>> the regular meeting for the san francisco board of education for may 8, 2012, is now called to order. roll call, please. >> thank you, commissioner. ms. fewer, ms. maufas, dr. murase, ms. norton, mr. yee, ms. zhang, ms tom? thank you.

president yee: please join me for the pledge of allegiance. >> i pledge allegiance, to the flag, one nation, under god, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. president yee: so the first item is the approval of the board minutes. a first and second for the special meeting board minutes of may 1, 2012. commissioner: 2nd. president yee: any changes? roll call, please. secretary: [reading roll]

five ayes. president yee: presentations to the board of education, superintendent's report. superintendent garcia? superintendent garcia: thank you. unfortunately, tonight is the board meeting from hell, which all of us hate going through, because every year, it does not make sense that we are put in a position with the may 15 deadline, and for some weird reason, it always seems to be the week that is the teacher appreciation week in the state of california, and we are involved in giving out layoffs. that is just an absurd state that we live in. that really goes to the heart of our community, the people who do all of the work and do great things, trying to work out a system that just does not give

adequate funding, the proposed governor's budget, when you look at all of the different things that are coming our way, it does not seem to be getting much better. we are going to continue with cuts, and the only good thing, i guess, because when you think of relatively speaking, when you look at other school districts, as bad as we may have is, there are actually places who have it worse, because we are in partnership with the mayor and the city and the supervisors and the public that have the wisdom enough to create a rainy day fund that will, our way, hopefully in the next couple of months -- that will, our way -- will come our way, and they can support the in richmond fund that helps us do a lot of things in this school district. when you look at the prop a, the quality teacher at, and those

are helping us through these tough times, and on top of that, the voters in san francisco are going out and supporting our facility bonds to be able to have great schools for our kids, but even with all of those things, and when you are assuming that the governor's proposal next november, that measure, or whatever measure passes, it still does not solve all of our problems, so later on, you will see i have asked the deputy superintendent to provide the board and the public with an update on the state budget and its impact on our budget. we do not want to do layoffs, but as you will see, where we are fiscally gives us very, very few options. this is a meeting that every year, i guess myself, for at least 17 years, have had to go through, because it seems that every year, we do not seem to be

adequate funding that comes our way. i do want the public to know that we are involved in two major lawsuits against the state of california in trying to resolve these types of issues, and san francisco unified is one of the leaders in both of these lawsuits. one has to do with restoring prop 98 full funding, the $2.20 billion that were taken away last summer from school districts in california. the impact would be about $20 million additional but we would get. the other is about adequately funding how much it takes to educate a child in california. we all know that we are now ranked around 48th and 49th about how much we spend per child, and we are rapidly going down. the last two years or the next two years where we are going financially, this district would have lost approximately 22% of its entire budget, and yet, we

are growing, and the cost of things go up. it is like a new math problem. it is ridiculous. we are not going to get there unless the state as the courage enough to do something to change how we fund public education in california, and until that happens, unfortunately, it hits all of us against each other, and i think that is a terrible situation to be in, and i know this board stands united in saying we hate doing this, but if we do not do that, then we risk having the state come in and taking over the district and actually doing whatever the heck they want to do, and we know how that works. we have our neighbors across the bay, several of them. we know when that happens, it really does not make things at all any better, so it is tough, but we will get through it, but it will require a lot to get there. thank you very much, and last but not least, i do want to wish everybody, i do know that sunday is mother's day, and i do want

to wish, you know, everybody a happy mother's day out there. think you. -- thank you. president yee: a ok, item c, recognition or commendation, and we have nine tonight. item d, student delegates' report. >> we will be meeting with supervisor jane kim, talking about what we have accomplished this year, and we are using this opportunity to ask her about her career and all of that. all of that, yes, and at our last meeting, on may 22, we will be meeting with the deputy superintendent carranza, and we are very excited for that meeting. >> and at our next board of education meeting on may 22, we

will be introducing the newly elected and appointed representatives and the new student delegates, said that will be very exciting. president yee: looking forward to that. thank you. item e, parent advisory council report. >> good evening. commissioners, superintendent, deputy superintendent. my name is nancy. i am on the parent advisory council, the current chair, and this is our report. tonight is a very charged evening, and we are fortunate to have at our next pac meeting

representatives from the district to come and give us an update on what is going on, and the pac cannot and will not take a stand on what is going on, but we will hear from both sides. on april 25, the pac and other partners from the family engagement coalition got to meet with deputy superintendent carranza, and we appreciate that time you spent with us, and he brought staff also to answer our questions. it was incredibly challenging. we had one hour to discuss major district priorities, and those included core curriculum assessments, quality middle schools, special end, it english learners, -- special ed, and on

some of those, we had eight minutes to talk about it, so we barely scratched the surface. the parents, we have been asking again and again, just to get more information, to build trust with the parents and find out what the district is doing. we want to see that transparency happen, and we need to create systems, or we want to work with you to find a sustainable way to communicate these things with parents. we have been talking about communication for at least the last four years on the pacd, -- pac, and we would like to see that change.

deputy superintendent carranza said he would set a regular meetings in the fall to get more information on these initiatives, and we appreciate that, but we have so much interest from the families and coalition that we could not fit everybody in the room where we met, who were interested to learn this information, and this information should be available to any parent to is curious about what is going on. we did appreciate the quality middle school group came out with a fire that we saw for the first time. we also did see some strategic goals from the special ed department, which is great, and especially in the midst of all of these budget cuts, it is important for us parents to know what the school district is prioritizing for our children, and we do not have that information, and there is no where we can get it, so we would like to have a systematic way of

disseminating this information. we would like to work with you to do that, and we would like to get a sustainable way of doing that. i want to talk also about the community conversations about practices. the pared to advisory council has met with approximately 275 parents already, and 20 conversations to talk about practices, and we are excited to share some of this information on may 22. you will have a brief summary of our findings, and on june 4, we will be meeting with a curriculum committee with a detailed report, so we are looking forward to that. lastly, we are currently interviewing parents to join our pac, and at our pac meeting on may 15, we will be doing that and making recommendations to the board on june 12.

thank you. president yee: thank you. deputy superintendent carranza? deputy superintendent carranza: thank you, president yee. we had a good opportunity that afternoon, and i want to be clear that we made commitments to continue to meet on a monthly basis next year when our pac representatives and to agendize for each one of those meetings specific topics so we would have more of an opportunity to go in depth. just as a way of fairness, my office was not responsible for the agenda, so the 12 minutes, it minutes, six minutes, it was not on our agenda. we would have preferred more time. it did give us a good place to start the conversation, and i also appreciate recommendations -- recognition that there were

documents from middle school pathway programs and others, and staff members have brought information that we provided to the parent organization. we are willing to do some more information, as well. i think one of the best aspects of our meeting is that we were very honest with each other, and we were very clearly able to say that there are some things that we are not want to be able to do next year. we were asked specifically about the middle school pathway and adding an additional period, which would be millions of dollars, and we were in fact that we could not do it, but it was that level of honesty that really bodes well. and may not have been apparent in the comments you have heard this evening, but it was the level of honesty that next year we agreed we would have next year in our conversations, and we also agreed that we would find times to meet not on tuesday nights. as you know, are tuesday night are spoken for. we all agree to find another

night, and we would be happy, and it was a good first start. president yee: thank you, deputy superintendent carranza. commissioner murase? commissioner murase: i think this issue of communication is important, and i would like to create more forms for this to go on. we have committees as a whole, and i know it is not convenient for a lot of people to come to, but if a lot of folks could come and report back to the group, i interested in exploring improved ways of making the decisions and discussions more accessible to our families. secondly, i had the opportunity to participate in one of the restrictive actions at the community center, and it was really a great exchange. you know, it was a smallish

group, but it was the right people around the table, and people have a lot of questions about restrictive practices, and it was very well run, so i want to thank the pac. president yee: any other comments? go ahead. the commissioner -- >> i do not know if it was clear. we really appreciate the conversation we had with deputy superintendent carranza, so we really appreciate your work on that. thank you. deputy superintendent carranza: thank you. president yee: the items. one speaker? president kellie? -- kelly?

two minutes. >> thank you very much for your accepting comment on the special order having to deal with layoffs at this time. president yee: i am sorry. restate it? >> are you having comment on the special order having to deal with layoffs at this time? president yee: no. >> ok. you have two resolutions that have to do with the extended school year, for summer school, professional development, for the teachers, and i just wanted to remind you that there is no agreement between the union and the district to open up this work period. you have an adopted work calendar that has already been adopted by the union and the

district, and you do not have these days listed in there, and we do not have an agreement. in the past, there was a least an oral agreement to go forward with this. there is no such thing now. the second item i wanted to call attention to is the item that has to do with the least of the richmond district neighborhood center, and formally it was known as the lucinda weeks site. it is composed of three small home like structures that have been augmented with all kinds of interesting areas between. it has been run by the richmond district near berlin's center for the past 32 years or so and is a tremendous benefit to the community. it is one of those things where we have programs. we have students from washington high school. it has been used as an after- school side. it is a wonderful place, to introduce