kindergarten and who would benefit from starting kindergarten this year. some of the some of those children have gone into kindergarten and they have done great. there are definitely children who can go in at 4 and do great. i have many examples of those. one of those is my own daughter, doing fantastically well in first grade right now and for my son, going in on a waiver, i believe he would do well in kindergarten. it is entirely in line with the legislation to have a waiver program. i got an email stating this and how important it was to the senator to leave that option per parents to skip transitional kindergarten if the child is ready and the district believes it's in the best interests of the child. i've been doing a lot of research on this. all the early education experts i've read on this have agreed that for a lot of children it's beneficial to have that extra

year, it is in the best interest of some children to start at 4 so i am asking the board and sfusd to please, more transitional kindergarten locations and consider case-by-case waivers, as well. thank you. i my name is chris binger, speaking on behalf of my daughter, wren, who turns 5 on november 26 next year. i have a first grader at lafayette distinguished school. this is his picture right here. the schools here are great. my daughter has gone to preschool for two years and is ready to go to kindergarten. she missed it by five days and unfortunately the schools that are offered right now are completely across town, will cause havoc for my wife and i who both work and it would be really great if you would accept

waivers. we have submitted a waiver that was not even acknowledged. no phone calls, no emails, nothing. and, you know, for a kid who could have gone to school last year if she was born a year earlier, to just deny that completely is really unfortunate and she is not able to stay where she is now. we haven't been able to get into any other preschool programs. it's just too late and there's really no choice for these parents except not to send their kids to school and i don't know how that's giving anybody a benefit. thank you. >> hi, my name is aurora rodriguez. i'm a parent of a fourth grader at clarndon elementary and i also thought my child would be enrolled in transitional kindergarten and i'm pretty upset with the way everything

has gone down, the announcement of the program and the repeal of the program. i've been talking to my daughter for several months about how she was getting ready to go to kindergarten and i was excited for her and she's excited. i want to talk about the kindergarten ready business act of 2010 with the allowance that these children were going to be taken care of. the kids from september 1 to december 2 are denied entrance into kindergarten and the people passed this law understanding these kids would be taken care of and they would be put into a program that would allow for them to be educated and at this point with the school district deciding they can only allow two spaces in visitation bell and bayview, i live on the sunset, all the way by the beach. i have to take a third grader and i have an eighth grader. i'm trying -- i googled how long it would take me in the morning. it said 26 minutes at 7:30. 26 minutes at 7:30 p.m. with no

traffic. imagine in the morning taking my eighth grader and then my daughter. it doesn't work for me. i'm asking the school district to provide more spaces for these children, spread them out throughout the city. the law calls that we make these places available to these children and that you have done but the truth is that they're not accessible. they need to be accessible for these kids, by the other families here. we need to have a chance to take our kids. i want my daughter in transitional kindergarten. i want to be able to take her in the morning and take my other children and feel comfortable leaving them. thank you for your time. please reconsider changing this. it needs your attention. it's their first step, their first experience in school. it should be positive. thank you.

>> hi, deputy superintendent, you might want to sing with me in a minute because i know you have a great voice. mrs. suzy siegal, kindergarten teacher from milk elementary school. ♪ come and play, everything's a-ok, on my way to where the air is clean, can you tell me how to get, how to get to sesame street ♪ sesame street is brought to you by the word data. let's make a rhyme since it is a standard on the kindergarten report card. data smatta. any skill teacher knows assessment is important to drive instruction and help a child progress to the next level but any entitled teach also knows there is so much to a 4, 5 and

6-year-old than solely taking test data and experts also know that at this age so many things happen developmentally, one can't box kids up by grade level. a child is a portfolio of knowledge assessed by the teacher in so many ways. you wouldn't compare an 18-month old baby to an 8-month-old and yet we are required to hold children to this comparison daily. data director which keeps track of a student's test scores and their teachers may tell you how many letters of the alphabet a student knows or if he can count to 100 but what's missing is how he mixes the color of paint, his smile when he figures out how to write his last name, finally feeling secure not enough to be scared in the lunch room, making a new friend, his delight when he tastes a lemonade he learned how to squeeze out of lemons, his excitement when he discovers three other kids in the class start with the same letter of

his name, his pride when he figures out how to balance a block structure, getting the last piece of the puzzle together, solving conflict, role playing in the doll house, growing pumpkin seeds. we talk about joyful learning but i can't help feeling that it translates into an oxymoron. how is learning to be joyful when we are asked to drive our curriculum sole solely by numbers and formal data. we are forgetting about so many important learning experiences that come with the early years of school including social competence. i am thinking about my student e who didn't get the blend "th" on her test but reads thanksgiving, thankful, thoughtful and then. i'm also thinking about my student who was pulled away for the second time to be assessed said, i am painting, i want to paint.

it seems we spend more time administering assessments than teaching more material. the tests are deplorable and developmentally inappropriate. you need to bring the early childhood experts to the table and find meaningful assessments and support children and teachers by giving appropriate resource to the classroom so teaching and learning can be carried out in a developmentally appropriate way. i'm sure that's how it would be on "sesame street." thank you. >> hello. i'm james brosnahan. i am a father at mira loma elementary and have the honor of

working at san francisco unified over of the last 15 years. what i have found out about physical education is this study recently out by shape-up. the reality, when you speak of the law, the law is being broken in over 80% of san francisco unified elementary schools. the law passed by the court of appeals of california states 200 minutes of quality p.e. be offered to these children. it is not happening. let me make very clear my point. here, and i took into consideration how far you would be sitting away. the brain scans show that children without quality physical education their brains are not activated properly in the morning. we can change this.

there are programs like brain dance, people at shape-up trying to make a difference here. we are talking about activated brains and nonactivated brains. san francisco unified is currently failing the children at offering them the quality physical education that they deserve. i would like you to take into consideration working with people at shape-up, taking brain dance into consideration and solving this problem. thank you very much. president yee:eileen ellis, are you still here? >> hi, i'm eileen ellis, a resident of san francisco since 1997. i'm a mother of two boys, 4 1/2

and 14 months. i'm a big proponent of public education, so much so, when i was exploring preschool options, i focused on public preschools. my older son is fortunate to attend the presidio child development center where i serve as the secretary on the c-p.a.c. i'm here to speak for myself and on behalf of six other parents at the school who have gone through the elementary school assignment process. last year and i have to say as a resident of san francisco, i've taken keen interest in how we offer public education in the city and i've made note of the assignment process for a very long time and last year when i saw the new tiebreaker system come into place and also see a circle of mom friends, about 10 of them, who got their assignments last year, almost all of them received their neighborhood school, i thought, wow, we're making progress, this tiebreaker system is really cool, it's going to work. so this year going through the

process, i thought, wow, you know, it seems like this is going to work but to give you some examples. i thought for sure we were going to get our assignment school and a friend of a friend who works in the assignment office and a friend who went through the process last year said put your first choice first and if you like your neighborhood school, put it second, so that's what i did and we fortunately got our first choice but i should not have gotten that. i have learned of two parents who lived in the assignment area who put that school first and did not get it. they should have gotten our spot. then, for example, going to the six other children i'm speaking on behalf of, student g lives in the sunset. put 10 schools on their application, did not get any of them, got assigned to cesar chavez. student t lives in alamo, is caucasian, would have added to the racial diversity of that school, got assigned to another school.

student a who lives in alamo put 10 schools on their application, got assigned to redding. student j who lives in a ctip neighborhood got none of the schools on their list, ended up going to the assignment office and complained and then got assigned to argon on the spot. this is just a sampling of students in my son's preschool. i have to imagine that in other children -- other friends i've spoken with, things are not right. i know there are factors and the school board leans on the computer system but something is not right with the process this year. president yee: thank you. i'm going to call names from daniel webster. again, there's more people --

there's a lot of people. and you have 15 minutes total as a group. use it any way you like. stacy -- so if somebody comes up and starts talking for five minutes, you only have 10 minutes for the rest of the group. >> we'll take one and go in our order if that's all right. president yee: sure. >> good evening, thank you, mr. president and board members. roberto aga, my daughter is in kindergarten at daniel webster elementary. i'm here to discuss daniel webster's middle school issue. i'm joined by parents, teachers and staff at daniel webster and we are speaking for all of our kids. we presented a plan to district staff november 2011. we've been meeting monthly with our area superintendent since then. facility utilization committee

is aware of the proposal and we would like to ensure that the board hears the proposal directly from us. we are small. president yee: i'm sorry. there's a lot of chattering right now. and the the acoustics in here makes it difficult to listen to the speaker so if you need to have a conversation, please go outside. go ahead. >> thank you. we are a small, culturally diverse school with many children under underserved communities. 75% of our kids participate in the free and reduced lunch program. 35% are english language learners. 50% of us are latino and 20% are african-american. we are also a fifth year program improving school with young spanish immersion program with growing interest in our general education program. >> i'm leah vetsle with a

kindergartener and second grader at daniel webster. some of you are familiar with the history of the school but wanted to provide a brief synopsis. in 2005, the school was slated for closure and the community rallied and got together, rolled up their sleeves, got together with the staff at the school, and made something happen that a lot of people said wouldn't happen and that is, they kept the school open, they established a spanish immersion program there, they established preschool on campus that has become the main feeder for daniel webster. the school is thriving. if you've been there, you know it's a really diverse campus, really diverse. and it's almost a success story except we got hit with this feeder plan last year which we wrote letters of opposition to and never heard back from the district on and we spent the

better part of the beginning of the school year developing a plan, an alternative proposal, and presented that to the district. we want to make it clear that we're coming to you for help because our success story has kind of headed south. fewer families are enrolling and we have families leaving the school. >> good afternoon. my name is maris ele, i have a son in second grade at daniel webster. we lost 16 students last year. many families that left were in spanish immersion program. our students lost best friends, our community lost vital to

fund-raising efforts. we lost our p.t.a. president. since immersion really place our school site, thank you. >> my name is colleen mcconnell and my son attends first grade at daniel webster in the spanish immersion program and we're excited to be part of this great community. our current feeder program is problematic for daniel webster. the demand for daniel webster has been on the rise since 2009. however, this is the feedback we're getting on tours. if i.s.a. is your feeder, we're crossing daniel webster off our list. while our total requests have remained about the same, our first choice requests went down a full 33% from 39 to 26 families. so our feeder, the international

studies academy, or i.s.a., has ranked last in first choice requests the last two years and demand has now dropped at this school to the point that while there are more than 40 middle school students, only six families in all of san francisco put i.s.a. as their first choice for high school. i want to stress that we would really appreciate your consideration in thinking about a better alternative for our new spanish immersion school that is really on the upswing. thank you. >> my name is alese adams. i'm the mother of eight children. i currently have three children go to daniel webster. one goes to i.s.a. and one goes to lincoln high school. my daughter is having a horrible time at i.s.a. so it's really important to me to ask for the extension of daniel webster to where my daughter will still be

stable, she will still be able to be with her sisters and brothers. we have a great staff there. we have a unity now that we didn't have but we have now that i don't think can fail us as parents, me as a person from the community or as the school. so i'm hoping that you hear our cry, our pain, for our children, who need the help. we have a lot of troubled kids coming out of the neighborhood and i believe when you take those kind of kids and put them in a situation like that, it makes it harder for them to step up and keep their grades up so it would be an asset to myself, my family, my community, if daniel webster was to have the extension to where they would go up to the eighth grade. i would currently have five children there, which would make me happy. it would be easier. i have a son who has transferred out because daniel webster didn't have the services that he need. but i would like to also see,

they gave more services, more classrooms, more employment. it would be a ripple effect of positive things to our neighborhood. i walk those shoes every day so i see the kids, i work with the kids hands-on every day and i know it's a dire need for them and our community. we have one junior high school, one middle school, it's combined with a high school and my daughter who's failing would be doing a lot better if she had better support, more unity, better conduct at the school. so long story short, i just think it would be an asset to our community. we need this. they build stores everywhere. we need more schools. we need to have a choice. i have no choice to where my daughter go to unless i bus her out completely across town besides i.s.a. so i would really like to see, i don't know if

it's monetary, but i would like to see the school upgrade itself, upgrade itself. we need the space, we need the classrooms, we need the teachers. i can't stress to you how much it would be an asset to our community. thank you. >> you're about halfway through the 15 minutes. >> [speaking spanish] >> good evening, i am the mother of marcella at daniel webster in the third grade. i'm here because i'm concerned about the plan of the district of daniel webster to go up to the high school grade.

i am very happy to know that when she's in the fifth grade that she's going to go to a school where she won't have to look for a different school. she will go to the school where she's going to go but i'm worried about kids that are older than she is at the level of high school to be there also with younger kids. i think it's appropriate for kids who are have kindergarten to eighth grade to be together but i think to have all the children together with younger children, children older, like at the level of high school, i think that is not appropriate and it can actually be

dangerous. as it is, my daughter has to deal with bullying with kids who are her same age so i'm worried about how would bullying be with kids who are much older than she is. it is -- i know it's really hard to control children in high school so i'm worried about how are they going to control these kids at that level and how am i going to feel that my child is safe since i have to go to work, i am alone, and how am i going to be feeling safe that i'm going to leave her there all day

long and she's going to be ok. [speaking spanish] so i wanted to consider parents like me who are worried that their kids are being with children who are much, much older than they are and that feel their kids won't be safe in that environment. [speaking spanish] i would like to say that i do think that a school that is from kindergarten to eighth grade is good because it would be good for my daughter because she wouldn't have to change schools,

she wouldn't have to change friends but i think -- and this will be, it's good because they will be with children that are the same age but i think children that are much older would be very difficult. thank you. president yee: someone tack on a minute or so for translation. >> i'm megan smith, my son is in the third grade spanish immersion program. i'm not here as much for my son as i am for his classmates. my son returned from i.s.a. and found four teenagers sitting on my car vandalizing it. we will be going somewhere else. we've been trying to get into our neighborhood school for five years, really tough, but we would be sad to give up spanish because it's been great. i think we should have been

grandfathered in because we didn't know when we were signing up for kindergarten that we would have to continue for three years. basically, one of his friends lives in the projects you see on 101 and i learned through him, he can't see out of his windows because they're boarded up and until going to daniel webster, i thought those were unoccupied units but those are daniel webster kids. they deserve better futures and a better chance than going to a middle school-high school combination where their lives will not get better in that situation. thank you. >> hi, my name is evelyn. i have twins in third grade. i was going to say that it would be wrong to send our kids with high school kids because developmentally they're not ready to be with bigger kids.

it's like throwing kitties to lions. we don't want to abuse common sense of little ones. we want to keep them happy and young and playful, not to become bullies and tough and macho and all of this so keep in mind developmentally they're not ready yet to be with these kids. thank you. >> good evening, my name is lori true and i'm a parent of a kindergartener, my son, kayden, at daniel webster. i don't live in the neighborhood. we went through lottery hell last year. i-toured 15 schools, had 13 on my list and daniel webster was 12th on the list but excited to give it a shot and i was excited about spanish immersion and we went to a p.t.a. meeting and i was so impressed with this community, i was excited daniel webster was my school. this is a community hard

working, committed to making the school good for every single student. it wasn't just about my kid but what do we need to do for every child to make it a success. i hate to see that undermined. i have three older children, as well, and they've been through junior high already and when we were looking to adopt our two younger children -- they're from ethiopia so diversity is a big deal for me, as well. when we were looking to adopt them, the one thing i was concerned about was going through junior high again because junior high is the toughest age of all and i honestly could never consider a junior high-high school combination because that would be too challenging for the kids. k through 8 is my number one choice, buena vista, because it's k through 8. more than anything, i don't want buena vista but i want daniel webster and k through 8 would be a fabulous thing and we don't have anything like at