>> okay. i think we're going to close public comment now. i'm going to call for a five minute recess. let's clear the room and we will start the meeting again in five minutes.

(recess).

>> okay. i'm going to call the meeting back into order.

>> public enrichment fund and we have a report from one of the committees. >> yes we have a report from the bilingual community council and bcc and they will be presenting and kim garcia misa.

>> all right. welcome to the members of the bilingual community council. you may start when ready. >>

good evening president norton and honorable commissioners and superintendent carranza and welcome to our new commissioner matt haney. i have to say i

really appreciate the fact that you hold these meetings and hear this very emotional kind of presentations. it totally drained me. my name is darlene inaya and i my colleagues are here to report on successes and the questions and the concerns of the bilingual community council, and we are your appointees and we want to thank you for having us here. we will begin by expressing our appreciation to all of those who help us in our work on behalf of the over 15,000 english language learners in our district, and we did provide you with some written data which i will be loosely following in my

beginning here. we're very grateful to our english language students and our representatives who continue to attend our bcc meetings and they voice their concerns to us and we're able to bring these issues forward, and to garner attention to them, and to make remedies. we're thankful for our translators who attend every meeting that we have, both spanish and can tonenies and some of the things that we were able to -- [inaudible] strict and with the help of our -- kristina wong and jennifer fong, the two people we work most closely with. we have a english learner program guide and we didn't have this before

and it's also translated into english -- into spanish and conton easy and serves as a guide to our english learner family who is find coming to epc and to the district very intimidating and very confusing. we work with the ioc and the mpd, the multilink welpath ways and they have given us a great deal of support, and we have -- they do come as guests to our meetings and we learn a great deal from them, and especially epc because that's [inaudible]. that's an area where english language learners don't quite know what to do especially if they don't know the language

and go to epc to try to get their child registered in school and epc as a result our requests has actually created written update the transfer process between schools so that it's in writing now, and this is really important because in many of the programs that are available to english language learners the folks don't really know what the procedure is to get into them, and we have been monitoring el student access and enrollment in the dual emersion programs. it's very popular right now as world languages become increasingly important and there is a certain balance that is

supposed to exist so we visit the schools to see if that and monitor to see that balance does exist. we've made progress on our sfusd's communication with families of the el students, especially around the results of the selt and used to be in english so the parents would get the results and they would not know what it was, so although it costs a bit of money it's now translated and goesout to our families in their native language, and there was a lack of translation on the sfusd website, and this was brought to the attention of sfusd, and

they now provide the translation so that the website is accessible to everybody, and another thing that we were able to accomplish was that lowell and soda did not have their applications in languages other than english, and these are very prestigious schools and we did not want to see our english language learners exclude friday attending these schools. but the application process was difficult and now they're being translate into the two other languages. we also received a report from sfusd staff and once again i do want to say that christina wong and

jennifer fong have been just great in helping us with our duties at the bbc -- bcc, and finally we have -- their guidance. that also helps us. they have quite -- i mean the report is like this thick, so they just keep us updated on what's going on and of course we go out and do visits so those are some of the things we have been able to do this year, and my colleagues are each going to address another portion of this. >> hi. i am abe [inaudible] and with the group with 2011 to 2012. our focus was on time in

elementary and middle school. we particular focus on long-term el's and include fifth grade. we started kinder as potential student as defined by sfusd and the ioc. we request [inaudible] general schedule, and then allow us to make situation and speak with staff, students and families with ioc representation. we have five we can have more [inaudible] without ioc representative present. in our situation bcc a part of appropriate teaching strategy during instruction time. we note that many have after school programs and emphasis on tutoring and assist

for el students. we also note that working to improve communication to non english [inaudible] and el students. participation in this access to translation, access to the computer lab. many have after school program that provides tutoring for el students. we hear from some administrator regarding frustration around planning for fluctuating student population. many planned for more than in the enrollment. we see more than that originally anticipated. [inaudible] situation create planning and implementation difficulties. both middle school and administrators express need to have more communication

[inaudible] >> [speaking spanish] >> good evening and commissioners and superintendent. i am flora ramos and i'm a member of the bcc. >> [speaking spanish] >> i'm going to give a report about to update you on the current status of the members. >> [speaking spanish] >> we need more members of the

bcc and we're here to make sure that all the members are represented on the bcc. >> [speaking spanish] >> and that representatives come to our meetings. [speaking spanish] >> generally you only have one meeting a month. >> [speaking spanish] >> we have member with us a member of the bcc as well. >> [speaking spanish] >> she's our [inaudible] to you with the education on board. >> [speaking spanish] >> she's providing report to the board members. >> [speaking spanish]

>> and generally we're going to decide what we're going to focus on in 2012-2013. >> [speaking spanish] >> observations that we're going to include in that report if we can are our observations regarding enrollment. >> [speaking spanish] >> thank you. >> well, superintendent carranza and board of education commissioners as you can see in our report we have a lot to celebrate and a lot of successes we have made. i am very happy to say great progress in how we are providing services for el students and families, so i think there's a lot to be -- a lot to appreciate and be thankful for. we do believe like we said in the beginning part of our report that we are

working much more effectively together with san francisco unified leadership and are grateful for that and my portion of the report are the concerns that we condition to -- continue to have in the bcc and in reviewing the letter to the san francisco unified school district, the bcc found our concerns and community concerns in line with the department of justice and you have in the report that we gave to you the 10 points that the department of justice outlined in their july letter to the san francisco unified school district, and they are very much in line with the concerns and the questions that we continue to have. i would like to highlight two of those concerns. one would be number six, improved communication with el families. you will see there are a number of bullet points.

this isn't a comprehensive list but it speaks to the biggest concerns that we continue to have and one of the largest concerns that we have speak is in line what we spoke about in our appreciation to finally having soda and lowell's applications translated into spanish and chinese but as we look at this issue more closely we noticed that at least some of the -- soda's website was only in english and aligned with the concerns we are hearing from the families that the websites that are put up by the different sites are not always accessible in different languages to our whole school communities. that is a big concern for us. the internal parent communications that are happening on yahoo groups or communications that are coming out from auxillary

organizations like the pta they're not always translateed and it's a big concern for us. it's not a step forward in creating a diverse communities. it's not a step forward in encouraging our -- particularly our english learning family to participate fully in our school sites and so recently we sent some questions back to christina wong specifically about what the policies were for our website and the auxillary websites that they are generated and the communications in the schools and we received a prompt reply back saying "it is in the works that the district is working toward adding protocols and processes into the guidelines for ensuring