are put in place become part of the district culture, and that is what has happened in san francisco. i'd like to mention a couple of people who deserve special recognition, we believe. superintendent garcia, hydra mendoza, the president of the board of education and the board of education for setting these priorities. also john bidoff, executive director of maintenance and operations, martin esclante, director of custodial services, nick cesner, lu annain lee, san francisco unified asthma nurse and all the nurses, custodians, facilities staff, teachers and others who have contributed to these ongoing efforts, truly remarkable, very impressive, and it is my good fortune to present the 2011 achievements in respiratory health awards and a check for $5,000 to the district to, we

hope, continue and expand your many achievements. congratulations. [applause] >> thank you very much. >> congratulations on all the good work you're doing.

commissioner mendoza: thank you so much, mr. kessler, we appreciate the recognition and the efforts you put in to recognize districts like ours who have put strong efforts to ensure our kids are healthy and safe. item 2 on this is a presentation on the investment in success scholarship program, with the california masonic foundation, which we're going to move to the next meeting on june 28. our student delegates report. they're on summer break, as you can see. good for them. item e is parent advisory council, p.a.c., report, and after the p.a.c. report, if it's o.k. with my colleagues, i'd like to move up the item where we're going to be appointing new members to the advisory council, so if there's no objection to that, we'll also be moving up, let's see, what it is, item l. >> thank you, we very much

appreciate that. good evening, commissioners, superintendent and folks in the room. i'm ruth krabowski and i staff the parent advisory council. i generally try not to be the one doing the talking but the p.a.c. members are also pretty much on break and asked me to do this for them. our report tonight addresses the superintendent's proposal that you'll be taking up later this evening to establish -- that includes establishing feeder patterns to assign students to middle schools and we share the superintendent's enthusiasm for the fact that this issue is about to be over, even if we don't agree with everything in the proposal. so i also want to let you know that district staff who have been working on the very complicated different pieces of this proposal invited us to meet with them to discuss our recommendations and their rationale behind the details in the proposal and we had a really frank and positive conversation which we really appreciate having the opportunity to talk more in depth about the issues that you can't always spend the

time on in a public setting. and i also felt being at the ad hoc committee meeting last night, that conversation was really interesting especially in discussing the function of tiebreakers and the use of c-tip as an equity mechanism. and following this discussion, the p.a.c. stands by its recommendations on and parents for public schools joins the p.a.c. in making these recommendations in terms of the vote that you're going to take later this evening. the p.a.c. puts a lot of work and effort into evaluating the proposals and policies that come before the board to really look to try to understand these fit and match and support the goals of the district to support student achievement, equitable access to opportunities and accountability from across the district, and it's through that lens that the p.a.c. urges the board to continue placing a high priority on giving students equitable access to educational

opportunity in middle schools by making a few changes to the proposal related to feeder patterns and there are three specific recommendations. the first one is to change the order of tiebreakers. so, an equity mechanism comes before the feeder pattern mechanism. we know that there are questions about how effective c-tip is to serve the students that it's intended to serve so we're not attached to c-tip. we're attached to an equity mechanism that you decide is a good one so the order that we're recommending is that younger siblings would come first followed by an equity mechanism with the feeder schools being third. our second recommendation is that -- within the policy or just the practices, the mechanisms, that there's a clear method for evaluating and changing feeder patterns that aren't resulting in the desired outcomes, whether that means that there's more racial

isolation or a concentration of underserved kids in the same schools, that we don't understand what the mechanism would be for changing those especially because full implementation would be some years out. we would hope that if things aren't going right in the interim, that there would be a mechanism to change it. and thirdly -- this is difficult, i think -- is to commit to providing transportation for students who are assigned by feeder patterns to schools that are far away from their home or difficult to get to on public transportation. what's difficult is the cost in this time of drastic cutbacks but last night there was a kind of rubric presented by staff that looked like evaluating how long it would take or transfers or how many miles away the feeders were and that there were some schools that were really, really far away and that it would be really difficult and inequitable for students to have to cross town to get to schools,

for example, from bayview to geninny. so to conclude, because we've talked about this a lot, whatever you decide tonight, the p.a.c. is committed, i mean, really, sincerely committed, to engaging families in the process of strengthening schools across the city and as part of that we ask the district to share with the community a detailed implementation plan for whatever you decide tonight that identifies specific challenges in each school with specific action plans to address those challenges, that there's a timeline for implementing those actions and a way to evaluate them and we really look forward to seeing that plan so we can understand what we can do to help. that's our report before we move to the appointment part. commissioner mendoza: any questions or comments from the board? needless to say, ruth, we really do appreciate the work you and parents of public schools have put in to helping us identify

the challenges and successes we've had around student assignments so your work is really appreciated. and we do all hope that this will be coming to the tail end before we start going into evaluations. if there aren't further questions, we'll move to the -- to item -- excuse me -- i guess it's item l, the appointment of three members to the san francisco board of education parent advisory council so the recommendation is that the board of education of the san francisco unified school district appoint to the parent advisory council three regular members to serve from july 2011 to june 2013. the members recommended for appointment are scott falcon, miranda martin and gloria molt. a recommendation and a second? thank you. a reading by the -- beyond what

i've already read? o.k. so what i read will go into record. and then i don't have any public speakers at this time speaking on this matter. do you have -- on this item? no, that's not what we're talking about. and then any comments from the board or superintendent? no? commissioner fewer? commissioner fewer: thank you, president mendoza. as a parent who wrote the resolution to have the parent advisory council and created it, i'm thrilled we're getting new parents to be on it and i didn't envision it would be as successful and last as long and be funded for such a long time but as a parent advocate, thrilled whenever i see a friend

that steps up for this volunteer service so, scott, pleasure to see that you've joined this great group of parents under the great guidance of ruth and also just want to say, welcome to miranda and gloria, also, and hope to work closely with you. thank you. commissioner mendoza: thank you, commissioner fewer. we have a lot of people in the room and i know you're talking to the person next to you. but when all of you are talking to the person next to you, it really makes it difficult for us up here to hear the presentation and have a discussion. if you need to talk, you can step outside. otherwise, we'd appreciate it if you'd honor the meeting that's happening. so, if there are no other -- sorry. commissioner murase? commissioner murase: as a former chair of the parent advisory council, i want to welcome the proposed new members and to really, i look forward to working very closely with you on, in particular, the middle school feeder patterns and what comes next and getting families the information they need to make the right choices for their

families so looking forward to working with you and thank you for your work. commissioner mendoza: thank you. if there are no other comments. roll call, please? secretary: ms. fewer? ms. maufas? dr. murase, ms. norton? ms. wynns, mr. yee, ms. mendoza. seven aye's. commissioner mendoza: thank you, welcome to the p.a.c. i've always wanted to say that, "welcome to the p.a.c." our next item -- but it wasn't that p.a.c. our next item is public comment on consent items and i have one speaker card. ms. plak. >> good evening, ladies and gentlemen, i'm linda plak, executive vice president of the

united educateors san francisco. tonight i'm speaking to you on behalf of united educators. tonight you have a retainer for cbre, a real estate company. over the past couple of years, we have gotten to know cbre representatives very well. the backup for this item is that you have -- you tell us that this retainer is not all you're going to pay them and that you need to hire them because you no longer have a real estate department. presumably, you do not have a real estate department because of the cost involved in maintaining a full-time employee who has limited work to do for the district. why, then, hire a consultant who is going to cost you the lion's share of one salary that you would have paid for a real estate office? the folks at cbre are perfectly decent people, no doubt, good at what they do, but they did it wrong time and time again when the board told them they wanted

an rfp for educator housing. being teachers, we are certain that people can get it right. we could train them, we could retest them, but that's not really the problem. the real concern is the big expense and what you're going to get for it. if there are plans for real estate transactions in the coming year, perhaps it will be better if you can get a better deal on a consultant. thank you very much. commissioner mendoza: thank you. ms. plak. our next item is item g. before going to the next item, though, i've been reminded that our speaker cards, that we're actually not observing the state board policy 11.2 on the request to speak. so if you are wanting to speak and i'm only going to let people tonight in particular because we have such a large group, who want to speak on any of the items, they have to submit

cards on that particular item. i just want to give you a heads up now as we continue with the agenda. thank you. item g is the consent calendar. i need a motion and second on consent calendar. [so moved] commissioner mendoza: thank you. any items withdrawn or corrected by the superintendent? thank you any items removed for first reading by the board? any items severed by the board or superintendent tonight? commissioner? >> k-11, page 94. commissioner mendoza: any others? so this roll call vote, thank you, this roll call vote will take place under section l. item h is superintendent's proposal held for speaker cards

in action so this is item no. 24 sp 1, revisions to board policy p5101 student assignment and it was moved and seconded on may 24. i need a report from the student ad hoc committee, commissioner wynns. commissioner wynns: thank you. the ad hoc committee on student assignments met yesterday evening. present were the three members of the committee, plus commissioner fewer and commissioner norton. and there were three items on the agenda but i'm only going to talk about this one and we'll do the rest later. so the middle school, k-8 feeder patterns is the item at issue now. i would like to ask whether the materials given to the committee last night have been made available already to the whole board, is that true? so, hopefully you all in

particular have seen that there were, after the last meeting that we had, which was only two weeks ago, of the ad hoc committee, where the whole board, i think, was present, there were some questions asked, including about the working of the c-tip preference this year, even though it's only preliminary information, because no one has yet actually showed up for school. it's only offers that have been made and now accepted. that still doesn't mean they're going to be there. so in particular i commend to you this chart in the materials which shows the using and this is the most important thing, is that the only data available for analysis is the current year's data. so, in other words, we're using data to try to analyze the effectiveness of the c-tip process, which is to analyze how, whether those students

would have gotten into schools that they chose using the feeder preference or the c-tip preference as the -- in what order, we would use those two tiebreakers and of course they weren't actually choosing schools that were the feeder preference as in existence. so this is very limited data. i think the key and most interesting point was that if you see in the two simulations that show the feeder preference, the feeder tiebreaker first and the feeder tiebreaker second with c-tip, the results are exactly the same. now, the more i thought about this today, the more it seems to me is that what that tells us is that this isn't going to tell us anything because people were not actually making choices based on what might be the feeders. so that makes it difficult, i have to say. this was -- but, from my point

of view, and i want to thank the p.p.s., ruth and others who were there last night and this evening for their careful ongoing, not only the outreach that they coordinated with the p.a.c. and for us, but also to keep at this throughout this whole process. i mean the whole time, but i particularly mean these last several weeks where we're trying to struggle with this and we've had a number of meetings and people are putting different ideas forward and the fact that these people who have been working to coordinate outreach with the community and give us information have kept on coming to the meetings, participating in debate with us and making suggestions, i think, has made this a much better process. so since this was an informational item only, there was no action taken by the committee and therefore no recommendation and i think that's adequate report on what happened last night. commissioner mendoza: thank you. a need a reading of the resolution by ms. o'keefe.

>> go ahead and read it and i'll make my comments. >> can i ask, are you going to do after you read the resolution some shortened form of the presentation? what i didn't do was to report on the changes that were made from when this proposal was made before to now, so you're going to do that? >> if we do that, it would be very brief. >> good evening, commissioners, o'keefe, special assistant to the superintendent. subject 115-24 sp 1, revisions to board policy p5101 student assignment. requested action, that the board of education of the san francisco unified school district adopt the revisions outlined in the attached student assignment for policy p5101 as

amended herein not withstanding any provisions in p5101 to the contrary, the revisions to p5101 shall be effective immediately. would you like me to read the background in also or the requested action? commissioner mendoza: i don't think we need to do the whole thing. thank you. no. superintendent garcia? superintendent garcia: first, i do really want to thank the p.a.c. and p.p.s. for being such great partners. this has been an extremely long journey for all of us to take but we're glad you took it with us. we may have a few items where we disagree but i think the discussion over the last two years has been a really rich and rewarding discussion that has educated all of us, i think, staff, parents, the community, we've learned a lot through this process and i think just from the very beginning when we started this long journey on student assignment, we kind of knew that whatever system we

did, the system itself is not what's going to create a quality middle schools. the student assignment system needs to be aligned to support that ultimate goal, but in itself would not do that, so that's something we're going to need to do. our proposal for the k-8 feeder addresses the board student assignment policy goals. it will help us strategically and efficiently use limited resources to create quality middle schools and it provides families with a degree of predictability regarding where their children will attend. i think it also helps build community and build neighborhoods and where people know and get to know each other and work together to go together to a different school. between 2012 and 2016, we're proposing a choice process with siblings as the first tiebreaker, then feeder school and then c-tip 1. the choice process will change

in 2017. students will receive an offer to their feeder middle school before the choice process even begins. we're not asking the board to make a choice between equity and feeders. we believe that placing the middle school feeder tiebreaker above c-tip 1 supports the board's goals and will help change enrollment patterns through a choice process. c-tip 1 will continue as a strong preference in assignment and staff will monitor how it works and will bring information back to the board on an ongoing basis. additionally, i've asked deputy superintendent richard garansa to make a few comments. >> thank you, superintendent garcia, and thank you, president mendoza. as the superintendent has mentioned in his remarks, the k-8 feeder pattern and k-8 feeders will support building quality middle schools. our team is very, very excited to continue the development of the strategic plan to improve all of our middle schools.

if we have k-8 feeders, we can begin to engage the larger k-8 school communities, including gathering input to support student learning and building stronger communities. to our freands in p.a.c. and p.p.s., this is the process we could not have undertaken without you and while we may disagree on some aspects of the recommendation, i think we are absolutely unified in our desire to see quality middle schools and i will say to you that you will not only see the detailed plan for what quality middle schools will look like, you will be part of the plan development. so we're very excited about embarking on this next stage of the strategic development of what those plans will look like for our middle school communities. commissioner mendoza: thank you. so, i have three speakers speaking on this item. pardon me?

shhhhh. two of whom i actually don't know if they're speaking on the middle school feeder piece but it says student assignment. so patricia mcfadden, eileen kenn and monica el amin. if you're speaking on the middle school feeder plan, come on up. you have two minutes. thank you. >> my name is patricia mcfadden, a parent of mckinley elementary. i don't know if you're actually considering changing the feeder map but that's what my main comment is on. and i support the feeder program. i like the ideas behind it, i just don't think the design is very good. i understand you had to meet many requirements and demands and you worked very hard for that and i know p.p.s. and p.a.c. assisted with that. i still was, as a parent, very

disappointed in the missed opportunities and the favoritism in the middle school feeder map. the feeder system, to me, is extremely biased toward the high test score schools and while you may spare the most vocal parents from coming here, you do a disservice to those who tend not to have a voice by doing that. i don't put a blind faith in test scores. it's just one of the measures of a school, but it is one way of measuring some of the intangibles like parent involvement, a stable classroom environment and one of your metrics that you put weight in. one of the things the feeder map has done is it's chosen to group the high test score schools together even when there are clearly closer schools that would greatly benefit from having a better mixture of test scores at that school. i feel you missed a great opportunity to create a better balance where every middle school was fed by a balance of test score schools so that every middle school had a chance to

excel. ideally every middle valid two e schools above or below 800 so the rising tide lifts all boats. in the very least, i don't think any school should have more than three schools over 875 but that's what's done from prisidio and geninny, i guess, minimally, because it impacts my child, i would ask that you look at taking graduaten and clarnden and moving them to everett and lick to create a better mix and allowing those other schools to benefit from being with presidio so i ask that you consider revising the map on that basis. commissioner mendoza: thank you. so if there's no other speakers on this item, comments from the -- did you have a speaker card, ma'am? >> yes, i'm monica el amin.

i'm coming up here to let you than there's probably a mistake at that card because i was trying to address a student assignment, school assignment issue. can i address that right now? commissioner mendoza: is this a personal student assignment issue or speaking to -- >> yes, it's a personal issue. commissioner mendoza: so it's not speaking to what we're go b to vote on? >> no, it's a personal issue. commissioner mendoza: i need you to speak on regular public comment. thanks for letting me know. i appreciate that. eileen, are you here? o.k., so you guys are both on the -- thank you. comments from the board? commissioner murase? commissioner murase: i thank p.p.s. and p.a.c. for working on this issue and the staff for the many hours that were put into this and i received exhaustil mail on this issue from both

sides of the issue. i want to ask someone to explain c-tip. i'm familiar with it but for those listening, we throw around that acronym a lot and it's important for families to understand what c-tip is. >> thank you, commissioner. so c-tip is actually an acronym that stands for census track integration preference and what it is, there are geographic areas of the city that have the lowest average test scores and they were determined by looking at multiple years of english language arts,c.s.t., california standardized tests, throughout the entire city and the city was then, because it's an average, you come up with averages so the city using those averages, there's five -- they're quintiles. the ranges were divided into quintiles and the lowest quintile is the area of the city

with the lowest average test scores and we call that ctip. in our literature, we moved away from the ctip because as you mentioned it's hard to understand. what it is is basically the areas of the city with the lowest average test scores historically and we hope that will change. commissioner mendoza: thank you. commissioner norton? commissioner norton: so, i have very mixed feelings in general about the feeder pattern. i am going to support the superintendent's recommendation tonight, but i also really feel that it is essential that we lay out a plan for what we are going to do for all our middle schools that are not offering equality in program because we know as we've been looking at this over the last few months and we've known for a t