while. we even had american cuisine. we made rainbow bread. you remember that. i speak to children and listen to them. it's beautiful to hear you, mr. adachi, say that. probably because of this, more one saying how is that. the only people who speak the truth are children and people who have had too much to drink. that's called wisdom. you think about it. i am going to share one more thing. i will speak briefly on the concepts of that. if i asked you right now, ladies and gentlemen, how many of you would have considered yourself at risk? could you raise your hands. and there was probably a lot of

pain with that, huh. in the book i wrote. i interviewed 60 role models and all of them were at risk astronauts. it made us who we are. i have scars. i have a doctorate, but also scars. wisdom comes from making mistakes. i have made a lot of mistakes ladies and gentlemen. i am going to speak about collaboration. i am going to talk about the role of expectations. i will speak to the value of hope. because when you're in an ugly situation. hope means so much. it's a global concept. in the research i do with

resilience of children. close your eyes. bear with me. go ahead and hope them. i am not going to take you through a visiblization. i charge for that. some of you did not close your eyes. you looked at the other people closing their eyes. i asked students why? because i don't trust people around me. there are islands when children run to the nearest adult. if i am not dressed like this. i am dressed like i do at home. that guy must be a gangster. when i speak about at riskness, i asked this gentlemen, a

school administrate or. what makes a student at risk? we talked about gangs. we treat the symptoms. it's the symptoms we're treating. that's just an expression of other forms of repression. teen pregnancy and drug abuse. i said, what's going on? well they speak a different language in the home. it's a disconnect. they don't have enough money. i knew he had money because he always picked up the tab. he drove a nice car. i happened to have a hood accept and am proud of it. people distinguish between accents. i have spoken to students about that. are you at risk? no. i like jewelry too.

what if i took your jewelry and i dropped you right in the middle. in a really high crime area. would you be at risk? sometimes we attribute at risk to perform characteristics. sometimes the environment. we adjust. growing up. i needed to leave the environment. i am talking straight up. to survive, i grew up on the streets. the word i did at chad. the number one book that's popular, what book do you think it is? i hear the bible. beautiful. what is it? i have heard that one too. you know what it is? it's called the art of

seduction. the first section is called choose a victim. what has happened is this. as an educator. someone who works with gang units. we created oxymorons. we created good people who i think it's good to be bad. we teach them them that passing the standard is success. there is a difference. 3 words they taught me. do you think what 3 words. this is from their world, at riskness. you know what the 3 most powerful words are? i tend to think in love, faith. you know what they said? hate, jealousy and revenge.

i am listening to that. i said, we need to go beyond that. what do you think strategically. i still remember. i went to a debut taunt ball. vice president of the university, and they were talking and then she looked at me and i was dressed in a suit. she looked at me with respect and she jumped. what did she do? she grabbed her earings, ladies and gentlemen. because i don't know. i think she has never seen a latino closeup and my cilantro cologne. i mean no disrespect. it was her gut level reaction.

i said, today i choose not to rob you. let me do this. i could go on and on. i want to respect the time. let me talk about expectations. on the research i have done, what kind of teachers are assaulted by youths? what behaviors were they exhibiting? some people say comfortive. and people say intolerant. you know what it is? teachers where low expectations tend to be assaulted the most. you don't have respecto for someone. the work that i have done started with with a primitive of respecto. i expect something from you mihoe. because i respect, you are always angry. no it's the fire in me.

the day i stop being angry is the day i stop caring. let's talk about collaboration. i did the best practices paper. sb 95. we have programs throughout the state. they had money. funding. staffing. facilities and yet they died on the vine. you know why? because they couldn't collaborate. that's the elephant in the living room. they came from different paradigms. let me conclude with this. i talk about hope. growing up. seeing some of the things i saw. i learned a very important lesson and that was this. streets around here. selling newspapers on the border town. i saw things a young person

shouldn't see. i learned an important lesson and it's this. in order not to get beat up. i am speaking to you the way my father talked to me. he was a doctorate from the field. you can tell i really value of the elders. he taught me a lesson. all the things i put up with. have hope. because i remember, coming home sometimes and i said, look what i bought you on special. people were making fun of me. do you know what color the shirt was? a bright yellow shirt. i looked like a light bulb. the role of the elders is important. when you talk about hope, ladies and gentlemen.

i want to remember the works of victor franco. he looked, he was one of the survivors of a/sweuts. this too shall pas. the best way to build hope is have a plan. when i talked about being on the streets. it's very operational. have bigger brother and cousins. that coalition building.

i was flying back. i did a key-note. going to nasa, you have 3 big panoramas behind me. my people. i will end with this, ladies and gentlemen. i got on the airplane. i was tired. i got in and i was on a good airline. i got in the window seat. a gentlemen, an african american. people were getting on the plane and they were bypassing us. they would look and keep going. i knew something was up. they looked at the same chairs. i said, it is what it is. until a young boy came. and he sat between us. that gave me an awful lot of hope.

it took him to teach us. children have a renewed effect on us. finally to conclude. i had a great complement. most teachers who are here with respect. you are the reason we are here. you give us hope. this complement, he said, doctor revelez. you are pretty cool. nice, huh. but then he said. do you want me to hook you up with my mom. doctor adachi, thank you very much. >> all right. my name is is an swan right. according to a 2001 survey.

84 percent said they were satisfied with high school safety. 22 percent said they were not. >> my name is matesh. whether students were asked if they felt safe on their way to school. 43 percent said no. they do not feel safe riding the bus. >> my name is daniel, i live in san francisco. when youths were asked where they carry weapons, 77 percent said it was for protection.

>> hi, my name is scott, i live in oakland. 66 percent of youths surveyed believe it is never right to carry a gun to school. >> my name is bianca. when asked if they believed it was a good idea to have are a gun 17 percent students said yes and 40 percent said it was sometimes okay. >> 61 percent of the same 8 thousand students said lack of jobs is a more serious problem than fights in school. they also felt violence was a problem. >> according to the juvenile

justice community assessment and referral center. 1147 juveniles were arrested between july 2007 and january 2008. of these. 122 happened at school. >> all right. can we please have a round of applause for our young people? thank you. all right. so gad to be here. i am evet, we are now going to move into our first panel which was going to address violence at school. i am one of your moderaters and we're going to go ahead and

start. thank you so much for being here. >> if you are asked in seeing those statistics, we will have the power point at www.dot st public defender.org to make them available. i am excited to introduce each of of the panelists. if we described all of the achievements we would here all day. it's available online on the website. the first is bianca, she is the junior at thorough good marshall high school. she the part of the united players who is in the house here. and we came to meet bianca when

she started interning. so thank you for being a part of this. carlos garcia is the super intendent of the city and county. we are so lucky to have him in san francisco. we served in the fifth faster growing school system in clark county. he worked as a principle including horace man in san francisco. thank you very much super intendent for being here.

nathaniel ford is the director of the transportation authority. prior to joining the municipal authority. he served for the atlantic authority for 5 years. he started as a train conductor in the new york city transit system. let's give it up for director ford. jim dierck is a principle, but not only a principle and an educator. he is someone who designd and developed innovative concepts where there was an incident that involved safety. for the work he was recognized

at the national principle of the year. and he is somebody who is on the ground and has worked to empower young people at his school. he took his school from a different circumstances to be one of the highest performs school districts in the state. jim dierck. margaret brodkin is the director of the department for children youth and families. i emphasize that because it is one of the most critical agencies in the city and county. margaret was a former director the colman advocates who is

responsible for many of the children and families here in san francisco much he served as director. including the another and leader of a campaign that results in a children's fund to provides funding to 220 program ares and serves 30 thousand children each year. margaret is a passionate person. she just came back from a trip on around the country and we are very happy to have her here. thank you margaret. doctor tom wenz, he's is an

expert if anger management and substance abuse treatment and has worked with with many youth throughout his career. he came to me through george anderson who runs an anger management firm. they have taken the science of conflict mediation and made it into an accessible discipline for trainers, people who are working with young people throughout the state and throughout the county. do you know that there's only, i think now one state that mandates anger management in the school and it was texas. and it's only been within the last year. doctor wenz is an advocate. he's also a vietnam veteran who

saw many people suffer from substance abuse in the wake of that war and conflict and has a tremendous amount of experience. he as a doctorate. a master's degree in working with children and works in his own consulting business as well. doctor tomas wenz. >> angela chan as worked with san francisco and community based organization in the area of violence reduction and hate crimes. she understands that often violence is simply a manifestation of conditions that we are preprogrammed to assume. we are seeing that now. this whole issue the race being

played out in the presidental elections. quite frankly untruths told about one another. if we understood the common history and the proud places from which we come, much of the violence and conflict could be avoided. she has done a number of presentations around the city and state. angela chan. officer lowis borilla. she took a particular interest

in working with youth and with schools. she was a sro , school resource officer. during that time, she worked with middle schools throughout the district and in many areas where they were experiencing violence. she has been an invader. i would like to acknowledge captain masha ash. captain ash has done a tremendous amount of work. she worked on protocols that

would work with children taken to the youth facility. during the parent's arrest and from trauma. thank you very much officer pri lo and captain nash. i am going to go over the panel discussion. we are try find solutions which includes violence to and from school and on the site. our goal is to move forward solutions. we ask that all questions be reserved today end.

please feel free to jot down questions you have. those questions we are not able to get to, we are interested in collecting them. we are going to collect information with respect to solutions as well as action items that they are going to take back and work on. so our first topic is violence to and from school. jeff will moderate this piece. >> we wanted to start talking about safety and getting to and from school, because that's really where it starts. again, as i mentioned earlier, many people do not feel safe in their homes, walk to go school and on the bus. one of the things that was listed was that a lot of

students fear what will happen to them on public transportation. i think in many instances the way they feel and react is what they experience every day. what role can transportation play in terms of safety? before we get there. i would like to start with bianca. this was something you had to live with. can you explain the challenges you experienced just getting to school. >> well, i know going to school, my school was in the bay area. some of them may have problems getting there on bus. some have to go alone. i know sometimes they face problems with other students because there's a lot of gangs.

you asked what part of the city you are from. that's a risk for a lot of youth. >> and if you're in a situation where you feel endangered or you see someone else victimized, who students know what actions to take >> i think some do and some don't >> what have you done personally where you have felt unsafe. >> i haven't felt that because i don't take bus. so, yeah. i wouldn't be able to answer that. >> okay. thank you. i am not going to go to both the superintendent and matt ford. they have been proactive in

which safety to school can be approved. i know sue is also here who works with transportation authority who actually places security officers on public transportation. obviously not all. but also works collaboratively. can you talk about your efforts and perhaps have you joined by director ford. >> well, i think it's a joint effort. it's always changing. and also the police chief, who we have a pretty tight relationship with the school district in terms of when things happen. we get on the phone and we're talking about what do we do? we have had to change starting times and ending time so they are not over