The district’s MOSAIC (Making Our School an Inclusive Community) program was selected for the Santa Clara County School Boards Association (SCCSBA)’s 2025 Glenn W. Hoffmann Award, as announced by a district press release on March 10.
The honor will be presented at an annual award ceremony on May 7 at the campus of the Metropolitan Education District (MetroED), the organization behind Silicon Valley Technical and Career Education (SVCTE).
Since 1984, the district has received six other Glenn B. Hoffman awards in various categories for programs like the Media Arts Program (MAP) and Counseling and Support for Youth (CASSY).
“[As teachers], it’s also part of our jobs to make sure that we’re teaching students how to effectively function in the world,” said special education teacher Lauren Taylor, who is part of the MOSAIC planning team along with guidance counselor Brian Safine and English teacher Natasha Ritchie. “I think it is nice to have the validation that people see that we’re prioritizing that work.”
In the fall, superintendent Heath Rocha and Tanya De La Cruz, submitted an application for the award containing a written explanation of summary of the program, its goals, how it’s sustainable, how the district continues to refine it year after year and student and staff testimonials and data from the California Healthy Kids Survey (CHKS).
The district launched the program in the 2022-23 school year and have continued to refine it.
Taylor said, “The teachers that are responsible for [MOSAIC] are really connected to what students need as a whole person versus what they need in the classroom. In my job, I support students with their academics, but a lot of my job is also supporting social emotions too. We have pretty unique roles that help us to understand the whole student more than maybe the average teacher does.”
According to Taylor, the team has monthly meetings with Los Gatos’ MOSAIC team to discuss topics. Since MOSAIC topics are decided based partially upon CHKS data, there is slight variation in topics between the two schools.
“Sometimes things that work for kids at Saratoga aren’t necessarily going to resonate for kids at LG so there is some variation” Taylor said. “There are different needs at each school, so we build our lessons around what our students need, but I would say 70% of the lessons are the same topic between the sites. For example, at Los Gatos, they have had more of an incidence and concern around binge drinking. One of their lessons was around that while that’s just not a statistic that popped up significantly for the population of Saratoga.”
Throughout the year, the team plans eight MOSAIC lessons on different topics. The topics vary by year depending on what CHKS results reveal. The district’s long-term We INSPIRE! strategic plan also allows the team to gather inputs from students, parents, teachers and administrators and also influences topics.
After determining a topic, the team creates a lesson and invites students to demo it. In the last two years, the team has shifted their lesson approach to a more interactive one in response to student feedback.
“The teachers at our schools really do deeply and truly care about the wellbeing of our kids, beyond their academic progress,” Taylor said. “I think they are committed to wanting to teach kids these things that are super important as they leave our schools.”
Despite accolades such as the Hoffman Award, MOSAIC may still face an uphill battle in being received well by most students. Once ASB treasurer candidate and one junior class treasurer candidate used the promise of removing MOSAIC as a part of their campaigns in 2025 and 2023, respectively, and an Instagram post ridiculing the district’s receiving the award garnered over 60 likes, mostly from students. A common complaint is that students would rather have their regular tutorials instead of the MOSAICs.
Regardless, junior Charlotte Hu, a member of Sources of Strength, which has helped plan MOSAIC lessons, said she believes the program is helpful to students and the CHKS “is an important metric of student performance.”
“I know what I am going to say is going to be wildly unpopular, but MOSAIC is a very important block of time to go over school expectations and resources that are extremely helpful — for instance, strategies for time management and overviewing the services offered at the Wellness Center, which many freshmen or transfer students might not know,” Hu said. “Personally, I haven’t felt like I was actively taking away something from MOSAIC, but I think it’s important that the school reaches out to every student. It’s better to overreach than to let someone who needs that help to fall through the cracks.”
