most problematic lines. i think things have changed. i know that things have changed in the last seven or eight months. i think this next school year, the kids are definitely going to feel safer on the buses. commissioner kim: that is great here. if we have a lot of lines that are particularly -- >> is the 14, the 38, the 49, and the tl. we have it all broken-down, and it will be between 2:00 in the afternoon until 8:00 at night. those are the peak hours after school. i am looking at the overall scope. 3:00 to 6:00, when you look at

each individual station, definitely for central, in the stations that have a high concentration of schools, definitely. commissioner kim: we all gather data. it is good to bring an overlay to have this survey were the greatest number of students reporting issues are in those neighborhoods and having information from sfpd and muni is really helpful. we all have resources about how we can best work together to address the issue. i hear about it so much from students, the safety back-and- forth. >> i think the other part of it is that the task force team has

made many arrests, and that being said, the individuals riding the buses, they don't know who a police officer is. our perceived presence has gone up exponentially. >> i am interested in figuring out what we can do to have -- i don't want to criminalize bullying, for example. i was interested in this idea of having an adult or adults in general -- young adults or adults in general that does not have to derive from that level of enforcement. >> is zero tolerance means that somebody gets the rest of the time. the zero tolerance means that you address it. don't do that, you got it?

we don't cite them every time, but we tell them that you can't stand there and drink the beer. what we started today, we're definitely on the right foot. they basically put their cards on the table and said, who can we send where? it is not exactly redistributed, but certain kids can go to that school. they may not have the program for that child so they have to go to this school. i get that. it is important that we get that part of it straight. supervisor dufty: briefly -- >> the youth themselves produced a dvd about keeping

themselves safe. i think that is something that is going to be coming out to raise awareness of that is going to go a long way. supervisor dufty: i want to welcome the commissioners who are joined by the program and policy coordinator to make a presentation. >> i am yasmine, i go to balboa, and i am 16. >> i currently go to notre dame univsersity. >> i graduated class of '09, and

now i attend sf state. >> can you guys put our power point on the screen please? >> unfortunately, none of us know how to do it. there it is. >> this power point is pretty much -- we made it ourselves, commissioners. it is our solution to distribution of the youth pass lifeline. you might be wondering, what is the fast pass? it would cost $10 a month, and its purpose is to be given to students who qualify.

-why create the fast pass? it would be for the students to have affordable muni access. there are a few main reasons why. >> the first reason why, as you can see on the pie chart, the unified students are strongly dependent on muni. about 70% of the school district students take muni. it is very important for them to have a mode of transportation. the second one is the rising cost of muni. in may, 2009, it was $10. a year later, we see that price

double. it is important to have affordable access. the last reason is the high proportion of low income students. 54% of the san francisco students qualify for free or reduced lunch. it is over half of the student body. >> we began the youth lifeline fast pass in february 2010. it was adopted by the youth commission in that your area. it was adopted by the board of supervisors in april followed by the education -- the board of education. since then, the mta has budgeted $1.4 million for this. that money will go to 12,000 youth passes each month.

the support services will have the full responsibility for distributing these passes. >> the basic plan would be for mta to give us 12,000 fast passes every month, and support services will be in charge of selling the fast passes to the students for them to pay and money which makes more sense. they pay to get their food, tickets, everything. >> the youth commission suggests that we take the most simple approach to this. we think that the simpler it is to buy the fast passes, the more likely students will buy them.

here is what we suggest. the only requirement for students to get there fast passes would be to show the free or reduced lunch card or pen number. -- pin number. as yasmine mentioned, that is what students are used to. it would be $10 in exchange for a fast pass. >> some questions that we had were that we want to partner with the sfusd in the distribution plan. the simpler will make the process, the more that students will buy it. for example, i have here -- awesome. ok. cool. here is what the sfusd drafted

for students to fill out. one thing i saw off the bat that was complicated, there isn't anything that says what is the fast pass. so i made my own. the youth-friendly version is this. it says what it is and a bunch of other stuff on one page instead of all of that. so we just want to ask them what the application process will be. we want to be fair and kind of make sure that they know what they are trying to sign up for and have the proper information.

>> another concern we had is the manner in which we prioritize which students receive the fast passes, and which schools? this year, there are only 12,000. there are over 30,000 low-income students that qualify for free or reduced lunches. >> another question, they used to be sold at the schools. could it not be replicated? >> when i attended the middle school in maybe 2004, i remembered that a secretary used to sell fast passes and i would go each month and pay $10 or

whatever it was. it mysteriously stopped and i never knew why. it has been done before and we should do it again. we also want to see if there is a possibility of existing school sites and advisory councils, pierre resources. -- peer resources. we want them to partner also with us to make sure the students know that the fast pass exists. >> in the last couple of points here, we want this to be available to all schools under the school district including charter schools. we want the program to be something that, again, is going

back to the idea of free and reduced lunches to provide a fast pass at an affordable rate. and lastly, students need to know about this. we need a way that we can advertise and sort of thing out of the box when it comes to the out reach for the program. this is something that is important, going back to the idea of affordable muni passes and access for the most vulnerable youth. >> they use commission looks forward to consulting with the services to make the plan successful. we thank you for taking the time to consider this issue. it can completely be a huge success. i would personally like to take -- it can really work. thank you.

supervisor dufty: commissioner kim? commissioner kim: i don't know if you can put that back on the screen. we did not get copies of them. i am curious, are we distributing them in our charter schools as well? >> i did not hear? [inaudible] commissioner kim: do we sell fast passes at school? that is new information to me. >> i have not verified that. we can get more information about that, how it was done through schools. it can be very valuable. commissioner kim: one of the

challenges is the amount of work " we're and end -- we're handing to our school counselors. which middle school were you at? >> it was seventh grade, a little while ago. commissioner kim: we do want to work with these commissions in advertising the lifeline passes. you can do better out -- then we can -- outreach than we can. you can create fires for the schools and the commissioners can be spokespeople. i think the word will spread faster through you than for us. you brought up a couple of points, but i don't remember them. the you have the questions? -- do you have the questions?

[inaudible] >> it's on the thing. there it is. commissioner kim: the other issue that i talked about with mario is that we may be able to do some psa's on muni lnes, -- lines, advertising the fast passes. i think the last issue was the priorities. i don't know if you want to go over how we make fast passes for students. >> it is still being finalized. homeless and transitional age youth. and then it's open to all students. one other issue that this does raise up is that we have not

prioritized between secondary and elementary. we think both of those groups are deserving of this. one big issue for this between school sites and our own central office is not many parents will want to send cash with their younger kids to the schools. there's a lot of logistical issues that are raised here by. this i appreciate where the youth commission is coming from and what their position is and who they're advocating for. we don't object to that position. but from where we stand on a lot of the problems, and especially with the pry or -- prioritization, we end up having to have a set number to send to the school. secretaries are sending cash, keeping track of it. the various burdens are very challenging. so our position is to have this centrally located, whether it's

through a central depository, a distribution center, a mailing system that prioritizes and use that as a way to increase our number, or do it through maim plus so that it's donen -- done online to accommodate those that don't have access to internet. there's different ways to go about this. right now we are not incline to do this through sales at the school site. >> i just want to add something real quick. i definitely think that san francisco unified school district services should be an interest gal part of this. i also want to note that the first day of school is august 16. that's kind of right around the corner. in the hopes of the youth commission, is to get the ball rolling rather fast. september hopefully can be the first month that we can start this program.

two other notes i wanted to throw in there. >> i do appreciate how you reformatted the application form and maybe we can take note of that in some of the applications. i do think that this is a little unclear in terms of what the application is like. i like how you guys redid it. do you have an extra copy of that that you can give? >> are there any other questions? >> why don't we open it up to -- why don't we see how many members of the public want to speak and then we'll come back for questions in a second. why don't we provide two minutes per speaker and invite up any individuals interested in speaking, come forward. if there are other speakers, if they could come and line up so we have a sense of how many speakers we'll have for this item. >> good morning, supervisors, and commission.

as you know, transportation will be cut to high school student starting this august, and with the assignments, many of the students -- schools across the city instead of neighborhood schools and these students are promised with the transportation system and the school buses in the morning, which will take them to school and after school. i don't know about the budget cuts, to cut teachers or buses. the obvious answer would be to cut teachers. but from my experience, when i take the school bus, i have female bus drivers who also take their kids with them. i feel like we're not just cutting buses, but we're also cutting bus drivers, too. so i would like to suggest that maybe we pay for transportation. is that possible? and also, with muni, i know that

it's not very consistent, and in the morning, muni often, like, skips bus stops. so are they going to increase buses for the high school students also? >> so when you finish, it's knot actually not a back and forth. so you have the two minutes to make your statement. >> that's it. >> ok. great. thank you. let me ask, are there any other members of the public that wish to be heard or give testimony on this item? you've actually spoken as a member of the youth commission, so let me just say are there any other members of the public that wish to be heard on this item? seeing none, we'll close public comment on this item. one of the speakers' questions was about, does muni

operationally plan for additional ridership by students, and they do in fact do that. julie was here earlier and it did not appear that those questions were going to arise, but there is communication that goes on between the schools and muni and at times if there's going to be a large group of students taking a trip, muni will arrange to have a vehicle at that stop that will start fresh and then run the route so that they can accommodate those students, and there is coordination and communication. i guess one of the things as we brief for this hearing, commissioner kim and myself learned that there are less than 400 high school students that are going to be riding muni in order to go to high school with the elimination of school bus. so i thought it was a much higher number and i thought it was going to have a bigger impact on service than it appears that it will. so anything else that you want to add? >> not really, supervisor dufty. that's essentially where we are right now with it.

as you pointed out, we have approximately 310 students who will be affected by our cuts. this is mostly in districts one and four going to the schools in gal lay owe, balboa, o'connell, and mission. we are working as you know from our meeting yesterday, we are in very good dialogue with muni. we have a good relationship. and one request has come to us to make sure they have a kep of all -- copy of all of our melt schedules. those have not been produced yet. we'll be continuing this dialogue throughout the year. supervisor dufty: great, thank you. i do want to note that i think some of the discussion that took place at the committee today with the youth commissioner, also with muni, i think that there's going to be a fair amount of follow-up work that we'll do outside of the committee and then hopefully come back with these issues again as we get to the beginning

of the school year and hopefully update on some things and have some news to report back. so with that, colleagues, i know there are some quorum issues that we're going to have if we go much longer. so with that, i would ask that we continue this item to the call of the chair so that we can reschedule it without objection. madam clerk, i believe we've completed the business of today's hearing. so with that, we ared a youred. thank you so much.

i'm starving. what's for breakfast? guten tag! kids: johannes brahms?! i bring you arts-enriched raisin brahms, fortified with increased test scores and creative problem solving skills. it's good! ...and good for you. bobby? suzy? don't worry. that's just the power of the arts. announcer: feed your kids the arts. for ten simple ways to learn how, visit americansforthearts.org