>> good afternoon and welcome to the meeting of the city and school districts elect committee. i am supervisor dufty, joined by my colleagues, supervisors alioto-pier and daly. we are joined by school board member commissioners. i want to acknowledge our committee clerk, and we also have an assistant from the school district. madam clerk, if we could call item 1. >> thank you, supervisor. truancy initiatives by the san francisco unified school district and the city and county of san francisco. supervisor dufty: great, thank you so much. i would like to welcome of the

planning and policy manager for violence prevention and intervention, and following that, she will be joined by liz jackson since then from the ymca. welcome. -- liz jackson simpson. >> i want to thank you for the opportunity to present to you the progress of the work. a quick reminder, in february 2010, the mayor announced that they would open a truancy and assessment resourced center. the office or some of its efforts is actually co located with the community assessment and referral center at clark. part of it is instrumental to making sure we support young people that are habitually truant, so some of the partners that we are actually gathering here today and are present here in the room are ymca huckleberries program, sfpd,

dcyf, and jpd. we are trying to create a one- stop center where we would actually provide youth academic and psychosocial assessments, and it would work closely with the district in order to be able to prevent some of the current attitude of continuously being truant. i wanted to invite someone who has been collaborating -- collaborating with us a lot more and taking initiative on a day-to-day basis. liz jackson is the person that has been one of the instrumental people that has been supporting some of the day-to-day work there at the center. >> thank you. good afternoon, commissioners, board of supervisors. i'm the executive director of program development with the ymca in san francisco and branch manager with urban development

services ymca. first of all, let me thank you for your continued interest and support of the truancy assessment and referral center. we have been working since january to come up with a comprehensive strategy and plan and have actually begun to launch a pilot that my colleague, the director of the tarc center, will give you more details about. we have worked collaborative with the school district, the police department, the youth program urban services, ymca, juvenile probation, and the d a's office to develop a pilot that was launched late april through the end of the school year, and we targeted this pilot with two communities that contributed most to the chronic and habitual truant to population, and that was in bayview and the western addition, so with the baby station and the northern station

in particular, and we then went out and did a lot of outreach to all the roll calls for both of the stations and talked with police officers. we have done outreach to the community resource centers, with a number of community-based organizations there in the schools, that a number of the young people participate in. and there are a couple of new members to the select committees, so let me talk a little bit about how this was intended to be operational and. we have discovered, and we have come up with a strategy where the police will go -- if they see young people hanging out the 20 hours of 9:00 and noon on any day monday through friday, they might approach a young person and ask him if they are supposed to be in school or why they not in school. if they will identify young people who are middle school or high school age, and they will call into the tarc center. we have school district

personnel and urban services ymca persons who will then check into the school system to identify whether or not they should be in school and are a habitual or chronic truant. if there are identified as being habitual or chronic truants, that means they had 10 or more consecutive absences in school, and the police officer will be instructed to bring them in. they'll come into the tarc center, receive an academic assessment from the school district and a psychosocial assessment. mother would be called in, that father, parent would be called in to let them know that they are there, and that are concerned because the have not been regularly attending school, and staff will be helping to develop a plan in tandem with the student and family to make sure that this young person is successfully re-entered into school. so that is one way that a young person might come into the center. then, the young person will be

supported for the next three to four weeks to insure a smooth transition and green tree and the engagement back into school by our community-based case managers who are trained and have a background in social work, background in social and juvenile justice, and a background in case management. from there, there are other venues and ways like a number of students that came into the tarc center during our pilot days were actually brought in by their parents. that is the best way. we want young people to come into the center. by community members or by their parents themselves who have just been at odds of, "how do i get this kid to go to school? how do i get them reconnected? where are the supports in the community?" that is the ideal way we would like the community to utilize the tarc center. with that, i should also add that we have had a successful

pilot with the d.a.'s office as well, who runs a truancy court. it initially started off with looking at elementary school- aged families, who were again chronic and habitually truant, but then, we launched in may -- in may, they started a truancy court for the high school students, and we received 15 referrals and are still engaged in working with those young people even through the summer to insure that they are being gauged back in school, connected to us, and be engaged back in school when school starts next month. so i would like to turn the microphone over to my colleague, the director of the tarc center. supervisor dufty: if i could just ask, when school resumes in august, the tarc center itself, students will be brought to that center, and it will be open and operational? >> absolutely.

supervisor dufty: one moment. commissioner mendoza. commissioner mendoza: thank you. can i just ask a quick question on the truancy corp. for high schools? there were 15 kids that were referred. can you explain that a little bit more for us and what that looks like and where the referrals come from or how the kids are identified? >> i will do my best. katie miller from the district attorney's office oversees the truancy courts. there is a court for elementary school-aged families, young people and families, but of course, the older kids, the high school-aged kids, they are going after the young people themselves, and is again our

young people who have been a chronic habitually truant, that we have not been able to connect with or catch up with, either through the district or community-based efforts, so with the use of school resource officers, the d.a.'s office are going out and subpoenaing these young people to come into court. they will come into the family court house. then, those young people are connected to the tarc center for academic and wraparound support services. again, there were 15 young people. they just started the court for the high school students, the teenage students, in may. they will continue to operate the court every other month, where they will have to go back. there will be progress reports heard, and the kids will be expected to come back every two months. we will be in a charting their

progress and insuring that they get reconnected. >> hi, everyone. thank you for having us. i'm the director for the tarc center. just to speak to the truancy court, again, like liz said -- >> and i just figured, since this was a new role, we always like to warm up the room, and tell us about your background coming to this position. it is always a good thing. if that is ok. >> i have been with urban services ymca for a little over two and a half years. i have an extensive background in case management services and have worked with children and families through san francisco for 10 + years. a recent graduate of san francisco state university where

i earned my master's in social work there with an emphasis in administration and planning, so this work is very dear to me. in my previous capacities, at different organizations, i have done truancy work as well, so coming to the ymca, i came with some truancy background and was able to bring that experience to the table, so i'm glad to be here today. supervisor dufty: we're glad, too, so thank you. >> with regard to the truancy court, we have been there in may and june, and it has been a very interesting experience, but we have been allowed -- we've been glad to be there to work with the district attorney's office. we have tried to actively engage this young people are in accord, connect with the families, connect with the young people and set up times to meet with those young people. what we found is that many of those young people have been disengaged from the academic environment for quite some time,

so our work has been over the school years to further identify what those barriers to attendance and getting better grades and engaging the school -- we have tried to really find out what those barriers are and work with those young people. that is what our work has been looking like as well as connecting young people and their families with support services, specific to where they need those services, the types of needs we have had the we have been able to identify and the things they have expressed. but again, the district attorney's office has referred 15 young people, and we are actively working with them, as well as the school district has made referrals. during our pilot time, we also had a number of calls from parents who called hearing about the tarc center and had students that were true and that they wanted support for, so we have also worked with those families to get them connected over the

summer and to really work specifically on a transition plan for the upcoming school year. what we're hoping is before the upcoming school year to provide all our young civil with backpacks, school supplies, which will be partnered with the containers work that is happening right now, and we are working on getting some alarm clocks and some other tools that will be good for them to have to help them with getting back into school. i do also want to make mentioned, with regards to the process which the is mentioned earlier as far as the kids coming into our center and getting assets or what have you, one of the primary focus is on our program is that we hold the hands of our young people. i know sometimes a lot of people speak against that, but kids that are chronically truant oftentimes need someone to connect with them and to hold their hand, so one of our primary emphasis will be providing next day follow-up with our young people, so you come into our center today, we

have a case manager that will connect with you the next day at home, in school, in your community to check with you to see how your day is going, to continue that kind of handholding for a couple of weeks to help get them established in school and settled and kind of help with that transition. from that point, we will reassess to determine if the status on track and good to go. great, we can kind of close them out on our in. if they still need support, we will be able to refer them for long-term case management services within our truancy program that we currently have, or to an outside organization, but again, we believe in connecting our young people with people and not with program, so we are going to be looking to build stronger relationships with cbo's and that are here in san francisco, and we already have some existing relationships. >> thank you, very much. i think i am making my comment

for everyone else following at the microphone. this is such a serious issue throughout our city and our school district. i would request that you be as honest and as candid with us as you can be in any presentation today. there is no need to -- yes, there is a professionalism that i definitely appreciate, but i really want to hear details. if you're saying that you are going to offer services and connect them with people, i would like to hear some of the details of that so i could better understand if somebody comes to tarc and somehow through your assessment process, you figure it is just an alarm clock -- how did you come to figure that was all that they needed? just then alarm clock? or actually, there is a much deeper causation for why they are truant or why apparent refers their child -- or why a

tariff refers to a child? we have our own understanding, but now you are in existence for another reason, because we were not able to solve it on our side of the block, and i'm grateful you are at the table to help us with this, but i appreciate the candidates you can bring to the conversation today. >> i will add that we will have our assessments that would have internally that we will use, and with the partnership with the school district, we will be able to tap into what those issues are, but i will say that -- and we have had that question come off in the past when we talk to different folks -- we did a great deal of investigation. we will ask those kinds of general questions, but we do deep very deep in our conversations and our meetings with those young people. sometimes, those young people are very honest with us, and it can be something as simple as an alarm clock, or it