types of things here, we need to get people -- once people know that it works, other people want to try it. they see the success rate of it. that is why we brought you here. it is working for you. sooner or later, if we start a little bit smaller and encourage people with resources, as a motivator they can get additional things if they get into this. i think we would get a lot of people stepping up. let us champion them. let us support them and let them on it. if it is small scale, it is easy to provide great training. it is easy to get people committed to making it work. we are trying to take a quantum leap forward. i think we need to take a few steps before we take those leaps. student delegate rose: i would

like to thank you all on behalf of the student advisory council. i am a student delicate. what we do is we talk to kids -- to representatives in each school in the district -- about different problems. restorative justice has been one of our key elements, one of our key topics. all of us have had that trend that has been expelled or suspended and had their lives turned upside down when they just need a second chance. you were talking about mutual respect. i believe that is a key ingredient in a better environment in the school. you do not want to be or feel like the teacher is off on a power trip, or they have ownership and power over you. a lot of teachers act like they do. with restorative justice comes a second chance.

i feel that they are seeing it through a personal -- i have an impulsive, too. kids are impulsive. but that one impulse -- within reason, not bringing a gun to school or beating someone up, but being aggressive with the teacher -- there is so much behind it. it is almost a cry for attention or help. i learned that it happens more than i thought. thank you for taking the time. it is nice to see adults in high stature actually carrying -- actually caring about this. everyone here -- the commissioners have been so great. it has been really nice to know that adults are paying attention, because it is a big deal. in your high school -- i have for friends the went to civic center. they are never going to get back on track. they are now starting to do

drugs, when they did not before. they are like, "these are our friends here. this is where we obviously deserve to end up." giving a second look to all those kids would be really nice. all of them were my friends. great wise, they did fine. othinking for spending the time with us so we can get feedback and get more information about how to move forward with staff. i am excited to hear about the work you're doing and the success you had. it gives us a lot of hope. we want to lower expulsions. we want to make sure our students are not going to another system here in san francisco, to the criminal justice system. thank you very much. [applause]

commissioner yee had to leave our board meeting. he has to drive to davis tonight. i know ms. ramirez has to drive all the way to fresno. think you for coming. we talked about taking breaks. we are going to take it by minute break before moving on to the next part of the meeting. president kim: we have another presentation under item l, discussion of other educational issues. it is, "high school wastes our time." i am sorry. actually, earlier when we had

our parent advisory council report -- our psv representative was not here -- our pac representative was not here, but now she is. we're going to go back to item b, the pack report -- the pac report. >> my apologies. i was in my car, listening to the meeting and heard you. i did not have child care coverage. good evening commissioners, staff, and members of the public who are left. i am a parent of two doctors to attend san francisco public schools. -- two daughters who attend san francisco public school. and every ship the families who came to advocate for the best -- i appreciate the families and teachers who came to advocate for the best for the children.

i hope the board and the parties will be able to get some work done together on a solution that works for everyone. on a personal level, i am excited about the restorative justice program and the things that are coming up. i look forward to incorporating that into the work i do as well. i want to thank deputy superintendent lee for his appreciation of the past work in the partnership, especially around the budget, and suv -- an echo the appreciation for our teachers and staff which will be taking a cut in pay and furlough days. you were set a report by our staff for, -- by our staffer. my nose got mixed up and my computer ran out of batteries. -- my notes got misstep and my computer -- doppler mixd ugot md

my computer ran out of batteries. pac reached over 900 parents this year in conversations about proposed changes in the assignment system and the budget crisis, including workshops at various summits and facilitating a conversation with the u.s. department of education deputy secretary tony miller. we gave regular reports at board of education meetings, participating in meetings with community partners and organizations, and education relativize or councils. we continue to strengthen our relationship with our sponsors and thunders by expanding our recruitment efforts to take on new roles and to take the lead on issues important to them we are doing. on that note, i wanted to say i am going to be staying on in my final year on the pac. i will be stepping down from the chair ship to allow natasha

levine to step up. looking ahead, we are working with district staff and command departments to set up meetings around the issues facing the district in the coming year. this has been a year of tremendous teamwork. we are really appreciative of that and looking forward to continuing that. i also want to thank you for your service to our students and families. as ruth is currently riding her bicycle across country, i want to let you know that she sent you my contact info. you can reach me if you have any concerns of issues related to the pac before her return. if you have any questions, i am happy to answer them. president kim: thank you so much for waiting to the other items. are there any other questions or comments? commissioner fewer: will be meeting during the summer? >> no. beeour first meeting is

scheduled for august 31. we will begin meeting on every third tuesday of the month. commissioner fewer: deal have a sort of get to know you think -- do you have this sort of get to know you think. g? they are the parent advisory to the board of education. it might be nice for us to have a gathering where we meet all of the pac members and are able to say hello and know them. then they know us also. >> we do not currently have that, although you all are invited to any and all of our meetings. it is a standing invitation. i know we do have some folks to come. i think richard is going to come to our first one. i am excited about that. i think it would be a great idea. maybe we can figure out a time

that would work for everybody that we could do that. president kim: would you like to do a reception really quickly? we do that for a student advisory council for 45 minutes. it would be great if you could come. >> that is not a great -- that is a great idea. we try to be respectful of parents time. we cannot meet until 6:00, and we tried to get people home by the end of the night. our time is really compressed. but that is a good idea. commissioner wynns: every time someone comes, we think the pac for their work, which is very important. i want to take -- to think -- to take extra time to thank you for your leadership. she is tough, and an inspiration to us all. >> thank you very much. president kim: thank you for your leadership. we are coming back to item l, high school late start time.

this is something that had come up in previous board discussions, particularly after budget cut decisions made on this continuing general ed transportation for our high schools in particular, and being sensitive to the fact tomuni -- the fact that muni has had to make their own cuts and there are times that this is not very high in the city. we want to talk about potentially starting our high school later. the san francisco police department is also interested in as exploring this, for a variety of reasons. the captain is here and may want to make some comments as well. >> good evening, president kim, superintendent garcia, commissioners.

earlier, we talked about restorative justice. i think it was a very rich discussion and we have learned a lot from the experts. related to restorative justice is the issue of truancy, tardiness, as commissioner mendoza had mentioned. in our high schools, we have tried many strategies to address the truancy, the tardiness issues. it is a barry -- it is a very tough issue. as former principals, we know we all want to maximize learning. we all want to maximize learning time. when we stand outside the school in the morning after the bell rang and we see so many students coming to school late, and we

look at first. failure rates -- and we look at first period failure rates which are so high, we want to know what we can do to improve the situation. we have tried many things, including punitive strategies, which did not work. we need to really explore deeply into how to address this issue. one of the variables that impact high-school student's performance -- high-school students' performance, truancy, and tardiness could be related to the start times in the morning. so i have prepared a power point tonight. i am sorry because my panel is not here. principals are on vacation and many of our staff members are also on vacation.

but i tried to capture the discussions that we had and provide you with the information. we may have more questions than answers, but i want to give you an overview of what we have discussed so far, what we have explored so far. maybe together we can make a decision on how to move forward with this initiative. i will start by showing you this power point. ok. so i want to start by -- [laughter] these are happy learners. joyful learners in scubas/ . [laughter] i want to assure you they are on their way to school, not going home. i want to start by quoting dr.

mary, who is a medical doctor at brown university school of medicine. she said, "given that the primary focus of education is to maximize human potential, there is is a new task before us -- to ensure that the conditions in which learning takes place address the very biology of our learners." the committee started by looking into the background of this issue. we had to learn about sleep patterns and about things that impact teenagers learning, and also their pattern of going to school. we asked many questions and try to find answers. we also looked at research. one of the first questions is

how much sleep do we really need. what the research says is that there is really no magic number. some people need more. some people need less. so it is very individual. a 2005 study confirmed that the sleep needs vary across populations. what happens if we sleep too little? when we do not have enough sleep it inhibits our productivity and ability to remember and consolidate information, which is very important to learning and very important to functioning well. it also leads to serious health and safety consequences. studies show that when we do not have enough sleep, if we extend this pattern, it really

increases our risk of diabetes, heart problems, depression, and substance abuse. there are serious consequences. on the flip side, what about sleeping too much? some of us need more sleep, but some people sleep more than nine hours. what happens? some research has found that long sleep durations are also associated with increased illness as well -- accidents and even death. one particular research found that variables such as low socioeconomic status and depression were significantly associated with long sleep. so sleeping too much may not be a good thing either. what is the rule of thumb? how much sleep do we really need? something to share with you -- newborns need 12 to 18 hours.

infants, 14 to 15 hours. toddlers, 12th to 14 hours. preschoolers, 11 to an 13 hours. elementary school students, 10 to 11 hours. teenagers need 8.5 to 9.325 hours. adults need 7 to 9 hours. how many of us get 7 to 9 hours? [laughter] let us do a survey. [laughter] i know. tonight you are not going to be getting enough sleep. schools start times and sleep -- a recent poll conducted by the national sleep foundation -- they did a lot of work finding out about people's sleep patterns. they found that 60% of children

under the age of 18 complained of being tired during the day. 15% said they fell asleep at school during the year. as a former principal, i have met with many of those students. [laughter] i mean we walked into the classroom. recount how many of them. on april 2 of 1999, representative -- a democrat introduced a congressional resolution to encourage schools and school districts to reconsider early morning start times to be more in sync with teenagers' biological makeup. at a national level, it has brought attention to how much time -- what is the maximum time and what is the optimum time for teenagers to function well? for them to function well, how much time do they need to sleep?

there was even a congressional resolution, number 135, or what they call "z's to a's act." they encouraged districts to move start times to no earlier than 8:30 a.m. so the facts are that teenagers are among those who are least likely to get enough sleep. so while they need an average of 9.25 hours of sleep, most of them that you're of seven hours a night. -- get fewer than 7 hours a night. most events report they feel very tired during the day. we all know, as parents and teachers -- we know some of the

problems. let us take a look at the problems. teenagers -- some of them have very poor sleep habits. those poor sleep habits do not allow them enough time to sleep. they have very hectic schedules, with after-school activities, jobs, homework, and family obligations. many students stay up late because they have to do chores around the house. also, there are increased social demands on our teenagers. we all know they do on-line chats. they play games. facebook is an important part of their life. they stay up until after midnight to socialize with their friends online. and then also the fact that we have so many demands on our teenagers -- one of those demands is that they need to get up very early to go to school,

which is in conflict with their biological changes. because of their biological changes, day or on a later sleep-wake pattern. as a result, when it is time to wake up for school, the teenager's body says it is still the middle of the night. they do not want to get up. as mothers, we know how hard it is to try to wake up our kids in the morning. let us look at the national trends. what are people doing in the rest of the country? according to a 2009 study by the national sleep foundation, individual school districts in 19 states have pushed back their start times. more than 100 school districts in an additional 17 states are delaying their start times. it is a national trend, here.

so i would like us to take a look at some patterns. in minnesota, for example, school start time changes were made in two cities, athena and minneapolis. minnesota, after their medical association issued a resolution based on research and say that puberty resets teenagers biological clocks. it is not that they are lazy. there is a biological clock that takes inside of their body. it is hard for them to get up in the morning. there were three years of data collected by the university of minnesota. what happened? ok.

that showed that -- it showed very positive results. positive results because of the late start. they show improved attendance, an increase in continuous enrollment, less tardiness, and students make less trips to the nurses. that means that are actually getting healthier. -- that means they are actually getting healthier. there is a difference between the findings of a suburban district and an urban district. that is interesting. suburban districts reported better results than urban districts. urban teachers did not see any general improvement in student behavior after the late start time. in kentucky, another study showed very interesting results. a school district changed its

start time from 7:30 to 8:30. students averaged up to 15 minutes -- almost a whole hour -- extra sleep per night. -- students average up to the 50 minutes. students measure the rate of the rest of the state. they find the crash rate for 16 chr 17-18 year-old rose and the rest of the state. it is a safety factor as well. in the bay area, california. the board of education decided in march of this year that high- school would start at 8:00. 25 minutes later than they

currently start now. in recent weeks, their board decided that they did not want to move forward because they learned that a change to the high school schedule would force the transportation department to add more routes. the board will not consider the issue until there is money to operate additional bus routes. it is a budgetary issue. they have the will, but they don't have the money. how about san francisco? some of our board members have expressed interest in right -- in changing the high school start time for the reasons we have talked about. we want to support our students and maximize their learning. the superintendent asked me to convene a group to look into this issue.

the committee was formed on may 11, 2010. we study the start time issue. as you can see, [laughter] actually, the committee was talking to me. members of the late start committee on taskforce -- the deputy superintendent participated in the discussion. me, and richard from the office of family voice. the principle of many high schools. john holmes, attendance office,

and martin of custodial services. we met three times. it was fairly late in the air. on may 11, may 18, and june 1, each one of us brought the information to the task force. let's look. most thais schools start around 8:00. three schools start very early at 7:30. abraham lincoln, george washington high schools. >> abraham lincoln and washington both have staggered schedules. some students come in at 7:30, the other half at 8:30. >> excuse me. most of the students don't start at 7:30. they are modular schedules. wait your than half of the

students who are their start at 7:30. trust me. >> they have them operating almost like a college. >> we don't have any school where everybody has to be there at 7:30. >> let's take a look at the turkey rate. i have a handout because i did not want to put those tiny numbers up. i have a handout that shows that 30 rate between last year and this year. the high school party rate is slightly improved this year, slightly, not a whole lot. the committee also looked a lot at the attendance rate. this compares high-school attendance between last year and this year. we