>> good morning, everyone. thank you so much for joining us at el cafe. we want to thank lourdes for housing us this morning. this was a really wonderful opportunity for us to get the community more involved. as many of you know we've been working really hard on our truancy and wanting to get our kids in our schools, staying in our schools, and make sure they're doing exactly what they're supposed to be doing. this effort has been a true effort between the city, the school district, and so many of our partners in the community,

and this launch today is really about involving our community, our larger community, in what it is that we're trying to do. and so we want to just thank all of our community partners who are here, urban services, maria sue from the department of children, youth, and families. the s.f. police department, who has been really instrumental in making sure that our truancy process goes well, and captain lazar is here from the police department. want to thank him for all of his efforts and supporting what we're doing. and i have from the school district superintendent garcia and our mayor, who have been partnering on so many different efforts. but today is about bringing our communities into the fold. when we see students out on the street, we're not going to walk by them any longer and just allow them to stay on the street and miss hours of school and miss opportunities, to be the kind of citizens that we want them to be. and so this is really about

showing the support for our students and that our community is here to be with them. and i also wanted to acknowledge regina, who has been really instrumental in connecting us with our merchant associations, and then we also have erica, who is here, who is our representative of the merchant associations that we're going to be walking and meeting with this afternoon. i did get maria. so without further ado -- there are so many people here -- i think part of the efforts that we wanted to really do too -- and lourdes, this is for you and your compadres around the neighborhood, so bring the staff to you, so you know who's part of this. we have our star from tarp, from sfpd, people that actually work directly with our families who are in crisis. so this is an opportunity for

you to see who the people are that are touching our students when you let us know that they need to be touched. so this is really an opportunity for all of our merchants to see what we're putting in behind this effort. so without further ado, i want to welcome our superintendent of schools. our first week of school went off without a hitch, thank goodness. and the efforts that he's been doing around truancy and the support he's been giving and receiving to the city to make sure our students stay in school. superintendent carlos garcia. [applause] >> good morning. for me, it's like a dream come true. i have to tell you. i've been a superintendent in three other places before i came here, and finally my dream has come true. we have a mayor who is actually walk tk talk, stepping up and saying what we need to do is if this isn't just a school district problem. this isn't just a parent problem. this is really a community, a city, county problem.

it's everybody's problem. anybody who thinks it isn't their problem, boy, they really have big problems, because the reality is the impact of truancy affects every single one of us in this great city and state. look at the kids who are incorrespondent rated, the people who are prisoners in our state penal system. it's all people who are truants. and 70% of our prisoners aren't literate. they can't read. so you can't learn to read unless you're at school and you're actively engaged in school. so finally, we have a city, we have, you know, departments. we have a mayor, we have a superintendent. we have everybody, teachers, now merchants, because we had to cast a bigger net. the net keeps getting -- every time we get together, somebody comes up with a more brilliant idea of saying, well, ok, you've gotten the parents involved now. you haven't had the d.a. involved. you have all these different people involved. who's missing? and the one that was obvious to us is where do kids hang out if

they're not in school? some of them stay at home, but we also know that a lot of the kids roam the streets and they go around commercial areas. so this now goes to the next level of saying, ok, now what are we going to do? this is something that needs to happen. if we want to turn this around, and i think we can, the results are in from last year, where it's a 30% increase on improving our attendance in our school district. i think we can get it to the point where it will be a model for the entire country. this doesn't happen by itself. it's been great to partner. this is the start of my fourth year, and we've had such a great partnership with the mayor. i'm stealing the show, but it really is my honor to scombruse i think a world class mayor here in san francisco gavin newsom. [applause] >> i don't know what more i can

possibly say, because i appreciate the spirit that carlos offered all of us, and that is we're all in this together. that there's no school district, truancy problem, there's not a city truancy problem, there's not a truancy problem as it relates to the issues at home and how they manifest in terms of attendance that we have in our community, not just in san francisco, the communities large and small across the state and across this nation, a major problem with truancy and dropouts. as carlos says, it manifests in the most acute ways. if you're fiscally conservative and care less about social justice and the issue of poverty and race, you should care about this issue as one of your dominant issues. because the costs are extraordinary. the economic costs and terms of lost wages. the economic cost, as carlos was saying, of incarceration. the economic cost in terms of

issues that manifest if someone is not going to school and someone is a dropout are self-evident. i think everyone can recognize those. the second thing is if you actually do believe in social justice and you do believe that we need to reconcile the issue of race and poverty, particularly in the african american and latino community, this needs to be top of your community. the facts are overwhelmingly so, that truancy and dropouts disproportionately affect the african-american and latino community. yet we somehow on both sides of the political aisle are playing the margins on this. and i said this with the superintendent, i guess it was your counselors, carlos, and with the district attorney, i said it feels like every year we're trying to fail more efficiently. which is just not good enough. last year we made some big progress, and carlos was right to recognize that progress.

but it's still, with all due respect, not good enough, because we know we have the capacity to do so much more. we've done a lot of good things. it's not as if we completely neglected this issue. we developed some innovative partnerships and programs that really are a model already in the region for the state and the nation. but it hasn't produced the outcomes that we were hopeful that it would produce. now with this new tarp -- this truancy assessment referral center, which is the first of its type in the nation with the new partnerships with the police department that have actually been embraced by the community, meaning it's not just law enforcement coming in to solve the problem in the community, being wary of that. but the community is now supportive because they understand the sensitivities that law enforcement has to how they can be a partner in this. and how we're now casting that wider net to the business community, to also say we need your help. if there are folks out there in the middle of the day, in the middle of the week, in the middle of the school year that are just hanging out, they

shouldn't be hanging. we need you to get engaged. we need your help. we need you to call the referral center. we need you to call 311. just call 311 and say i need let you know there's some kids out there that seem like good kids, but they could be better kids if they were in class, not necessarily hanging out in front of my birks or in my business, as much as i love them, i know their parents would love it more if they were at school, and encourage them along. we've never had that kind of partnership. so really the spirit of the day is we're going to go out, knock on doors, meet with the merchants, hand out these fliers. these are the fliers. say "keep it real, stay in school." we reference the new truancy school that we opened up, first of its type in the nation. we have a telephone number that's direct to them.

437-1700, or they can call 311, as always. and talk about the opportunity to be part of this solution. we're going to ask if they put this up in their windows, because we want some of the kids to go uh-oh, i guess they're more serious than ever about staying in school, and it may trigger a sense of responsibility to a lot of the children, or for a lot of the parents that may say, you know, i've had trouble with my kid. but here's a resource center. here's a place i can call to get help with my children, because they're not listening to me. i get this all the time when we knock on doors and meet with parents. i know how tough it is. this is not an indictment of parenting. this is not about pointing fingers. this is about offering our support and help. we recognize the stress of, particularly parents in this economic climate that are doing more than ever and have to do more than ever and they can't do it all. so they need our help as well. that's really the spirit of the moment, the spirit of the day, and the spirit of a new school year.

final point, we're not waiting in the statistics come in. that's probably the most significant thing, as we're not waiting until the middle of the school year. i just just want to thank car loaches it's an incredible temptation. mayors all seem to want to take over their school districts, because no one returns their calls, they don't feel like they're being respected, and everyone on the street is always blaming them for the quality of public education. it's exactly the opposite. to me, that is truly a solution in search of a problem. it would actually create more problems. in this city, we have a model partnership, we have a real leader that cares deeply about not only the school district, cares about his community and the city and recognizes that we are all again in this together and that he has a remarkable wealth of opportunity to resource capital and the human

resources of a 28,000-member city family, and we want to provide those resources. we want to provide that talent to help him do his job more effectively and vice versa. that's why it really is wonderful to see department heads in the past working together, community leaders that haven't been working together, everybody coming, stepping in, and stepping up. so that's the spirit. and i'm very grateful, again, for everyone's leadership and your stewardship. and captain lazar, for wearing a tie, making the mayor look bad. and eric for his great support and the great work he's doing down here. [applause] thank you. >> i always feel like any more a privileged position, because i also work with carlos very closely on the school board and i'm also a parent of a middle schooler and a high schooler. so if i find them at tark, they will be if a lot of trouble.

i'm grateful, though, that there will be folks like all of you that are out there look out for kids like mine that just, you know, thought that today was a beautiful day and wanted to go hang out. so tark will really focus on our chronic and habitual truants, and we'll also be able to redirect students so they don't get into that pattern of not being in school. i want to thank our deputy chief of staff, who was really instrumental in bringing all of this together. [applause] i think the mayor has made it extremely clear in our office that truancy is a priority, so all of us have gotten deeply involved in it. christine worked ve with eric to make sure that the merchants were aware of what we were doing. she came out and spoke to them personally. she made sure that this is not the only corridor that we'll be

hitting. we'll be talking to all of the merchant associations to find out where there are hot spot so we can reach out to the other communities. this will be one of many. i want to extend our gratitude to eric and give him an opportunity to talk about what this actually means for him as a merchant and somebody who organizes the community down this way. i think this will be really helpful, not only for his membership, but for our students. eric? >> thank you. i just want to thank the mayor for being here today. it's always good to see you here. thank you to lourdes for hosting us here this morning. [applause] i do want to say, this is a great opportunity for the merchants to really be involved in this program. i know that walk that christine and i did together today, some of the merchants already have passed that number on to some of their parents regarding the program. so i think it's going to be a

greet partnership. it really takes a community to really deal with this issue. the non-profits, the local businesses, the residents. the merchants are really the eyes and ears of what's happening along the corridor, so they know the families, they know the kids in the neighborhoods. their -- they're comminets and they speak -- clients and they speak to them every day. this is a great opportunity for everyone to come together and tackle this issue. i look forward to working with the mayor and talking to the merchants about the program. so thank you. [applause] >> we have lots of folks -- could actually all of you raise your hand that are involved in the school district, or tark. these are the folks that can answer questions if for you as you're walk along. so i guess we're doing that.

>> we're here to talk truancy. we've got a new partnership. we're trying to encourage kids to stay in school. it's really innovative.

the whole idea is to try to get merchants and encourage them to help out. instead of just hanging out here in the middle of the day. not to get you in the middle of these things, but we've got a number -- [inaudible] -- just help us encourage these kids. >> kids with their upbringing and their background -- [inaudible] -- the football program getting cut. >> some of them are going to be plumbers or a nasa scientist. we want to encourage them. >> we have academies.

so we're putting -- [inaudible] -- we're encouraging everybody to go to college. but some kids are in more technical jobs. >> and that's fine. >> and let that be their choice and not the system. because we need to get them in school. and if they're not in school, they won't be successful at all. >> there's so many things involved with that. i mean, it's all interwoven. [inaudible]

>> we thought we wouldd< take ts weekly video out on the road. we are here at recology at the recycling center. if you ever wondered where your recyclables go, and this new mandate for composting, the new challenges and mandates around recycling, what we are trying to achieve -- it all starts right here. we just marked an important milestone in our city. i would argue important this nationn francisco has now achieved a 77% diversion rate, the highest in america. no big city can lay claim to diverting that much of their waste, and that is why that composting requirement was so important. this is why our efforts to consumption and distribution and the like of plastic water

bottles is so important. it is because we want to reduce that waste going into the landfill. we want to reduce the burden on our environment. we want to create jobs. the folks on the line behind me and above me, those are folks that have employment because of these programs. we have added over 118 people in the last couple of years to the roles of the employed in these green collar jobs because of the recycling and composting programs. we actually created economic stimulus by building facilities like this and putting people to work to do that job. ball the folks out here in the hard hats are also supported by people in the office is doing the processing, doing accounting, doing the bookkeeping, so there is a multiple in terms of jobs that are created because of programs like we have established. it was error, we were less than 50%.

when i first w6urw@8yyixorwakñwe were roughly 35% effective, which was pretty impressive. it was higher than almost any other big city in this country, but we had an= reaching 50%, and they said it could not be done. we said we would reach 70%, and i was so proud when we broke 72%, and here we are with a goal of 75% by 2010, and not only did we achieve that. as i just region, we are at 77%. on our way -- ahead of schedule in fact, to be at 0 waste by 2020. there is no city that i know of anywhere in the world that could ever even imagine within the next number of years to be at zero ways. this is achievable because think about this -- even though we are at 77%, the remaining trash that comes here that ends up in a landfill -- already, we have

identified 2/3 of it that could easily be diverted if folks would do more composting at home and do more recycling at home and use these bins you see behind me. i do not want this to become a psa for our recycling efforts, although that is always good, and remember, it is the kids teaching the adults, which is always good. but this is good for the environment, good for the economy, and a san francisco can do this, cities across california and cities across america can do this. i will remind you of the great line by michelangelo, who said that the biggest risk is not that we aim to hawaii and miss but that we aim to low and --. it would have been easy for us to have a goal of 50% recycling rate by 2020. a lot of states, a lot of cities across the state, that will be tow%8x4ç:vw1qs8mna ++%uq

when you do that, you get people to organize that quality of imagination, where people in the private sector and public sector, using the entrepreneurial and innovative spirit coming up with new ideas and attitudes that may seem untoward or a little controversial or extreme at first, but suddenly, when you peel it back and look back two or three years, you go, "my gosh, that makes so much since." if you make a few mistakes in the process, but ultimately, you create a goal that is accomplished that becomes an example for other people and other cities to achieve with similar goals and accomplish similar efforts. we are really proud of our collective effort in san francisco and the people in a city that have stepped up. they mocked us a bit. i even was a little concerned about the composting requirement at first, but now i'm doing it. other folks are doing it, and it is really exciting to achieve these extraordinary goals.

green collar jobs. the new economy. this is our future. this is real. it is happening now, and it could be happening everywhere else, not just in the great city and county of san francisco. >> welcome to "culture wire." i'm your host meg. for years, free jazz concerts have been providing entertainment in downtown san francisco. people pay local musicians to perform for lunchtime crowds. the goal is not just entertainth. people in plazas are trying to create neighborhoods.

what began as a forum for performers who were paid by passing the hat has become a program that provides wide exposure and more than 500 paid gigs annually for local musicians. from july through september, people in plazas produces almost 300 free performances in the lunchtime hour. the mission of people in plazas generates social congregation. and by having these events, we encourage people to make these plazas everybody's neighborhood. >> recently, the san francisco arts commission was awarded a $ 250,000 grant for the national endowment for the arts. to establish an arts district in the central market corridor between fifth and 10th street. throughout the yearing the arts commission will partner with people in plazas to activate the

sidewalks along this stretch with art installation, opening events, live music, and new arts and antique markets at u.n. plaza. >> this area has been sleighted for many years, at least the past 25 years. i think that this redevelopment project and the n.e.a. grant are very positive signs that we have political will and a lot of momentum to really make the mid market area what it could be, which is a vibrant area where everybody is welcome and it's a place to be in san francisco. >> to get a feel for the future of the central market arts and culture district, be sure to catch out an upcoming concert. for locations and times, visit peopleinplazas.org. to learn more about the central market revitalization initiative, visit sfartcommission.org. thank you for watching "culture wire."