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 lapping in different routes so we don't

get different turfs. we have had to look at rerouting where kids have to stop to take another transit. those areas are safe. sometimes we have worked directly. they have put police out there and we always find hot spots that come up. you think you have solved it and then a new one pops up. the best help for us is to alert all of us when that happens. it's a constant change. we can't control all the variables. we are not out there every day. she doesn't ride muni.

we look it when we don't see it as people complaining to us. by the way, i was on this bus or this streetcar and this happened. this is going on on a regular base. we can't fix it unless we know about it. we get on the phone with police and they are open to that. i think keeping on going communication is a good effort. plus we worked on having a hot line. they advertise it. he it probably tell you more of that. even in schools, we have a hot line, if you are feeling threatened or whatever, they want them to call on it. we are doing a lot of different things. we have to keep doing it it. there's always better ideas to make it better.

>> thank you. superintendent garcia. one of the first actions we took in terms of the mta upon your joining the city as our superintendent was to talk about the relationship between the mta and the school district. we are intrusted with thousands and thousands of students. we have to make sure you get there savely. it's additionally personal to me because i have 2 children in the unified school district. we do take this very seriously. back to 2001. there was a mtap program.

we have dozens of individuals who are out there to work specifically with schools and work close with schools. they have the individuals in this program, primarily in middle schools and highs. they have relationships with school security personnel, the idea being, if we do get the information, we are able to redeploy these individuals to head off these conflicts. one of the things we tried to do was one, we increased mtap personnel and this year, where you hear about the cuts as it relates to staffing. we have not reduced personnel assigned to that. it also is responsible for parking and traffic and in

that unit is school crossing guards. school safety as it relates to students getting to and from school. we want to make sure we protect everyone out there. the challenge is staffing and having enough people as well as education. one of the programs that he we implemented was electronic devices. it used to be ipods. it's a target for criminal activity in terms of ipod. also work in terms of educational processes. it's nice to have those, put it

in your pocket so no one has the urge to take it. there's also a lot more we can do. i am here too look for ideas to do it better. right now we have mtap. there's not a day that goes by that our people aren't reporting back they stopped a fight. we could do even more and also, i think there maybe an student to look at our bus operators. they have a responsibility to drive the bus. they are aware of issues brewing and they need to step up their involvement with student safety. there's a great deal more work to do. in the past 6 months, there as

not been and incidents involving weapons. we feel like we are headed in the right direction. not just for our youth. but we have to look at it from a home land security aspect. while it may not appear to be amount of work going on. there's a lot on video cameras. all of our vehicles are out fitted. if something happens, we will be able to identify them and take proper recourse. it's front burner. he wasn't here a week before we were sitting with my top managers relating to students getting to and from school and how to do a better job. he mentioned a phone number. do you have that number?

>> i will get that and be able to provide it to you. >> so we can announce is during this summit. >> it's called the safe school line. it was adopted this year. we have yellow cards and there's 3 ways to report an incident to the safe school line. to handle incidences related to school. you can go online, click on either of those and it will take you to the save school line. it's again on the yellow card and you can email a complaint. this system was set up so

youths can report complaints anonymously. what we found out is that youth are less likely to report crimes and incidences because of no snitching. so having an online system or telephone where you don't have to leave your name or give school hints as to what's happening so they can address it when it starts. someone mugging at someone before it gets into a huge brawl. >> 241-2141. >> i was going to say that's an action item >> can i put an idea on the table. it's a slightly different approach. but, what parents and young people tell us is they don't

participate in a lot of after school programs and other kinds of programs because they don't feel safe. so what they're doing in they have a fleet of buses that go around every neighborhood and young people can register for the bus. it stops at the local library and it goes from morning it evening. we do fund van collaboratives. but really having a system in san francisco, it not only gets

them safely, we could design it for san francisco and it can go to the every neighborhood and go from neighborhood to neighborhood. that's something i'm interested in looking at. it would provide an alternative. if you tell the mayor it's going to be a green us. they make peek his interest. i am interested to see what people think about this. is this something the children's fund. we can do a pool. how much of you believe that is a problem? people having transportation to your services? >> all right. so i will take that as a 92 percent rule. >> thank you. >> i would like to ask, thank you very much, margaret, that

was great. i would like to ask principle dierck about an experience at his school when i young person saw another person being victimized and actually a group of young adults were stealing school binders and he was afraid she was going to be victimized. how do you work collaboratively with schools, >> i have 2 stories to relate. the first one, took place at washington high school. we had adopted a hot line many years ago before they were in vogue. this young man call about

criminals victimizing kids on the 38 bus line. every day these guys were getting on the same stop and steal shoesing and pack backs from kids and get off the next stop. no one did anything about it. he didn't do anything about it until the guy in the row in front of him got victimized. the police were able to put up a sting operation and that they were able to catch them. another instance. somebody jumped on the bus and beat this boy up and jumped off

the bus and the other students at our school have all our students have been taught what to do in case someone hurts you on the bus. they had the bus number. the time, the description of what the people looked like and within 2 days these people were arrested. part of what we need to do is teach our kids to be aware of their environments. especially for middle school kids. they are not as worldly as high school kids. they need to be trained to negotiate their environments. >> i think that's a great bridge to doctor wenz, you

teach people how to negotiate an environment. it you tell us what your advice would be and also what the science has shown what works and what doesn't? >> at this time, i was just introduced to mr. dierck, and had the opportunity to see what he was doing at his middle school. i was very impressed. my background has been in education since about 1972. this whole movement for social-emotional movement is gathering a lot of momentum. when george anderson developed

this and he saw a need in california. his curriculum that he developed is the only one accepted by the courts as well as the prison system because of it's effectiveness. george expanded to that to include emotional intelligence and the 4 components are developing empathy, creating compassion and working collaborative and forgiveness. in developing that, in order to understand what george developed, i have to say that i am a little nervous. you have to excuse me. it's been a while. george is a 70-year old black

man who group up in mississippi and was diagnosed as retarded before special education. he was one of 6 people with a nonmedical degree to participate in a harvard study in science. george has been in business for close to 40 years. he developed this anger management program to help people get along with themselves and secondly, to get along with each other. the one thing he believes and practices, our emotions are the characteristics that unite us all. the one thing we share in

common are feelings and emotions. this is the one area we fail so badly as educators, counselors and therapists. one of the commonalities as an educator and as a counselor is, i was, 10 years ago. i was working with native american students, i am from the midwest and i moved out here 6 years ago. prior to that, however, i was, the counseling department for a native american therapeutic school. we had 260 students grades 4 through 8. 75 percent were on special education ie p's. 90 percent were already

enrolled in the juvenile system and in the drug and alcohol programs. later on, i would show up and be a counselor at the betty ford center with attorneys and other professionals. the one commonality that the children at therapeutic school and the professionals at the betty ford center had in common was no clue about feelings and how to be aware of their feelings and how to address them. what mr. dierck has done is one of the things that we as educators, it's the one thing we have missed. it's the absolutely one thing we missed to teach our children