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tv   [untitled]    September 8, 2010 6:30am-7:00am PST

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went to visit many schools together, and he also asked do you have any teachers for america teachers, and he asks about how this project is working. overwhelmingly, they said it was really working. i can't remember every school, but i do remember bessie carmichael who said they thought it was great. this is the new teacher project. he asked two questions. and overwhelmingly, they said it was great, that there was a point of contact, that they were able to streamline the hiring, and i just heard great reviews about it. but i look force to hearing it at the labor committee. >> role call, please. >> thank you. >> yes, yes, yes, yes, yes,
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yes, aye, aye, and yes. >> seven ayes. >> our next item is item q, first reading of plopesals. we give a total of five minutes for public testimony for all of these resolutions. we won't have a discussion tonight. may i have a motion and second on 1083-point. >> so moved. >> second. >> thank you. >> i will be referring this to budget and buildings and grounds. and then -- actually, do we want to refer this to student assignment? >> yes. >> we will just refer this to budget and student assignment and not to buildings and grounds. is that all right?
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or can we include a begget area analysis. i am -- a budget area assignment. may i have a motion and second for 108-24 fp 2. moved, >> second. >> ideology move this to our student assignment committee, and that meeting is on monday, september 13 at 6:00 for members of the public. i do have two speaker carts for this item are cards for this item. i have david robinson and hunter cutting. two minutes, please. >> good evening, commissioners and superintendent. as the support said, no plan is perfect, and i'm sure that through the community outreach process that you're going to engage in, because we have common goals and values, we will be able to address the problems with this plan. but i do need to highlight for
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you that this plan really does not implement the principles that you articulated for emerging kids in the district with regard to middle school assignments, particularly with regard to spanish immersion middle school assignments. as the public process goes forward, i would like you to be thinking about how this plan, if it were implemented would actually affect next year's sixth graders, particularly in spanish immersion. is it fair to assign those kids next year to a school that has no immersion program when we know how difficult it has been to build those programs? is it fair to those students to close one of two actually working spanish immersion programs based on a hope of
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implementing more programs simultaneously across multiple sites when we know how difficult it is to do that historically? and is it fair that the current spanish immersion kids will be assigned to the valley, and the kids from the mission will not be? we can work through this with a speakered process, but i really hope you will listen to the input you will get from the immerse parents in particular. it was very surprising to the immersion parent community that this proposal came forward in the form it did. we did not see it coming. >> would you identify yourself? >> i am david robinson, and i have a fourth grader his school. >> thank you, mr. robinson.
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[inaudible] >> well, i am hunter. thanks for letting me talk. i have a couple of kids in the district. i wanted to also address the assignment proposal for middle schools. i apologize, but i am going to be a lot more blunt than david robinson. this proposal is a disaster in the making, and i want to highlight three problems for you. i think it is worthwhile highlighting it now because you have a very impressed schedule for considering this in a couple of weeks. one, the assignment provisions are going to basically lock the east side families into poor performing middle schools, and that hurt is going to mostly fall on low income families and latino families. two, as david pointed out, this
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proposal is going to tear apart the spanish language immersion program in the middle schools in san francisco. and three, this proposal essentially abolishes the sibling preference program in middle schools. i realize it is a complicated program, but all you have to do is take a look at the math that got produced. almost without exception the elementary schools on the west side are being assigned to the high-performing middle schools, and the east side schools are almost all going to poor performing middle schools. i think who are as mann is a great example. it is one of the most trouble middle schools, and it is going to be fed entirely by east side schools. the parents in those elementary schools may have made the devil's choice when their kids were young to send them to a poor-performing but local elementary school, but under
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this plan, they are going to lose their choice to send their kids to a better performing middle school that might be further away when their kids are older. this plan takes away choice for families. lastly we talked about the sibling preference. it is going to tear families apart. if i may quickly, there is no spanish immersion program at mann. mann lists them of as having. >> may we have a motion and second for a recommitment of students for military
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recruitment? >> moved. >> refer it though curriculum committee. >> the board members' report. we already got a report on this. our next report is from the augmented rules policy and legislation committee. commissioner norton? >> yes. we did not consider any legislative propose always. we did hear an update on our various title grant applications, most of which the superintendent updated us on earlier. and we heard a short update from susan wong on the ongoing review of board of education policies, and we will be taking that up in the next few sessions of the legislation committee. >> the next is a report from the augmented ad hoc committee on student assignment. commissioner wynns? >> i would like to take this opportunity if i may to read or highlight a lot of the time line of the actual meetings
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that are listed here in the agenda because the substance of the meeting was that we had the presentation of the draft proposals for the elementary attendance areas and the middle school feeder pattern. you have heard about that, and the point is not to discuss substance, but to highlight feedback. those were just introduced, as well as the transportation policy this evening for a first reading. on september 28, the theory is that we will be voting on those policies, that then by october 13th, that what will be presented to the board of education will be outreach, and on november 8, a monitoring and
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evaluation plan, and administrative regulations related to transportation will be presented to the committee. and then in addition, i just want to repeat that we have a series of community conversations and other vehicles for feedback from the public. the meetings -- you saw them tonight. but just for the public, august 5, which is tomorrow 6:00 to 585 charles drew. 28th at frons scott -- france scott key. august 1, 6:00 to 58 -- september 1st at marina middle school. we have opportunity to give fee back on line at the district's website. and also the staff and i want to -- and i want to thank the staff for this, is making themselves available for individual appointments,
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drop-in appointments, and we are facilitating meetings with school communities or others interested in talking to the staff about the work they have done that has brought us where we are today. i hope all members of the public will avail themselves of that. lastly, i want to repeat that commissioner kim said that the next meeting of the committee will be september 13 from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. here in this room. >> thank you very much. i one-and-one to thank -- want to thank staff for the website. it is great. glad to be online. next is a report from the budget and business service committee. commissioner yee? >> sure. basically we had one discussion which would be consider an informational item.
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the discussion really was to come back around to what we had discussed earlier in the year when we were going through our budget development. there were a lot of -- many of the commissioners wanted us to look at our priority areas or programs in a way that is more comprehensive. a lot of times when we look at budget line items, it is just one item. for example, parent engagement, there are many sources of funding which support that effort. yet when we have the discussion, we generally focus on one particular source of funding rather than looking at it more conferencively. -- conferencively. >> we may the decision that
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every budget committee meeting we would take on a topic for exre hencive discussion efments >> if we have time, if it is not a packed agenda, and it looks like it is not packed, then we will also discuss the resources of our federal programs. then in october we decided to take on or discuss the special education program and the budget that supports that, and also the community schools. we chose in october to go over the special education budget. wented to recommend to president kim -- we wanted to
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recommend to president kim or vice president mendoza that we have a discussion on specialed cation redesign. we are hoping that would happen in september. >> we are definitely on it. >> i wanted to mention our committee wanted to start the budget development for the new year starting next month. we are going to have an early start. >> thank you so much, commissioner yee. item t is report of closed session actions. close session actions of august 19, 2010, the board of education by a photo of 6-1 approved the appointment of two supervisors and one supervisor. other informational items have been posted in the agenda. acceptance of gifts in the
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month of june. quarterly report on complaints. and information, no notice of classified personal transactions. we are at item v. we are adjourning our meeting tonight in memory of miss kansas dra roberts and katherine. our condolences go outs to everett and mission high schools. thank you very much, meeting is adjourned.
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>> good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us. today is a very special day in san francisco. it marks our celebration of the bicycle injunction we have been suffering under for about four years now. today, we are able to begin in earnest and aggressive bike plan implementation. divide plan implementation will increase the amount of bike lanes by 64% here in the city. we currently have 48 miles of land making us one of the most likable cities, and i think everyone recognizes that this is just another step in our establishing ourselves as a world-class white city. with that, i would like to turn it over to our mayor, who has been a champion as we went through the legal battle we had to go through. -- establishing ourselves as a world-class bicycle city. gavin newsom thank you to the
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members of the -- mayor newsom: thank you to the members of the board that are here, to all the activism and intensity and passion that represents the people of the city that stepped up, step in since 2006. congratulations, and welcome to a new era of bicycling in san francisco. i think it is incredibly important and suggested that we sort of set the tone of bicycling in the city in this context, that since the injunction in 2006, remarkably, that basically shut us down in terms of being able to put up new bike racks for these boxes or enhancing our bike lanes, we saw a 54% increase in bicycling. since the injunction was established, which is rather remarkable. meaning with no new enhancements, we saw a huge increase in the desire of pent-
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up demand to bicycle. what makes this so significant is that now, with this injunction lifted and the ability is now referencing the increase of 35 miles, another 45 projects to get us up to 75 miles of our network, to be able to move forward as we are today, to be able to do all of these things we have been wanting to do means that the growth is going to be exponential. you have seen this on valencia st. not a modest increase in the use and utilization of bicycles once the bike lane has been put in, but a huge increase. talking anywhere from 200% to 300% increase in the use of bicycles once these bike lanes are established. we can conservatively estimate, and these are the numbers that
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the agency uses, that we would see a 50% increase in the utilization of bicycles when we paid -- as we stripe these bike lanes. you see that with the ability to enhance, and now, you see the enhancements, and that ability is going to follow and i think exceeded everyone's expectations. world-class city is a city that tries to democratize its streets, sidewalks, plazas, playgrounds, public realms. world-class cities now are competing for the best and brightest, and they understand the quality of life is that one differentiated that establishes those that will be the leaders 5, 10, 15, 25 years from now. san francisco does not want to see its world-class status. -- does not want to cede its world-class status. means we have to be a city that
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is friendly to bicyclist. it means we have to restate that recognizes that we cohabitate. this is not the old days where it is about bicycles versus cars. this is about bicycles and cars. this is about, again, quality of life. i want to congratulate everyone who worked so hard to get us here. this took a lot of time, a lot of money, and at the end of the day, what did we prove? that you can delay things, but you cannot and things, so it is in the spirit of that recognition that there was a delay, but there is now a real progress that we are going to see things really take off. i'm really proud of all our team behind me and those that were in the city attorney's office, the planning department, and other agencies. final point, what i think it's also important to note, when we had that partial injunction lifted a number of months back, you saw how quickly you part of public works went to work, the department of traffic went to
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work. mark my words -- you have seen nothing yet. they are ready to go, full-time commitment, a real energetic effort over the next few years. this is not going to be a big fish start -- fit/start. this is not something we're going to announce and and see people move away to complete other work. we will be doing along the lines of what portland -- i love portland, but i hate that they are ahead of us on this. by the way, anyone in a sustained rain, we're always second in the country in terms of our environmental network because of the bike network. portland is finished. with all respect to the mayor, you are going down.
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this is the last piece of the puzzle that was missing. now, we are able to unveil this, and you ain't seen nothing. >> thank you, mayor newsom. we have a host of folks that were part of the effort to get us to where we are today. i see our director of sustainable streets is here. bridget smith, who heads up our sustainable streets effort, and she is doing a fine job. she has a great team of people working with her. another individual i need to bring up to speak to you today is our chairman of the mta, chairman tom nolan. [applause] >> good afternoon. i'm very proud to be here on behalf of the board of directors, joined with our distinguished vice chair. tomorrow, if the board of supervisors votes correctly, we will have a new chair, so we are very proud to report of the --
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part of this. our board has had to do some very difficult things, had to make some really tough decisions in terms of budgeting, in terms of service, all kinds of things, but we are proud of what we have been able to achieve. i want to tell you that this was not hard for any member of our board. our board was unanimously supported every step of the way through, working with others in the city to make this great day happen. on behalf of all of our board, very proud to be part of this, and we look forward to the events coming shortly to make this plan a reality for all of us. thank you. [applause] >> thank you. next, we have renee rivera from the san francisco by a coalition. >> thank you. this is a great day for bicycling here in san francisco. we are beginning, as the mayor was just saying, a new era for bicycling and for san francisco. as the mayor said, we are not going to be number two anymore.
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we are well on our way to being the most bike-friendly city in the country and -- a real green city. nothing is holding us back. the mayor still most of my numbers that i was going to share with you. he is just a little too sharp these days. but i wanted to share a survey we did recently. we learned that one in two people in san francisco said they would like more if there were more bike lanes. as the mayor mentioned, we have seen a big increase in people biking, even with the very few improvements we have had over the last few years. we also know that seven out of 10 people rode a bike last year, seven out of 10 san franciscans. all of that adds up to a huge demand for the improvements that the city is going to be rolling out this year and next.
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these 35 bike lane projects are all planned. they are funded. they are ready to go thanks to the amazing work of the mta. i want to particularly thank bridget smith and her team for all their amazing work in making sure that we are ready to go when this day comes, and they are ready. after a decision that just came at 5:00 on friday afternoon. i applaud them for being ready. you are going to see amazing things on the streets here in san francisco. we really learned a lot, even in the last few months, we saw the improvements on market street. people have just loved the green separated by planes on market street, and now that the injunction has been lifted, we are ready to move forward and have those separated green by plans on market street go the
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whole length. they are all projects in the by plan, but you are going to see more than that. san francisco is to be going to be transformed, and the streets are going to be just a wonderful place for everyone to travel. i wanted to also thank the city attorney's -- attorneys, dennis herrera and his staff who did a really great job on getting us past the injunction. and i swear that is the last time you are ever going to hear me say that word. thank you all for being out here. we are ready for this new era to begin, and you are going to see the city become, as the mayor said, the number one most by a friendly city -- bike-friendly city in the country [applause] >> supervisor mirkarimi, do you
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want to say few words? strong champion of our bike program. >> thank you. we just jam from the budget committee to get over here. i would not miss this for the world. i just heard someone echo mayor newsom's comments about how san francisco aims to be and is serious about being extremely bike-friendly, and this is a challenge to the rest of the united states that this is an urban pledge and one that we will see no retreat to. i'm absolutely delighted to be here today to see us moving forward. the only time of the three-year paralysis due to the bike in junction where we were able to successfully see some injunctive relief was in my district, the fifth district, where the city benefited from the first installation of a dedicated bike light. we're all very appreciative of that innovation as well as