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A transitional kindergarten student at Woodside Elementary School poses for a photo with the welcome sign on Aug. 20. Photo by Jennifer Yoshikoshi. 
Students hang their backpacks outside of Ms. Reilly’s kindergarten classroom at Woodside Elementary School on Aug. 20. Photo by Jennifer Yoshikoshi. 
Transitional kindergarten teacher Sonja Virgallito welcomes new students to the yard at Woodside Elementary School on Aug. 20. Photo by Jennifer Yoshikoshi. 
A transitional kindergarten student at Woodside Elementary School plays with Magna-Tiles before school begins on Aug. 20. Photo by Jennifer Yoshikoshi.
Elementary and middle school students across Woodside, Menlo Park, Atherton, East Palo Alto and Portola Valley are back at school. With a new academic year ahead, district officials are excited about new classrooms, increased enrollment and plans for district-wide facilities improvements.
At Woodside Elementary School, the first day was filled with mixed reactions — from excitement for a new year, sadness to part from parents and joy from reuniting with friends. In the schoolyard, students were seen playing with friends, just wandering around acclimating to their surroundings and spending their last moments with their parents.
In the transitional kindergarten yard, 4-year-old students and their parents eased into a new beginning by playing together on the rainbow carpet, meeting new friends and reading books before school started. As they apprehensively walked in, students were greeted by teachers and a colorful “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” themed sign.
As the minutes neared the start of school, young students gave their parents last-minute hugs, some with tearful eyes, as they prepared themselves for their big day at school.
Here are the updates for each school district for the 2025-26 school year:
Woodside Elementary School District
This year, Woodside Elementary School District will be constructing five new transitional kindergarten and kindergarten classrooms, after four rooms were demolished this summer. The new classrooms will provide modern learning spaces designed to support innovative teaching and student engagement, said Superintendent Steve Frank.
In a newsletter to Woodside families, Frank wrote, “While this may present some temporary inconveniences and require flexibility from all of us, I am confident in our school community’s resilience and adaptability.”
The school district will also welcome an increased student population with nearly 5% more students than the 2024-25 school year.
Menlo Park City School District
Menlo Park City School District will be welcoming 2,700 students and 17 new staff members on the first day of school.
This summer, the district began its facilities improvement projects under Measure U, a $123.6 million bond that passed in Nov. 2024. New trees have been planted at Encinal Elementary School, asphalt and play structures at Laurel Elementary School’s Upper Campus have been resurfaced, and cables have been upgraded throughout the district.
Menlo Park City School District looks forward to continued improvements, including new buildings at Laurel’s Lower Campus and the installation of electric HVAC units across all schools.
Ravenswood City School District
Ravenswood City School District’s theme for this school year is “moving with purpose and precision,” said Superintendent Gina Sudaria.
The school district will continue to focus on its Ravenswood Promise, a district-wide initiative aimed at reimagining the educational experience through community involvement. Within this project, the district’s focus is primarily set on improving language and literacy skills, attendance rates and retaining and recruiting qualified teachers.
“Our goal this year is to raise average daily attendance to 96% and reduce chronic absenteeism from 34% to 30%. Last year, we successfully brought that rate down from 40% to 34%,” said Sudaria.
Ravenswood will be implementing a new mobile device policy which prohibits the use of phones during school hours, extracurriculars and afterschool programs. The policy expands to smartwatches, artificial intelligence glasses, and other recording or social devices. Safe phones, devices with basic features, are allowed with strict limits and can be provided to families at little to no cost by the district.
The district also announced that for the second year in a row, every classroom is staffed by a credentialed teacher. Each campus will also have site leaders that will allow every teacher to sharpen their instructional leadership skills and receive feedback that can be applied immediately when needed.
This year, all elementary schools will provide before and afterschool care through a partnership with City Year and the Boy and Girls Club.
Campuses across Ravenswood are currently undergoing construction, but Cesar Chavez Ravenswood Middle School students will return to a fully renovated campus. Other school sites that are ongoing remodeling include Los Robles-Ronald McNair Dual Immersion School, which will be having a grand reopening after Thanksgiving break and Belle Haven Elementary School, which will celebrate its remodeling after winter break.
Las Lomitas Elementary School District
Students at Las Lomitas Elementary School District will return to deep-cleaned classrooms with new HVAC units. The district also shared that all lights across the district have been replaced with energy efficient LEDs and new filtered water stations have been installed.
According to the district’s newsletter, these upgrades are the start to various improvements that will take place in the months ahead. Funds specifically for facility improvements will be used to replace carpets, install a professional sound system to La Entrada Middle School’s Jensen Hall and build a new broadcast studio and makerspace at both campuses.
Starting this year, all school board meetings will be held in the multiuse room at La Entrada. Regular open session board meetings will be starting 30 minutes earlier than past years at 6:30 p.m, starting on Wednesday, Aug. 20.
Over the next months, the district will be using its dedicated facility funds to modernize the technology in the multiuse room as it transforms into the regular board room. The upgrades are intended to ensure meetings are delivered in an accessible, effective and professional manner.
Portola Valley School District
Portola Valley School District students will notice some facilities improvements across both Ormondale and Corte Madera school campuses. Over the summer, new fencing and gates were installed at both sites. The multiuse rooms across the district also had a revamp with new flooring at Ormondale and a new scoreboard, basketball hoops and sound system at Corte Madera.
PVSD is seeing an increase in enrollment for TK and has added an additional classroom to accommodate the class size. This year, 49 students will be placed in three TK classrooms. The district also welcomed 11 new staff members this school year.
For instruction, the district will be focusing on continuing initiative in artificial intelligence integration, language arts, science and multitiered systems of support to provide every student with necessary academic and social-emotional support.
