tenet, “academic access and excellence.”

The draft’s emphasis on academics comes amid the ongoing issue of access to advanced courses at Palo Alto and Gunn High School, which send many graduates to Stanford each year. The debate revolves around whether allowing students to take college-level courses earlier is necessary to accommodate advanced students or if the school district should dedicate more resources to struggling students instead.

The PAUSD mission statement, formally titled the The Promise, was introduced before the 2019-2020 school year and consists of three “priority areas.” The draft for 2025-2026 proposes changes to three: replacing “Early Literacy” with “Academic Access and Excellence,” in addition to revising “Equity and Excellence” to “Social Responsibility and Equity” and “Mental Health and Wellness” to “Mental Health, Belonging and Wellness.”

The first draft of the 2025-2026 Promise follows an April 29 “Promise Study Session” which presented the results of a PAUSD survey of parents, teachers, and students. The survey asked respondents to provide “compliments,” “concerns” and “suggestions” about each tenet of the Promise. 

Of 537 survey respondents, 339, or 73%, were parents. The “Equity and Excellence” tenet received the most responses at 73. The board’s “Key Takeaways” from the survey noted that “a major theme was the perceived tension between equity and excellence.”

In January 2025, the PAUSD voted to combine honors and regular biology into one course.

“Gunn’s attitude towards academic rigor was very focused on doing very well in class…and taking a bunch of high-level courses,” said Henry Tian ’27, a graduate of Gunn High School. He added that this attitude is “self-imposed” by students and parents.

“Imagine if at Stanford, you were pressured to take 20-unit quarters, and then hypothetically, Stanford would be going: ‘Hey guys, don’t take 20 units. Take 15.’ That’s effectively what Gunn was trying to do,” Tian said.

Students at Gunn are not permitted to take AP courses until junior year. Tian said that he and his friends “didn’t particularly mind” this policy, however, because the honors courses were as rigorous as their AP equivalents.

“I took the AP Chemistry test straight out of honors chemistry. All I did was cover one additional unit on my own, and I got a 5,” Tian said.

“The idea of college applications is thought about very early in high school,” said Michelle Koo ’28, another Gunn graduate. She said that not being able to take AP courses until junior year was “stressful” and created pressure for students to “take as many [APs] as they can in two years.”

“I was aware that most people who go to a top school take at least 10 APs,” Koo said. “It was like, ‘Now, I only have two years.’” 

Both Tian and Koo discussed the sequence of math courses. They said that at PAUSD middle schools, students could take a test that would allow them to skip ahead in math. Students on the accelerated math track could also take courses as advanced as multivariable calculus (MVC) at a local community college.

In May 2023, the PAUSD eliminated high school credit for MVC, which meant that the course would not appear on students’ high school transcripts or contribute to their GPA, Tian said. Having spoken with a friend currently at Gunn, Tian noted an ongoing debate over whether advanced math courses past AP Calculus create pressure on students to skip ahead even if they are not ready.

In light of these debates, the addition of academic “excellence” to the revised PAUSD Promise could reflect parents’ and students’ growing attention to students’ access to advanced course offerings.

Koo said she felt the the biggest inequity at Gunn between students was the resources they had access to outside of school. She said that through on-campus tutoring or office hours built into the school day, Gunn is “doing its best to minimize the gap” between students who have “all the resources” and those “that don’t have much at all.”