after-school programs. so i'll start with community conversations about restorative practices. our goal in leading these community conversations is to support the district schools of reducing students speppingses and improving school climate and climates by helping families to help shape and strengthen how restorative practices are implemented at school sites. while a number of schools are using restorative practices and others are embracing the approach, we know most families haven't heard about it. so we're really looking to bring information to families and then hear what their questions, their concerns, their suggestions are for how to strengthen how restorative practices are actually implemented in schools. to prepare for leading the conversation, several p.a.c. members and staff, myself, attended one of the all-day introductory training on restorative practices that our district coordinators for restorative practices leads.

another p.a.c. member went back to the second day. actually, she went with the principal of her kid's elementary stare school. two people went to the week-long training back in pennsylvania. so it's been really exciting to actually get a lot of skills and deeper understanding about what this is as we go out to lead conversations in the community about it. we're definitely on track to exceed our original goal, which was to have 10 to 15 conversations and hear from about 250 family and community members, largely because schools are being so incredibly receptive and enthusiastic about it, which has been great. we conducted our first full conversation last night at groton, which was parts of culminating their school-wide day of friendship and kindness yesterday. it was a big group of parents. it was really a great experience and they were very forgiving, given it was our first one. we're going to have to kind of

revise our discussion, because actually people had a lot to say and it took longer than we thought, so we had to cut some activities out but we're trying to make it interactive and actually practice some restorative approaches, practice some of the strangs while we have the conversation, which is a new way for us to have these kind of conversations. so we have six more events on the calendar and five more schools working out when they want to do it. another eight schools who are thinking about whether they can find a time to do it and in an unprecedented situation, four middle schools, the l.s.p.'s at four middle schools heard this was happening and contacted me through the district student support department saying we want to do it. that's never happened. it was exciting. so we're just trying to make this all fit with people's clends, which is a great

challenge. we're also talking with staff at peer resources and judson from the student advisory council to explore ways to include students voices in the conversations, and we're working with some community grouns that are convening groups outside of a school setting to come at it from a lot of different angles. i guess i want to reiterate how exciting it is to be working on this. another new thing we're doing at the suggestion of the district staff is part of our discussion. we leave time at the end to talk, not for us to talk, but to give time and some structure to folks at the conversation to find out what third next step should be, so it gives them a little support for them to have that conversation and figure out what they want to do at their school. so that's always a great process of inventing this stuff and then living it out.

but we look forward to bringing you, by the end of the school year, our findings from these conversations and some recommendations. as always, we like to invite board commissioners to attend these, because i think it means a lot to the parents to see board members there. and i think you get an extra dose of the flavor, beyond what we just present here to you when you hear it in person. so i'll send you a memo that have the dates and the times of those, and it would be great to know how often you want that kind of update, or i'll just do it every couple of weeks as we get new things on our calendar to let you know. and you can always contact me to find out, or confirm them. so that's about restorative practices. the other topic i want to briefly give you an update on is about after-school programs. the last week two representatives of the p.a.c. participated in a three-day planning meeting with staff from the sfusd and from dcyf, the city's department of youth

and children families, to develop plans to start working on plans for outlining the different after-school programs that the district manages, which are the excelling and the early education program for school-age youth. and the goals for aligning these programs are to increase the district's capacity to serve more students in the out-of-school time programs, to improve and support program quality and systems for accountability and to support program sustainability by maximizing the funding that's available from both public and private sources. so we're really excited that a small cohort of elementary schools are going to move forward to align their programs starting next year, and we're expecting that that's going to go broader than the school year following that. the p.a.c. has been involved in discussions about this general idea for years, and after hearing from many families, hundreds of families and conducting a survey of over 1,000 families who really -- we realize we really needed to

expands the capacity to serve kids after school, and we really appreciate being included in the process and literally being at the table. three days was a lot, but we got a lot of work done. the members of the team are going to meet as a whole group a few more times over the next six weeks to just start really making sure we're on track with implementation timeline and more information about that is all going to be provided to you. i don't want to speak out of turn or give any misinformation, so i'm just going to leave it as a process report. but there are a lot of action steps that we are working on and for just for an example, one of them is to have the after-school program application form, that whole process to be simplified and streamlined and to include the after-school program application in the placement letters that go out to new families in march, so that you can enroll in a school and

enroll and apply for after school at the same time, which is something that we think is a great idea. the very last thing is that the p.a.c. has opened a process for the year which is a long program, and they're available in english and chinese and spanish on our website which is pacsf.org. >> thank you, ruth. commissioner fewer and then commissioner wynns. commissioner fewer: thank you, right, for coming in and speaking and giving us your report and filling in for the p.a.c. parents tonight. i wanted to ask you, what is the time frame of when you're doing these conversations around restorative practices? >> it's great to not have a firm deadline at the end, because there's not a decision that you are going to make

about it. so we're pretty much going to do the conversation starting yesterday as far into april as school can do it. but we know after spring break is over, it's a lot harder for schools to calendar that. so it's pretty much now till mid april probably. commissioner wynns: did you hear any feedback from the parents that participated in the training? >> feedback about restorative practices? commissioner wynns: yes. >> sure, because that's what it was all about. the p.a.c. in general, our policy is not to give partial findings, and we only had the one conversation. but it was great and pretty rich. people at groton -- there are three demonstration schools in the district. groton is not one of the formal demonstration schools, but a number of the staff have really embraced it, so they've been doing it. but again, most of the parents didn't know that it was happening at their school. commissioner wynns: you mentioned that some of the p.a.c. members went to the district training, and did you

hear from the p. cramplet members about that district -- p.a.c. members about the district training? >> yes, there were about four of us, i think. we thought it was great. we're really excited about it. we know parents are going to have perspectives that are going to both be critical in a friendly way, in a way of wanting things to work better. but we're coming at it from this makes a lot of sense. i will say that as parents hear about what the strategies are for working with students and with adults in schools, everyone says, wow, i want to figure out how to use this with my family, with my kids in my home. one of the questions that's already come up is, how can we get training? how can parents get training on how to do this? commissioner wynns: that's great. that's exactly something that maybe kevin truitt might relate to our office of family engagement. that's great. thank you.

>> i actually wanted to explore the restorative practices work with you for a minute, too, although this is sort of a companion piece. so i went on saturday at the summit to one of the restorative practices workshops and was there to see everybody coming out of the first one, and then went into the second one. so i talked to a lot of people about this. i think that they were all or almost all administrators that were in the workshop. and they were all or almost all from schools that are not demonstration schools, and that seemed to me had not had training yet. so there was a huge amount of interest, and everybody was very enthusiastic and really happy to hear the small amount that they were able to learn in the short time. but it seemed to me that -- i'd just like, as this goes along, i'd be very interested to come to these conversations. i appreciate you giving us the schedule, so i can try to be available for some of that. but it made me realize that we need to pay attention to the

fact that we sort of have a role or a certain kind of interest from staff, people of a different kind of parents, and trying to integrate that and make it work together and tell the parents what we're telling -- you know, what we're doing for the administrators and the teachers and vice versa will will help us to have the same information for everybody. and peep have lots of -- people have lots of presume ugses about this. so i want us to pay attention to we can think about how to integrate some of that and make sure that they're talking to each other, not just the parents talking to parents and the site people talking to the site people. that made me think that that's -- we need to make sure that happens. it's a kind of policy-related issue. so thank you. president yee: commissioner

maufas. commissioner maufas: thank you, president yee. any types of steps where we're moving around community around i'm very glad to hear about these scheduled dates and i look forward to attending any number of those meetings that i can make certain i have on my calendar. thank you. i think commissioner fewer's comment about the -- i'm sorry -- getting other folks involved in the trainings, we have incorporated a train the trainer model so although you have sent folks back to pennsylvania, which, of course, i think is fabulous, because i went there and i believe that they are the appropriate partner for us because. of the way they do the work and i'm sure from the examples that the parents that went back there

experienced and saw, but also, my assumption is that they are now part of our sort of training cohort, because they saw it firsthand and were using that model there to inform our own people but also we've tweaked it a little bit and as i understand it from speaking with claudia anderson at pupil services, we've tweaked it a bit for san francisco which completely makes sense. we'll not be able to replicate an identical program from restorative practices elsewhere, we need things that are specialized for us and i like that we understood that and are doing that and i'm hoping the folks that are going there with loop back in with pupil services to understand what we've done a bit differently here in san francisco because that makes sense to me but also be a part of this parent body that has, again, experienced it firsthand and really it's just, once -- it satisfies so many inquiries that

you have, and you can help inform others because it's not fourth-hand information. they went there and they're talking to families so i'm hoping they come back and explain to the rest of the p.a.c. what that process looks like in their experiences back east. commissioner wynns brings up a good point about the parent perspective and what we're doing with teaching staff and what we're doing with administration and even here at central office. i would beg our vice president, i'm looking at her for maybe a committee of the whole on our restorative justice initiative and the implementation practices we are incorporating in sfusd because it is a district-wide process,, it just seems to me that we, as a board, need to be update on the various components and various layers and levels and how we're moving forward, and i do periodically have conversations with pupil services to also hear about the -- our statistics and what are the outcomes and are we

starting to see outcomes and we are in many different areas, in truancy and the reduction of suspensions and expulsions and more conferencing which also means that schools are really trying to implement and do things differently which is based on relationships and we're doing a lot of relationship building so i'm hoping we can bring this conversation, because it's so timely, to the board, and maybe a committee of the whole seems appropriate. >> we're in the process of talking about what topics should we look at for the rest of the year so certainly that would go on the list, thanks for the suggestion. >> can i just say, i have to give a shout out to our student support services department because the two people who went back to pennsylvania, then they were also in the one-day training and one of them went to the second day of the training here. she's just super enthusiastic about this, which is great. and they said it was great to be in pennsylvania, to be really focused on that, but they thought our training was better.

>> because we've incorporated what they started and how san francisco does it even better, taking it a step forward. so i'm happy to hear that. >> i was there, an anxious administrator track you down to try to have the community conversation at her school so it's all very exciting and i want to thank you and p.a.c. for doing this important work and it's important because board members last year received a very significant report from claudia anderson and her team about the significant decreases in expulsions and suspensions so it's making a difference and i look forward to sharing that report widely because i think it's really an important analysis at a committee of the whole meeting. president yee: commissioner fewer? commissioner fewer: i wanted to

mention that, if we couldn't fit into the community as a whole schedule, since we're only scheduling one a month now, i'm happy to put it on the curriculum committee agenda if you would like. and i'm so glad that it's actually working out because i feel that i think that there's some commissioners also that had a lot of questions about it when we first introduced it and i think people were apprehensive and hesitant to approve it and to fund it and so i'm so glad to hear things are working good. thanks, ruth. president yee: i want to also mention or at least thank p.a.c. because, as you know, there's going to be pre-k to three summit coming up february 25, and some of the things we're talking about here in regards to having the perspective of not only parents, but the community,

and educators, sitting in one room to have a discussion around all these issues, i just want to -- how does this tie in? because as you know, nancy, your chair person, will be one of our panelists at this conference and that's going to happen at everett middle school from 8:30 to 12:30. and it makes some sense here, also, because i'm thinking as people were talking about restorative justice, that in many ways, if you look at a quality preschool setting, that's what they do. they really do use that approach. so maybe there's something that could be learned from the bottom up rather than the top down. thank you very much, ruth. yee next item is item f, public comment on consent items. i don't have any speakers that

so the consent calendar is item g, and is there a motion? >> so moved. >> i second. president yee: any items grown or corrected by the superintendent? any items removed for first reading by the board? any items severed by the board or superintendent for a discussion and vote tonight? seeing none, roll call vote will take place under section o. item h, superintendent's proposal, health speaker cards and actions. this was moved and seconded january 2 and this is item 121-224sp1, authorization to grant or in the alternative deny the renewal petition for leadership high school. is there a report from the budget committee of the whole meetings?

>> yes, president yee. we had this on our agenda, an action item at our last budget meeting and due to the i guess lack of information, we were not able to actually have a recommendation. but we heard -- we heard it at, i think, the information, at the committee meeting of the whole. >> that's correct. we heard the budget information and also the curriculum information at the committee of the whole and the board, through general consensus, agreed to move this back to the full board with a positive recommendation on both counts. president yee: ok, so there's going to be a reading of the resolution by superintendent or designee, michael davis. >> yay! good evening, president yee, commissioners, superintendent

garcia. my name is mike davis, i'm the director of the office of equity and charter schools and i'm here to read the superintendent's proposal. superintendent's recommendation regarding leadership high school, 121-24-sp1, authorization to grant the renewal petition for leadership high school. whereas, san francisco unified school district is the charter authorizer for leadership high school, the charter school which is set to expire june 30, 2012, and whereas, pursuant to the california education code section 47607, the charter school submitted a renewal petition for the renewal of the charter school's petition to the san francisco unified school district, on december 21, 2011, and whereas the district shallcome ply with all time lines for review and action on the renewal petition as required by law and whereas the board of education shall consider the level of public support for the charter school and shall review

the renewal petition and all information received with respect to the renewal petition including supporting documentation and whereas in reviewing the renewal petition, the board of education shall be guided by the intent of the california legislature that charter schools are and should become an integral part of the california educational system and that the establishment of charter schools should be encouraged and whereas the district superintendent and district staff completed a review of the renewal petig and issued a report and recommendation to the board of education regarding the renewal -- review of the renewal petition, therefore be it resolved that the board of education shall grant the renewal petition subject to the requirements set forth by law. president yee: thank you, mr. davis. there's going to be some public speakers that have submitted cards to speak tonight on this issue. i will call your name and you will have two minutes each.

kathleen large, just come up to the podium and macy acosta, renee morgan, michael evans, cilia macktodal, rosie paris. >> good evening, commissioners. my name is kathleen marge. in 2002, i stood in this same place to speak in favor of leadership's charter renewal. it is with respect and appreciation for the work of this board and all the educators in the school district that i stand here again. leadership was a good school in 2002. now, 10 years later, thanks to the support of this board and our district, leadership is an excellent school. it is with a deep love for leadership and for san francisco kids that i have returned to

teach at leadership after taking six years off to stay at home with my daughter. my 10th grade english students are reading james baldwin's essay, "a talk to teachers," which they find quite relevant today. baldwin writes, "to any citizen of this country who figures himself as responsible and particularly those of you who deal with the hearts and minds of young people, must be prepared to go for broke." all of us in this room are here because we want to nurture the hearts and minds of young people, because we are prepared to give our all so that our students can create for themselves a future that may look very different from their past or present reality. what i see as leadership's greatest success is the ability of this school to make good on our promise to students that schooling can, indeed, enable them to transform their lives and, in turn, the lives of their families, communities and our world. this is not just a lofty promise.

we do it student by student, day by day. we do it by design. we do it when each student has the same adviser for all four years and goes on to become the first in their family to graduate from high school and the first in their family to attend college. we do it when we make the curriculum both rigorous and relevant to our students. leadership high school continues to graduate many leaders that offer the -- excuse me -- to graduate leaders and to offer each and every one of our kids the opportunity to not just dream big, but to attain those dreams. thank you so very much. [applause] president yee: thank you, ms. large. >> sorry, i'm kinda short. happy valentine's day, commissioners. i'm mornay morgan, a senior at leadership high school. over the years, i've been an active student and i can

honestly say that leadership high school is the epitome of what a charter school should be. leadership high school not only teaches students requirements but it also teaches students what it truly means to be a well round student and young scholar. leadership high school is the type of school where it's more like a home. it comforts students and gives them different ways to -- gives them different ways to learn different things. it also teaches students how to be a student inside the classroom and how to teach others outside in the community. leadership high school also builds character and i can tell over the four years it's built me into a person that i never was and if i had went to a public school, i probably wouldn't be. from my experience, leadership high school has motivated me to be a wonderful student. i can remember one time in my 10th grade year, where i was

stressed out. i i didn't really know what to do in my situation. i had a lot going on and one of my teachers told me this quote and it stuck with me ever since. "wanting something is not enough. you want hunger for it and your motivation must be absolutely compelling in order to overcome the obstacles that will be in your way." and it stuck with me ever since and it's going to stick with me until graduation. leadership is the type of school that not only teaches you stuff, it teaches you morals so you can be a better person and i know that once i graduate from leadership high school, i will be a better person. and i hope this charter will be renewed so that way students that are not in my year, in younger years, can have these type of teachers so they can be to the best of their ability, so that they could be better people in the world. that's it. [applause] president yee: thank you.

>> good evening, commissioners. my name is michael evans. i'm an 11th grade student at leadership high school. i play baseball for the school. i live in valero, california, and i like long walks on the beach. when i started freshman year at leadership, i didn't always like it because it was like a stereotypical high school -- no huge football team, no jocks, nerds, all that stuff. there's no huge campus and in my opinion, there's not enough girls but that's not that important so i transferred after freshman year, actually. and i transferred to lincoln high school where i was there from the beginning of sophomore year to the -- just to the end of the first semester and after the first semester during winter break, i got a call, because i live in valirro, california, i signed under a permit that says i can go to school in san francisco and only one day

before winter break, i got a call saying i can't go to lincoln anymore so i was really upset and for the most part, i was genuinely upset because i feel like if a student makes an effort to wake up every morning, do the homework and pass classes, they should be allowed to go to whatever school they want to so i had one day to choose where i wanted to go so i chose to come back to leadership. i chose to economic back to a school that doesn't have a football team or homecoming king or queen or its own building, actually. but i felt confident that this was the school that would help me support me with all of my needs and provide me with the education i need to go to college and isn't that the mission of high school anyway, to get students to college? yes. and transferring back to leadership ended up