the schools make-up on free and reduced lunches. many of those students might qualify for extended medi-cal and that seems quite fitting since it's attendance awareness month for september and you were talking about the importance of health. just curious. i have been trying to search online and i haven't seen much information. >> mr. superintendant is there a member of the staff that you might direct us to contact? >> yes. our associate superintendant kevin troout. we'll get in touch. >> all right, we are moving on with our speakers list. i'm going to call your name and this will expedite the process

considerably. if you will line on the wall. keith dennis. bill ford. chance duke. no smith. chan. i'm going to stop there. would you like to go to the staff table to speak? that might be more comfortable. >> i'm not trying to be rude but i'm going to speak with my head down because your lights are sobriety. i need to -- my name is keith dennis as you already know. i was a para

professional for the school district, i was a teacher for the school district. that's what i want to focus this evening. thurgood marshall was designed to help black students, latinos and pacific islanders and it was doing a great job. before coming over to thurgood marshall, i was a lowe high school. i ran into one of the teachers i knew from lowe and they asked me how is thurgood marshall high school? i told them it was the best hidden secret in the san

francisco. now, when i was going through some difficulties coming down very strongly with multiple sclerosis, i was transitioning out of high school and at the same time i was transitioning out, the old make tear now soda was transitioning into thurgood marshall high school. thurgood marshall high school is located in bay view hunters point, a low income high crime community. i was really concerned that kids would get squeezed out and that's exactly what happened. i work in this, i saw more black

and latino youth being suspended for just silly reasons. instead of giving them detention. they were just sending our black youth home. >> your time is up. could you wrap it up, please. >> i would like to know, thurgood marshall is a consent decree school. what are we doing to help out those young men and women. you have my phone number and my contacts. you can contact me so we can make sure our african american

students and black american students are on the right track to graduate. okay we'll move to the next speaker. >> my name is bill ford. i want to say to all the parents listening to this on the radio, if you are frustrated with the school board process, i would encourage you to come to the next board meeting on thursday. let the board superintendant hear your voice. i believe action can be taken. i don't know how to get to the table here to make proposal, i would

like to make some proposals from here. i propose this should be school bus routes to valley middle school. it it was only middle school that was offered. for example my son is too far away. i would propose the school board should scrap and come up with a new school assignment process. come up with a process that does not rely to make assignments. i propose that the school board members to work with the process. currently i stand here as a parent and speak for two

minutes but the rules states the school cannot discuss with me. i propose that individual school board members with all do respect do not understand the real world hardships that face families and children. for example our family was forced to make a choice between two decisions. my wife could quit her job so she can commute our son orren roll our son in a private school. i would like to say that i truly propose that the school assignment process is a policy, if we are forced to make bad decisions and i highly recommend that we scrap it and come up with a new process. thank you. good evening. i'm here to

tell you the problem with schools. i'm a graduate of the loel middle school. i graduated at the top of my class. i find myself now without a school. i attempted to get into school closest to my house. instead i was assigned furthest from my house. no schools go that way and it would take an hour-and-a-half to get to by public transportation. if the buses were late, guess what? i would be too. obviously this is unacceptable. my parents went to the placement center down the hall three times to ask if there's any other option. the response they got was go to private school. what if i can't afford to go to private school. the conclusion i came to is that i would have to drop out of school. i'm currently enrolled in holy name catholic

school. this cost $7,000 a year. the school district made a mistake of not signing me to a school i couldn't get to. over 500 students were in the wait school when it dissolved. it's 311 200-0000. is it a mist substantially when you want people in charge of you making. thank you. >> hi. when we applied to school for my son, it would required me to commute more than an hour with my son. the fact that san francisco unified thinks this is an acceptable

solution shows out of touch they are. the district insist that the only middle school is with space. it was over enrolled with no desk or materials with the 40 plus student class assignment. we allowed ourselves to be pressured and be in over crowded classrooms. a stressful situation which is not conducive for every child. i know other families in this situation. they requested the schools and instead were assigned the farthest school

away. there are many families who are suffering because of the district refusal to allow families to be assigned to their closest school even though city san franciscans desire the nearest school by the proposition h. the california education code says that there must be equal access to education. shouldn't the definition of access include being able to get to the school. could san francisco unified really say sorry, no more room to all the schools. this is an issue. the board needs to make children their first priority rather than hard headed ideology. >> i have a number of speakers

from visitation valley. i believe you will require interpretation? okay. brenda yann. jenny my. nicole >> do we have interpretation available? >> 2 minutes time but we'll double it because of interpretation per speaker. >> good evening everybody. i'm a new parent from the elementary school. we came to

voice our serious question about the school and the principal. we share our complaint to assistant who promise to get back to our -- we have not hear from them since so we have send -- last school year the bilingual teachers was -- the principal to transport to another school.

teaches with no bcld certificate. one of them can handle speak chinese. we are not happy about this replacement. our student has to get the best teacher. the second one is the principal support this in constantly we are professional no experience teacher. a part-time in how can the student learn in this kind of setting. three, it's the project was located to having inside of the schools. that's

why we come back to talk. >> currentary -- currently there is no help. the principal the priority especially for the asian students. giving asian parents. we would like a principal who would like to cooperate with us on a school wide decision. what happened to the meeting with the principal that we had agreed to. we have however not heard anything. we feel the district doesn't respect us. and does not take any matters

seriously. we continue to complain and continue to attend the board meeting until a process is made. if the district continues to ignore us, we'll contact the chinese media or television or newspaper to inform the communities how to district and our school have treat us and the statues. so we urge you to acton those matters in a timely manner. thank you. >> good evening. my name is nicole wu. i'm a parent of a kid at the elementary school.

i'm actually representing a lot of parents in the school and we have come here a few times to air our voice. because we believe the district can help us. but we got disappointed by their district's actions. because the district didn't resolve the problem with us directly. on behalf of the parents, i would like to say this will be the last time we come here to speak up for ourselves. if the district

still do not face the problem in elementary school and help us solve the problem, we are going to contact the media. to help us to resolve the problem. lastly i strongly request and plead for all the commissioners and there is superintendant to help us to stop the problem in elementary school. >> thank you. >> good evening, everyone. i am also apparent of visitation valley elementary school. in may we came here to speak up

about the problems in our school. even though the district sent people to our school, however they did not stop the problem directly. you even ignored our request. is that because we are the new immigrants people? or because we have limited english proficiency and also less educational level? or because we live in the low income area and the district discriminate against us. in this school

year, the school already started more than a month even the new superintendant came to the school and also provides management for our school, however she did not communicate with us directly. there was a mixed classroom of 4th and 5th grade consist of more than 40 students. the parent professionals are changing all the time and the teacher and students feel very hard to adapt to the change of the staff in the school. the

parents kind of lose confidence in the school. i hope this time the district can really give us some direct response for the issues in our school. otherwise we are going to seek other actions to stop the problem. >> hello, my name is -- i'm also a parent from visitation valley elementary school. this is the third time that our parents come to the board meeting. but, the district did

not solve the problem completely. >> there are incidents in the school that the students are bringing knives and also scissors to the school. how come the district did not face this problem and solve this problem. instead there will be a fatal incident happen in the school so the district will take action to solve this problem? we don't think this principal is suitable for this

school. because there are so many things happen in the school. however she doesn't know how to communicate with the parents. and she just want us to forget about everything and that's it. if she just pay attention there will be strong impact on our students. we entrusted school a safe place for the students to learn. and not for the students who learn become bad. and the principal's

measure is to take the action of her will and force the parents to accept her actions. >> when a parent is trying to communicate with a teacher however the principal step in and stop the communication. within a year, the principal fired about 10 people of the teacher, social workers and also parents. i believe you're

welcome parents also and picture when there are so many changes in the school. what will the students think? so there is another incident that there is one student is peeing in the restroom and there are two students bullying him and robbing him. i will communicate

with them and solve the problem. >> will you help translate the supervisor of valley elementary school retired. there is a new superintendant that has not met the parents. what i would like to do is invite the parents to come to the mccaller conference room so they can meet her and have a conversation with her about their concerns. >> i have two more speakers. john templeton and carlos. good

evening. i want to bring to your attention the culturally responsive evidence space psycho social intervention that we believe will show a 10-1 return investment in terms of increased attendance. we talked to superintendant and want to be sure as many principals know about this to not only increase attendance but also certain outcomes and reduce special education place ments and reduce suspensions as well. we

have the university united freedom movement which is important for them to attend. we encourage that and also doing a project with core.org which we'll be featuring african americans professionals leading up to national computer week. so, there are lots of opportunities to make sure that our schools really work for african american students. we began the process that thurgood marshall high school p 14 years ago. we were able to lead many students. now we want to take it and scale it up so it mentions the needs.

>> my name is carlos, a san francisco alumni. in the spirits of september attendance month we have the most at risk students by administering a great program to counter act bullying. it called the scholar wrestling. scholar wrestling was piloted by drew in the bay view for a lunchtime activity. over 80 students weighed in for the activity. we are now considering this an after school activity. esteban lost his way to school after bullying and getting kicked out of schools, he found his way

through wrestling. he lost 80-pound between sophomore and seem -- senior year and won the division. after applying wrestling to academics he rose to the top of his class and went to medical school at stanford and became the youngest tenured professor at ucsf. myself and the sheriff's department was to partner with the school district on the scholar league. thank you. >> all right. public comment is now closed. thank you. we are moving on to item k advisory committee reports and appointments to advisary economies by board members. >> i'm very happy to appoint the specialist to the bilingual committee community council.