supervisor dufty: captioned by the national captioning institute --www.ncicap.org-- supervisor chu: good morning. welcome to city operations and neighborhood services committee. victor, are there any announcements today? [no audio] supervisor chu: thank you, please call item no. 1. >> i did not have it on.

ordinance authorizing the department of the environment to expend a grant in the amount of e department of public library to accept and expend a grant in the amount of $80,000 from the california state library as part of the federal library services and technology act for the out- of-school-time online homework help program. supervisor chu: thank you. >> good morning, supervisors. my name is toni bernardi. this program is serviced under my direction. i wanted to say a couple of important things about the program. the assistance is provided in two different ways. worksheets are provided, with tutorials and study guides with said proxy components.

more important and more heavily used, the program connects students to a tutor that will provide them with one of one help. students enter their subject and grade level and the tudor provides expertise at that level and within that subject. in tabling these students to access homework assistance outside of school hours. and to receive assistance from trained tutors i ever. grade level subject expertise, enabling the expansion of fun assistance that a parent might provide, which might be limited to education, language, subject matter, expertise, or the need for that parent to be at work in the hours that the student needs help. it also enables the students to seek assistance at any location

that has internet access to connect to the library website. 20,951 students used this program at the library. that was in 2009. students may enter an evaluation of the program that are consistently positive and grateful for the help, the only complaint being that the tudor will not do the homework for them. it is my earnest hope that you will approve this resolution and that these funds will assist us in continuing to provide the service that we need. supervisor chu: you mentioned locations where services were provided. were there any locations where there was public access for computers? how many of them have that connection? >> all of our branch libraries

allow this. offsite is allowed, fine with us. online libraries also allow for access. supervisor chu: services are also online? >> correct. supervisor avalos: do you have any data as to how often the students back to the program? are there ongoing users of the system? >> we do not have hard data. it is important that we do not provide anything for specific students and their privacy. i can tell that a substantial number of them repeat. they talk about using it again. as far as hard data, we do not have that particular

information. supervisor avalos: in terms of outreach to specific populations in san francisco? >> we provide fliers to the students, posters, and for the last few years we have hosted a meeting of the school principal at the library, and that both of those we have highlighted this program that teachers can access and use. supervisor avalos: this is something that trickles down for teacher knowledge as well? >> we have provided training. some of them have allowed us to go in to their schools to demonstrate the program. almost all the schools in the city are visited at least once per year. they talk about the online

program and what it can do for the students and how they can use it. supervisor avalos: every school has a library as well, hookups for computer technology. it seems like the librarians and the schools could find a good place for those as well? >> yes. supervisor avalos: great. supervisor chu: are there any members of the public that wish to speak on item number one? >> good morning. my name is douglas shepard and i have lived in san francisco for 15 years. i would like to speak in support of this. i think it is something that is noteworthy and i would like to make a suggestion that four students who are kind of close to dropping out of school, i

think that this sort of program should be offered in writing to the parents of students and that the school should get a written reply as to whether that student is going to accept the help or reject it. something like this, rather than simply being suggested, should be done in writing in order to basically make the student and parents aware that they need to use the process. i would also like to pose two questions to the department public library. the first is if they have ever investigated allegations made by a public comment her that comes up to make presentations on video regarding friends of the library. i have always wondered if these allegations are true or false and i think that they should be publicly taking care of. i would also like to pose a question to the public library

about whether they have adequate safeguards against child pornography. since there has been so much publicity about the front -- planning department passing pornography, i would like to make sure that the public library has adequate protection for children against child pornography, especially as there was a police department investigation into alleged child for being viewed at the san francisco general hospital. thank you. supervisor chu: thank you. are there any other members of the public? seeing no one, public comment disclosed. we can move this item forward with recommendations. >> item #one will be recommended to the board of supervisors on august 23. supervisor chu: item number two, please. >> item #2 ordinance authorizing

the department of the environment to expend a grant in the amount of $74,500 from the california department of toxic substances control to coordinate the green business tracking and measurement tool and amending ordinance no. 183-09 to reflect the addition of one (1) grant funded position at the department of the environment. supervisor chu: thank you. >> good morning, supervisors. mark west, department of the environment. the city operates a mottled green business program with the department of toxic substance control. shared with other cities that have business programs. supervisor chu: thank you. i know that there are a couple of amendments to the legislation. can you explain it briefly? >> we are asking that 2009- 2010, 2011, and on page three,

line 11, we are asking that the grant fund reflect 0.50. going into the new fiscal year. the position is a grant funded position. the balance of the funding will be coming from an epa grant. supervisor chu: to clarify, the position is for one year's work for the upcoming fiscal year, half of an fte >> correct. supervisor chu: let's go to public comment. any members of the public debt would wish to speak on item number two. seeing no one, public comment is closed. colleagues, the changes are on the first page, on the title, we want to change the fiscal year

to read 2010-2011. on page three, line one, the fiscal year 2009-2010 should also read 2010 through 2011. page three, line 11, it should reflect 0.5. correct? >> correct. >> will be ordinance no. change also? supervisor chu: i do not believe so. the file number? >> yes. i am not sure if there is a new ordinance no. 42010-2011? supervisor chu: i do not believe i have received changes to that

number. supervisor avalos: it should work from one year to the next. supervisor chu: there is a motion to make those amendments without objection. i believe that these changes are not substantive, so the city attorney could move forward today? >> correct. supervisor chu: we have a motion to move forward on the amended version. are there any other items today? >> item #two will be recommended to the april 13, 2010 meeting. supervisor chu: thank you. we are adjourned.

>> 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