reside in the sunset district. -- i reside in the sunset district. in our theaters, our parents are not in the neighborhood schools. it can be hard to drop off or pick up in the early morning times. if we are in the neighborhood schools, it can save us the energy for the school bus coming so much more. it benefits the san francisco citizenship. we do not need to pay more tax to support the school bus. i had personal issues effective in march and april. my eldest son got accepted into

a school. the time to drop him off, my youngest son has to show up at the other school, which is far away. many times, this happens to parents in the school district. we have to save more money in our personal budget so we can let our children go on for higher learning. being parents, we are upset with that. commissioner wynns: we have five

minutes left. >> my name is randy wong. i represent an elementary school bilingual program. after fourth grade, our parents have an -- our students have no more bilingual tests. most of our kids decide to change middle schools. i represent the parents' petition. we are against our kids go into a middle school without an immersion program or bilingual program. thank you. >> good evening. i wanted to start by thanking the district for the good faith with which they have listened to parent and community input. i definitely agree with the

assistant superintendent that this is a complicated decision that requires thinking about a number of factors. i do feel that the community should have some sense of the timetable under which you are going to be trying to make these decisions. we do not know if we are talking about two months, 10 months, or two years. we deserve to have some more clarity, if not at this meeting, hopefully at one of the next meetings at which to take the vote. there are children that need language pathways' built for them. there are programs that need to be built. we cannot wait. we need to do it right. you also need to do it in a way that is transparent. the second point i would make is that if you would share some

information when you are coming up with potential feeders, of what are the projections for capacity, you have that information, but it has not been shared with the public. what our potential demographics of places you are going to send us? create an opportunity for us to talk. >> i am a teacher from an elementary school. i am here on behalf of my chinese students' parents, who are too busy making a living or too shy to speak here. many of them do not drive or speak with english. they want me to request in the strongest possible terms that the school board implement the proposed feeder patterned immediately. they invested their lives and in come to living in the sunset district so the children can go to the schools they like.

they want to go to the neighborhood schools. any change would be disastrous for them and would disrupt their normal living. they need your sympathy and understanding, and they need you to implement the proposed peter petre immediately. they do not want our children to be bused out of the area. they have always they feel comfortable with. please help them and hear their voices. >> i have a child in the immersion program. i have emailed you about my concerns. we are looking for quality of education here. i have one question. will language programs be

considered city-wide at the middle school level, or will they sit with their elementary school, as in the previous proposal? that is my question. commissioner wynns: this is going to be the last speaker. thank you. >> [speaking chinese]

[applause] >> my name is jenny. i am living in the mission district area. from my personal experience, my child is learning in the area schools over there.

i find the level is not [unintelligible] something important is my child wants to go on in higher level school. and because we live in the district, we would like to move to other schools for the better level in the feeders. also, i hope that all the schools will be based on california, for those students who would like to go to one school they think is ideal for them. [applause] commissioner wynns: i want to thank everybody for your testimony. if anybody has any further testimony they would like to submit, you can e-mail us.

the proposal is that we take this in phrases, -- in phases, which will give us more opportunities to get input from you in a more comprehensive way. i am going to start with commissioner mendoza. vice president mendoza: could you tell me -- commissioner wynns: it is difficult to hear now with the side conversations going on. please be quiet when leaving the room. could you tell me the capacity of the existing -- vice president mendoza: could you tell me the capacity of the

existing middle schools? if all of our middle schools graduated, would they all fit in at james blake and hoover? >> we plan to have enough space is to match the needs and demands. they could have two cohorts.

vice president mendoza: with the schools the parents were referring to, do we have a sense of how many families, what percentages, get their choice? is this city-wide, or is this by area? >> that is citywide. last year was 92%. three of the larger schools do not have language programs. hoover does, but the others do not. our capacity at the middle school level significantly exceeds the number of middle school students we have today. that is not what we expect the future to look like. we are expecting significant growth in a middle school over the next few years. historically, that has been the case.

commissioner fewer: think you for the hard work you have put into this. we heard from a couple of parents they are concerned you are taking away immersion programs. we are not eliminating immersion programs in schools, correct? >> correct. commissioner fewer: we are expanding them. i do not know how that misinformation got out, but i feel there needs to be a clarification. i feel like maybe that was a miscommunication and we do not want to focus on that. we do believe in and emergence strand k-12. -- in an immersion strand k-12. let us take the word out and not have a communication problem with that. we heard tonight about

neighborhood schools, and in fact over 50% of students in our school district do not sit to schools in their attendance zone. -- do not choose schools in their attendance zone. we are not talking about neighborhood. in my neighborhood, that is not an average statement. what it means is students who are attending schools in that area would be fed into that area. it could be kids who are actually living across town.

just a clarification for folks who use neighborhood schools. we do not use neighborhood schools. we use attendance zones. i want to say to staff a think it is wise that we do the program placement. i think from the very beginning we were all very, very clear about program placement. it was in every discussion and every recommendation. the program placement was huge. on the west side, we do not have any spanish immersion programs. i do not even think we have a chinese immersion program. looking at that offering of program, i think that would be worth to look at. i have heard tonight from some people about, "why don't people just moved into an apartment, and what if they don't really

live there?" we have hired investigators. we are knocking on doors. frankly, we found a lot of parents who are not using the correct address. i want to let you know that if you are using the address of the relative or a fake address to get one over on the system, it is not going to work. a lot of parents were very upset with us for their children being pulled out of those schools and being placed at other schools, but in some cases that are out of district. they are not allowed to go to school in our district. i want to tell the audience because that was brought up this evening. we are guarding against that. we have hired full-time investigators. i know a lot of people are using addresses of relatives. we are knocking on doors. you can be sure that we are trying to eliminate the gaming of the system. i appreciate everyone who is

here tonight and taking an interest in their child's attendance. we have had ongoing student assignment meetings. this has been an ongoing process. i feel we have had a very open process here. it has been televised. all the results have been on our website. we have had multiple meetings on a very regular basis with almost full board attendance. we have made a very big effort to inform the public.

directly from public comment, come from what we heard in the sessions, what we hear at community meetings, and i just want you to know it is not a perfect system. we have designed a system that we know that we are segregated by geography in the city, very drastically, so we are doing the best that we can, and korea knowledge this is not a perfect system, but we have been doing this a long time, and we are getting this to where i think we are making our best effort right now, and ask you to join us in this effort to continue in the conversation, and i know it is sometimes painful. it is painful for us, too. again, it is not a perfect system. the system has been designed for tweaking and changing so that we make sure that we are as close

to meeting the needs of our 65,000 public-school children, and so, again, i think you for your participation. commissioner: thank you. commissioner norton? commissioner norton: i appreciate what you said about fielder -- feeder areas. clearly, we heard a lot of anger, particularly from parents of those in the immersion programs. it is really important to me that we do this differently,

that we give people enough time to absorb the changes that we are proposing, that we have given better thought to what that program placement is and our capacity to actually put programs where they are needed and bill them so that they are ready when they are needed, and i think also, particularly with respect to some schools, and i know we will talk more about that at the superintendent's meeting tomorrow night, but i think we need to give families a better understanding of what we are proposing to do. i really heard loud and clear from a lot of the families. they needed a better sense of what are the reforms that you are planning. i actually heard a lot of open mindedness. they did not get a clear picture of that from us, so i think we need to do a better job of communicating, and timelines and benchmarks, i know we have the

best intentions in the world, but i do not think there is a tremendous amount of trust out there in the community about our capacity to do what we actually said we are going to do. we actually have to do what we say we are going to do, and we have to ask in such away -- a way. [applause] commissioner: commissioner yee? no? ok, i just want to say a few things. i really want to emphasize over and over again about how much work this has been for staff. it is a huge amount of work.

the students, application season is beginning, and we will begin to print the enrollment guides. it is important to remember and i hope by next spring, i hope we will make a decision. if it is not happening this year

with the feeder patterns, i think we say the office of the people understand. and thenãi i just wanted to say that i think, as the staff said, we put something out there that was the best that could be created with the input that we had and with the goals we had at that time. i do not think that anybody quite anticipated what we got at the level that we got it. this process in my view really gave us a chance to go into some of the problematic issues. because it is a term we have used, several times tonight, we have used the term "program placement," which is kind of specific as to what we have in

the district. i kind of hope that we do not use that for what we are proposing to do. but there was very professional and program development strategies. not that someone is going to say, "i want this program," and it is going to go through a committee. we are talking about changing the program at the middle schools, which will be affected by in driven by the feeder pattern, so that conversation has to take place, i think, among the of the things that the deputy superintendent referred to. this is why i am supportive of this postponement. so, anyway, this committee is going to be going on to meet monthly. commissioner mendoza and myself

recommending for the 28, so the chair will entertain a motion. i will second that and be supportive of that, and we will recognize the substitute motion. [applause] we still have one-third of our agenda, about transportation, and i do want to say that if any of you were leaving, i know that you were concerned about the feeder patterns. transportation is going to affect the access of the schools. if not this evening, i hope that all of you who care about this

subject will pay attention to the transportation proposals because it will change the access issues, so those of you who are leaving, again, try to do it as quietly as possible, and we will start with the staff presentation about the transportation proposal. ok. deputy superintendent. >> developing a data least about the transportation policy, and my colleagues, if i leave things out, please help me rounded out. -- round it out. i think a good job was done going through the staff

presentation, and i will try to do the same, although what has gone into the thinking behind this is as ms. o'keefe alluded to, it has been a little less developed, frankly, and that is one of the reasons why we are proposing a slight adjustment in the timeline, so the goal of this presentation is to briefly go over the timeline with the new policy. there are some very significant questions about how the policy might be implemented and to get the feedback from the board and the feedback the commissioners of about the thinking that we have undertaken so far. so just to cut to the chase in

terms of the policy timeline, the original plan was to have this discussion take place from the 2004 act of the transportation policy at a fairly broad level of the second meeting, two weeks from tomorrow, and what we are proposing is that second reading take place in november, on november 9, and we would have two more discussions in this ad hoc committee that would go into more detail about regulations that would take place at the october 13 committee meeting, and then as ms. o'keefe said earlier, we would still be in the position to publish a goal

for the school year in january of two dozen 11, which is still a long time for that information for the choices that families make, and that is one of the timelines that we would like your feedback on. the approach that we are taking conceptually is that we are trying to, number one, work within the current parameters of the budget. we know that has been a concern. that has been on the minds of the district, and it was expressed by you in the past couple of years, especially because things in the budget have gotten so tight, but we also want to build a new transportation infrastructure that is aligned with wynegar policy vote, with the policy that was passed in the spring,

and then these implementation questions have gone into a lot of detail, so, in general, this is not rocket science, but this means that some bus stops would be eliminated, some would be maintained. some would be added. it would be a question of which stops ball into those categories, so with respect to the redesign of the network of routes, korea been thinking about the following principles. one is that we want to provide access to elementary and other programs throughout the city, at least where there is a critical mass of students that would be appropriately attending those programs. there are several elementary schools that are currently served and have been served for some time by the bus routes.