should be involved. i hope that happens from now on. >> good evening. my name is marilyn garcia. i am the spanish teacher at hoover middle school. i know i just sent a letter to the board, to the superintendent, about this recommendation. i just want to reiterate it does take years to develop a quality program. i was a teacher at buena vista up for 14 to 18 years before i moved to hoover to develop it more. this is my seventh year at hoover. i am also part of the school council. last year, we voted as a school to expand the spanish immersion program. this year, we have to sixth grade class is -- we have 2 you a sixth grade -- we have two

sixth-grade classes. i hope you will keep hoover as a citywide program. my own doctors were graduates of both programs -- whenever it -- my own daughters were graduates of buena vista and hoover. please do not shut it down. >> good evening, members of the board, superintendent's staff, and community. i am a parent at buena vista elementary school. i have a couple of concerns. i am really happy that you have reconsidered pushing the proposal forward and are taking time to work with the community and incorporate input. i am glad to hear tonight that you all are willing to engage the community. i consider myself an active

parent at my school and i still just learned about this very recently. i do not know that my community had enough time to provide input for what we would like to see. we do have a serious concern about not having a middle school with an immersion program being available for our sixth grader when he goes off to middle school. that was part of the original proposal. i am not sure it is being addressed. the status quo will stand for next year, but i am not sure what it means for my child. research shows -- i am sure you want to follow the evidence- based best practices. research shows that any language immersion program is more successful if the entire school is language immersion, not just one program within a mono- lingual school. and we want you to consider that and make sure it is available for all students in language immersion.

it is unfortunate to see the fear folks have about sending their children to the east side. and the fear of east side folks keeping their children on the east side. hopefully, we can work for equity for all. help us do that, particularly by keeping in mind what you do with your plan. [applause] >> [speaking spanish]

>> good evening. i am a mother and a representative of monroe elementary. we are concerned about the immersion. we want you to analyze and see it could affect us the fleet if that program is not implemented correctly. >> [speaking spanish]

[applause] >> good evening. my name is from a cup. i have two children at monroe. five years is not enough, if after that you are not going to keep up with the program and everything is going to go to waste. it is not fair that she is doing english and spanish exams. for what? that effort is not going to be taken into account if you take away the immersion programs at

the middle schools. >> [speaking spanish]

>> i have children in monroe. i represent many voices. we had a meeting on friday. we do not want to get our kids into a one-year immersion. that is not strong enough. it is mainly a spanish class. also, the security on the

neighborhood -- some of the schools where kids would be sent, we have seen children get out of the school and start taking drugs in the alley. you hour -- you are sending our children to what we say in spanish, "the mouth of the wolf ." think of those kids. do not let those kids become delinquent. we care about children. i ask god to give you the wisdom to not make a halfway solution. commissioner wynns: we are going to cut off testimony on this item in 10 minutes, so maybe 10 more speakers on this. if other people have come from your school, remember we have to discuss this recommendation and the committee has to take action. we also have a whole other area of discussion and presentations. if other people have come from your school and want to express

the same opinion, the best thing would be to say, "i agree with that. good night." somebody is blocked in in the parking lot, a great bmw -- gray bmx x5. if that is your car, please move it. somebody is blocked. >> i am at fsk right now. if this feeder program is not implemented and i have one kid who is going a half-hour drive, i am not going to be part of the community at either school, because i will be on the road more often than not, just driving. i implore you guys to do something so we can get in our

neighborhood schools. if there is not an immersion program now, put it in. you have to do something so i am not sitting on the road all day to drop off my kids. my wife and i work. we cannot afford to not have both of them in the same area. [applause] commissioner wynns: ms. o'keefe, could you tell us how many people currently get one of their choices in the middle school process? the interim process we are proposing is likely to have the same kinds of results we have today. >> historically, for the last eight years, 90% of middle school students get one of their choices.

>> i am the executive director of parents for public schools. i talked to almost 1000 parents. most were parents the district has the hardest time reaching. we heard the same things then as we heard this last month. parents are clamoring for quality schools. second, parents want to make informed choices, whether it is choosing their school or lending their voice to a conversation about student assignments. since the message is the same to us, we want to repeat the message we gave to you in the spring. we want the district to start to give the discussion about

quality schools the same visibility, urgency, and consistent attention as we have been giving student assignment. we call on the board and district to engage the community around a plan for creating quality schools. we are still too -- we are here to help facilitate that. in doing so, we want to say thank you for recommending to delay the middle school feeder, and want to urge you to set a time line and measurable benchmarks for each school and each of the programs identified tonight by the deputy superintendent, and to make concrete data available for the public to review and discuss, and make space for families to discuss priorities in middle schools. i want to mention that besides bringing the conversation toward quality schools and programming, we also urge you to consider taking longer than a year if the conversation needs to take longer than a year.

>> [speaking a foreign language]

[applause]

>> reside in the sunset district. -- i reside in the sunset district. in our theaters, our parents are not in the neighborhood schools. it can be hard to drop off or pick up in the early morning times. if we are in the neighborhood schools, it can save us the energy for the school bus coming so much more. it benefits the san francisco citizenship. we do not need to pay more tax to support the school bus. i had personal issues effective

in march and april. my eldest son got accepted into a school. the time to drop him off, my youngest son has to show up at the other school, which is far away. many times, this happens to parents in the school district. we have to save more money in our personal budget so we can let our children go on for higher learning.

being parents, we are upset with that. commissioner wynns: we have five minutes left. >> my name is randy wong. i represent an elementary school bilingual program. after fourth grade, our parents have an -- our students have no more bilingual tests. most of our kids decide to change middle schools. i represent the parents' petition. we are against our kids go into a middle school without an immersion program or bilingual program. thank you. >> good evening. i wanted to start by thanking

the district for the good faith with which they have listened to parent and community input. i definitely agree with the assistant superintendent that this is a complicated decision that requires thinking about a number of factors. i do feel that the community should have some sense of the timetable under which you are going to be trying to make these decisions. we do not know if we are talking about two months, 10 months, or two years. we deserve to have some more clarity, if not at this meeting, hopefully at one of the next meetings at which to take the vote. there are children that need language pathways' built for them. there are programs that need to be built. we cannot wait.

we need to do it right. you also need to do it in a way that is transparent. the second point i would make is that if you would share some information when you are coming up with potential feeders, of what are the projections for capacity, you have that information, but it has not been shared with the public. what our potential demographics of places you are going to send us? create an opportunity for us to talk. >> i am a teacher from an elementary school. i am here on behalf of my chinese students' parents, who are too busy making a living or too shy to speak here. many of them do not drive or speak with english. they want me to request in the strongest possible terms that the school board implement the

proposed feeder patterned immediately. they invested their lives and in come to living in the sunset district so the children can go to the schools they like. they want to go to the neighborhood schools. any change would be disastrous for them and would disrupt their normal living. they need your sympathy and understanding, and they need you to implement the proposed peter petre immediately. they do not want our children to be bused out of the area. they have always they feel comfortable with. please help them and hear their voices. >> i have a child in the immersion program. i have emailed you about my concerns.

we are looking for quality of education here. i have one question. will language programs be considered city-wide at the middle school level, or will they sit with their elementary school, as in the previous proposal? that is my question. commissioner wynns: this is going to be the last speaker. thank you. >> [speaking chinese]

[applause] >> my name is jenny. i am living in the mission district area. from my personal experience, my child is learning in the area

schools over there. i find the level is not [unintelligible] something important is my child wants to go on in higher level school. and because we live in the district, we would like to move to other schools for the better level in the feeders. also, i hope that all the schools will be based on california, for those students who would like to go to one school they think is ideal for them. [applause] commissioner wynns: i want to

thank everybody for your testimony. if anybody has any further testimony they would like to submit, you can e-mail us. the proposal is that we take this in phrases, -- in phases, which will give us more opportunities to get input from you in a more comprehensive way. i am going to start with commissioner mendoza. vice president mendoza: could you tell me -- commissioner wynns: it is difficult to hear now with the side conversations going on. please be quiet when leaving the room.

could you tell me the capacity of the existing -- vice president mendoza: could you tell me the capacity of the existing middle schools? if all of our middle schools graduated, would they all fit in at james blake and hoover? >> we plan to have enough space is to match the needs and demands. they could have two cohorts.

vice president mendoza: with the schools the parents were referring to, do we have a sense of how many families, what percentages, get their choice? is this city-wide, or is this by area? >> that is citywide. last year was 92%. three of the larger schools do not have language programs. hoover does, but the others do not. our capacity at the middle school level significantly exceeds the number of middle school students we have today. that is not what we expect the

future to look like. we are expecting significant growth in a middle school over the next few years. historically, that has been the case. commissioner fewer: think you for the hard work you have put into this. we heard from a couple of parents they are concerned you are taking away immersion programs. we are not eliminating immersion programs in schools, correct? >> correct. commissioner fewer: we are expanding them. i do not know how that misinformation got out, but i feel there needs to be a clarification. i feel like maybe that was a miscommunication and we do not want to focus on that. we do believe in and emergence strand k-12. -- in an immersion strand k-12.

let us take the word out and not have a communication problem with that. we heard tonight about neighborhood schools, and in fact over 50% of students in our school district do not sit to schools in their attendance zone. -- do not choose schools in their attendance zone. we are not talking about neighborhood. in my neighborhood, that is not an average statement. what it means is students who

are attending schools in that area would be fed into that area. it could be kids who are actually living across town. just a clarification for folks who use neighborhood schools. we do not use neighborhood schools. we use attendance zones. i want to say to staff a think it is wise that we do the program placement. i think from the very beginning we were all very, very clear about program placement. it was in every discussion and every recommendation. the program placement was huge. on the west side, we do not have any spanish immersion programs. i do not even think we have a chinese immersion program. looking at that offering of program, i