Principal John Walker and Campolindo Parents’ Club president Carol Spiering explained results from the Challenge Success survey that Acalanes Union High School District students took last year at the “Insider’s Guide to Campo” meeting in the library on November 3.

Walker said that he wanted to make the parents “more aware of the academic experience here at Campo.”  Data from the survey suggests that a large portion of Campolindo students are experiencing high levels of stress, spending excessive time on school work outside the classroom, and are not getting enough sleep.

Parents shared opinions about the results. Walker then discussed how the school is working to reduce academic stress. “A lot of it revolves around scheduling, and parents have a strong say in their student’s schedule,” he said. “Not just their academic schedule, but their daily schedule as in activities and family responsibilities and co-curricular activities. And so we want to encourage families and students to work together to make a schedule that balances.”

“We [the administration] is looking at the data, and we’re trying to figure out ways to make it [school] a better environment for everybody,” said Spiering. Walker and Spiering emphasized the importance of time management and “PDF”: playtime, downtime, and family time. They also talked about pulling back on homework, helping students plan which classes to take, and a parent book club.

Emma Bishop and Holly Noland, parents from the Acalanes Parents’ Club board, also came to the meeting. “We’re trying to attend the other schools’ Challenge Success evenings just to see how they’re disseminating the message, so that we could work collaboratively amongst the other schools,” said Bishop.

Acalanes’s survey results were similar to Campolindo’s results.

“We believe that the bigger picture for the kids does include in many instances too many extracurricular hours, too many other pressures that are also put on them that are causing them to also have too little sleep, and too little time to reasonably complete what they are expected to complete,” said Noland.

Walker confirmed that there will be another meeting in the spring regarding the Challenge Success initiatives.