he has an inherent president mendoza: good evening ever won. it is tuesday, december the 13th trick if i could please have roll-call at. commissioner fewer: here. commissioner norton: here.

president mendoza: here. commissioner maufas: here. president mendoza: if you could please join us for the applause of allegiance. flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under god, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. president mendoza: item a is the approval of the board minutes for june 14, june 28, august 9, and november 11. he i need a motion please. and a second. if any corrections? seeing none, roll call. commissioner fewer: yes. commissioner maufas: yes.

commissioner norton: yes. vice president yee: aye. president mendoza: aye. president mendoza: item b is a presentation to the board by the superintendent for it collapse earlier this month, i had the privilege of attending the school board association meeting in san diego. our very own commissioner wynns was inducted as the president of the school board association for 2012. congratulations. that is exciting. [applause] is your mom here? >> and not yet. >> her 97-year-old mother is going to be here. so be on your best behavior. [laughter] i also want to remind everybody

that the school district works year-round to maintain communities across the district that embrace and support students of diverse abilities. it is a good time to pause and celebrate. last year, we did an inclusive school week. the assistant superintendent share the carter as we made it. as many of you know, she will be leaving us soon. i would like to thank her. cecilia, are you here? she will come down eventually. i want to thank her for all of the hard work. she did a lot of heavy lifting. kudos go out to her. also kudos go out to lola elementary school. their principal just returned from washington d.c. where he expected the 2011 national blue

ribbon schools award. only a few schools in the nation were selected and it says a lot about our school district when one of our very own is in that group. congratulations go out to them. [applause] it is a good way to end the year. the new san francisco unified school leadership -- i want to let you know that not only is cecilia special ed leaving, we are bringing someone else on board. there is cecilia. [applause] we also have our general counsel who left. when the new year starts, we will shape up a little bit differently. there will be new people on there. we were lucky to identify some top notch individuals and they're going to join the sfusd

family. it will be great to have them on board. as most of you know, today the governor pulled the trigger. as bad as things were in our budget, they are getting worse. there is somewhat of a silver lining. it could have been even worse than that. they were projecting $45 million worth of additional cuts for our school district. as it is, we are going to have to cut somewhere in the neighborhood of $50 million over the next two years. the good news is it will only be a meager $5 million more, which sounds horrible, but it is better than $45 million or $50 million more. we are born to have to look at that and plan ahead. the hit could have been worse, but it is still going to be a tough one, especially when $3.6 million of that money they are cutting out of our transportation budget. that is really going to have heard -- that is really going to

hurt. it is difficult to shift things mid year, but we are going to have to others or of the cuts for the following two years. on the good side, tonight, and this is something that does not get a lot of splash in the news, but we are asking the board to authorize the submission of our positive fiscal certification to the state. last year, 110 school districts in california submitted either a qualified or-certification on the first interim report. in this time and era, for us to be positive, that is quite an achievement in california. i want to thank the board and community and all of our labor partners, because we had to make some deep cuts and had fopu -- had four furlough days this

year. we are not out of the woods yet. we are going to start the negotiating process because we are going to have to figure out, together as a community, how are we going to absorber more cuts? they are here and they are real. we have been pretty thrifty and how we spend our money. as a result, we are better off than a lot of places. on an upbeat note, i have to remind everybody that on friday, we are halfway through the school year. that is quite an accomplishment. i want to thank all of the parents, the community, teachers, administrators, support staff, for working so hard to get us there in spite of the tough economic times. we want to wish everybody a happy holiday season. enjoy the winter break from december 19-january 2 and do not

forget that on tuesday, january 3, we all come back and do it again and finish the next half of your. everybody has done a great job. i want to wish everyone a happy holiday season. thank you. [applause] president mendoza: a lot of transitions. this will be my last full board meeting as the president of the board. i want to thank everybody for such a great year. commissioner winds. -- wynns. commissioner wynns: i chaired the education coalition today. all of the coalition's were meeting today on the day that the trigger cuts were announced. the coalition agreed that our position will be twofold.

one, you will hear it in the press, i heard it driving back from sacramento, that this is good for us. we dodged a bullet. we are only getting $350 million in cuts. this is $330 million actually, for k-12. that is not the position of the coalition. the position is that no more cuts are sustainable. these cuts disproportionately affect school districts that have school transportation funding, including us. it is quite interesting that the coalition has unanimously decided to advocate for a position -- and the governor, in his press advisory today, said that he understood that this was not a cut to transportation. it is a cut to general funds, because school districts cannot

stop transporting kids. they have to take that money out of other funding. if you look at it that way, which is what the coalition discussed today, it is an unfair and disproportionate cut, particularly to districts with poor students who disproportionately rely on school transportation. therefore, the coalition position is that the whole $330 million in cuts ought to be distributed in some form of ada basis. that is about $55 per kid. if that happened, instead of a $5 million cut, it would be more like a $3 million cut. there will be organizing about that. hopefully that will be unified message. we went from a coalition meeting across the street to the capital. we spoke to a lot of reporters,

not just me, but people from all of the organizations, including carol kosovar. this is the first time ever that the california school district association and the california pta come from the same school district. we were there and made the point that san francisco was well- represented in the capital today. i do not want anybody listening or anybody in our school district to think that we are not advocating. this is a good deal for us. this is an unacceptable deal for k-12 schools. we will be working hard and mobilizing the community. now, since my guests are in the room, if i may have a point of personal privilege, i want to introduce my son, evan, who is here as a chauffeur for his grandmother. my mother came to visit us.

happily, she was here during the conference. [applause] in the 19 years i've served on the school board, this is the first time she has been at a meeting here it she lives in north carolina, but she has not happened to be here when we have a regular meeting, which is why i asked her to come. thank you all for your warm reception. president mendoza: welcome to our board meeting and welcome to california and happy holidays. we have the recognitions and resolutions of commendation. there are none too night. item d is the student delegates report. >> as we submit our college applications and study for finals, we are working on the policy draft and will be submitting that for review this thursday, december 15.

the sac is doing outreach for applicants for candidates for the next years 2012-2013 student delegates. you can find application on the www got -- www. ysf.org/youthvote. or you can submit it to the youth vote coordinator at fox plaza, suite 900. we will also be following up with the mid-your retreat with the u.s. commission on january 21-22nd. we'll be doing workshops with the youth commission. it will be held at the presidio sports basement community room.

>> in addition, we would like to bring to light the bank of america student leaders program, which is available for current 11th and 12th grade students. in this program helps students gain a greater understanding of how a non-profits impact the community and develop the next generation of community leaders. the first component is an eight- week summer internships with select organizations in san francisco. the second is a week-long, all expenses paid student leadership summit to washington d.c. from july 15-july 20, 2012. if you would like to apply, applications are due january 25, 2012. the application can be found at bankofamerica.com/neistudentlead

ers. after the winter break, we will be working on a couple more projects, including working with the bicycle coalition of on a presentation for the safe routes to school due in february. and we will be getting to plan our youth summit. president mendoza: thank you both. i hope your doing well on your finals. we have some pac representatives in the audience. if you would like to join us. i would like to move for the special order of business, an appointment of one member to the board, if it is okay with my colleagues to do that. if we could do this at the same time, i would be grateful. welcome.

>> good evening. i have a second grader at marshall elementary, a junior at mboa, and a 20-year-old who is taking a break from cali -- taking a break from college. >> good evening. i have two sons at merrill elementary. >> we want to address questions we have regarding this initiative. president mendoza: could you bring the mike closer to you? i cannot hear you very well. >> ok. we want to address a couple of questions -- president mendoza: can you also turn off your other mike? you can only have one mike on at a time. >> ok. we want to address some questions we have regarding the strategic initiatives.

parents were planning to attend the meeting last week because we have some concerns. unfortunately, it has been rescheduled for january 17 to rid the reason we are interested in hearing this report is we feel we need that information to shake the kind of work and we plan for to address the community in the future. we want to focus our efforts on issues that are strategic for the district. we have had to put some projects on hold because we are waiting for information that will be presented next month. scott is going to go into more details about the questions that we have regarding this. >> as betty mentioned, we are trying to be strategic about our resources and energy we could force towards supporting the district as it is undertaking these strategic initiatives. the district in use it the same

way. it is trying to be strategic. the deputy commissioner met with us twice already in this half of the school year and. he mentioned the district intention to focus financial resources, prioritizing them in ways that will support the undertaking of a meeting the goals within these strategic initiatives. the main question is, how can we, the pac, and the district, deploy these resources strategically without information about what is working or not? in the last public report about the strategic initiatives was in march. the information that we hope to get in january would be answers to the questions such as what are the goals and how close are we to achieving that? what has happened since march of 2011?