have the any speakers signed up for this item. anyone like to speak? seeing none, any questions or comments from the board? all right, roll call. >> thank you. [roll call] four ayes. president kim: next is item n. discussion of other issues. i'm actually very excited to hear more about the restructuring that we have done at our central office, and this is on the development of the superintendent. superintendent garcia. >> yes, i'd like t the deputy superintendent to start this off. >> thank you, superintendent garcia, president kim, commissioners.

this board, in adopting the strategic plan in 2008 clearly indicated that there was a concern with the achievement of all students in all segments of our community. memorialized in the strategic plan, the desire and aspiration to ensure academic access to high-quality instruction and instruction programs for all students. as we have worked to implement that vision and make that vision a reality for all students, we have a engaged in a process of looking at our system extractors on how we provide those opportunities for students. more importantly, how we organize ourselves to be able to fulfil those promises. we are very excited this evening to give you the first of many updates this year on what that will look like if we go forward. in the spring semester of the last school year, we engaged in

a rigorous process of looking for talented individuals that would take ownership of a certain segment in our community. we have talked for years in this community about services and the need to focus our resources in the they view and hunters point community, and also in the mission. we are excited we have found two individuals to lead this work -- assistant superintendent patricia gray and assistant superintendent [unintelligible] i would like to turn it over to them to explain the theory of action behind a superintendent the zone and some of the components of the superintendent the zone -- of a superintendent zone. >> just a few minutes ago, i spoke with a reporter who asked me, "do you really think it will

work?" my answer is absolutely. if we did not believe this would work we would not be trying to make it work. what you are hearing from us tonight is how we are beginning to describe our initial phases around the development of our superintendent zone effort. do you want to do it for me? you will see the rationale of the organization, which you have heard a little bit about from the superintendent. our theory of action, emerging priorities, and the implementation plan that has begun to emerge. these are the initial phases of implementation. our rationale -- you have heard the deputy superintendent explain the need and we have heard you agree there is a definite need for closing the achievement gap and providing

opportunities for children in the bay view and the mission. for all of our children, but especially them. last spring, rpa identified the schools in need. there are several federal and state criteria that show us that we are not meeting the needs of our students. the state of california identified the 10 san francisco schools that are in the bottom 5% of chronically underperforming schools. we have 8the lea plan and the school grant requirements, which led us to know we needed to do what we always knew, but even more. we began to develop a draft theory of action. we call it a draft because it is going to be continuously changing.

our draft theory is it -- and notice resale "when" -- notice we say "when," not "if." when we identify a number of schools, then we will positively impact and accelerate student learning outcomes. we will continue to refine and redefine our theory of action as our work analysis and evaluations continue. if you notice, we have the superintendent zone. some of you have heard this from the deputy and the superintendent before. our zone is divided into two teams -- they view and up revers, spearheaded by me. -- bayview and revere,

spearheaded by me. mission and [unintelligible] he has a boy your elementary and to high schools. -- he has four elementary and two high schools. next is a list of our identified priorities, but it is an incomplete list. we value being inclusive and so we have not finished to identify our priorities. we still need to work with our parents, our labor partners, and our community partners. this will continue to be defined. i will not read them to you.

our charge is to accelerate positive results for students. we will develop a profile with our teams in conjunction with a balanced scorecard, but the staff and principles of the schools. we have been doing a needs analysis of the schools in the superintendent zone in collaboration with the schools, working with instruction reform facilitators, working with our partners in school innovation, with a defined rubric for change, integrating our balanced scorecard, combining our resources to this defined set of priorities, and our external providers and partners. >> good evening, commissioners

and superintendent. i am the superintendent for the superintendent schools. i had the privilege of working with the mission district and john muir school. at the center of our effort is the instructional course. our deputy superintendent often starts there with an essential first question -- what are students expected to learn? you heard earlier a successful counter a narrative from one of our teachers about the outcomes we can expect from teaching and learning. in the lessons we provide when we collaborate with our colleagues and share in engage parents and community members about what we expect from students, with our progress along the way we create opportunities to share best practices. the instructional corporation -- we have been doing exciting work on articulating a framework for

those expectations around content and standards. our superintendent zone schools hope to lead that work in implementing those facets and begin to work their way through this draft of the courtroom come to offer suggestions and to make sure our students are meeting those standards. at the core of instruction is making sure we are approaching effective reading instruction through a balanced literacy approach. that includes providing robust and direct support for our teachers and our students. in order to best access the content in those standards, we know that a large part of our student population we are hoping to support includes a lot of differentiation we need to be effective at providing. therefore, aspect that allow master plan, we have a dedication to completing, which includes english development

time on all of our master schedules. then we begin to have deep conversations around instructional practices to differentiate for those students. the second essential question our superintendent often speaks about -- once we have come to terms with defining what our students want to learn, how is learning being measured and what are the results? we are putting into place a work around in measuring performance, which is a range and battery of assessments -- everything from diagnostic testing in the classrooms to school-developed rubrics as well as the benchmark assessments our district is going to be putting into place. all of those tools are going to help to monitor student growth, in form instruction, and a sure we are tailoring our -- inform

instruction, and assure we are tailoring our district. when students to fail, we will identify specialist teachers who can work in and out of classrooms to identify students. we can learn from technology- based interventions that are showing great promise and providing hardware and ramp up to use those. we want to explore expanded learning time to increase instructional minutes before and after school with targeted tutoring, as well as offering some summer academies. we hope to help address some direct student support along with a continuum that addresses students other's needs. those include attendance and truancy. that is a particular crisis in many of our schools.

we intend to wrap all of our communities around assuring students are there to receive the content we are offering. extended learning opportunities is one of those reform model opportunities. to accelerate, students will need targeted opportunities to be on par with their peers. there is no greater investment we can make them in the professionals on the front line in our classrooms. we believe we can only be successful in working with them and making an investment in their practice. therefore we look forward to beginning to develop and articulate a sequence of targeted teacher development that comes from looking at the data and there voiced needs. we are making a dedicated effort to dedicate our master teachers program to the superintendent zone schools.

teachers will be receiving an application process. that is an opportunity open to them to support their peers at the schools. we have secured private foundation funding to subsidize and support any teacher interested in the superintendent zone, beginning in the mission district, who would like to pursue other national board certification to increase their practice. in order to hone a practice, you need to work with coaches. we are seeking to put into place content instructional coaches in literacy, math, and other secondary content areas. we also need to invest in our leaders in this effort. our teams meet regularly with a cohort of principals. we also dedicate our small group time to assessing principals around and agreed

inquiry topic that affects achievement in their schools. this is in addition to direct support zone that team members are responding to. >>vice president mendoza: we knw that when families are involved there is greater academic success. to increase that engagement -- > > we know that when families are involved there is greater academic success. to increase that -- to increase that engagement we have tried to involve families and work in other areas of support services to increase attendance and decrease truancy. parent leadership, coaching, and capacity building is a major component of what we are trying

to do. implementation of our district parent engagement plan. providing parent liaisons' that are already there but making sure that are more capable of doing what they need to do to increase the conversations with the schools and with the families. >> to be successful in this effort, we need everybody's assistance. we want to embody the community's schools approach. none of our identified schools will be -- nine of our identified schools will be working to find a full-time community -- full-time community facilitator. as another strategy for engaging the many neighborhood agencies, groups, and community-

based organizations, our intent is to launch an advisory council chaired by a steering committee. there is a range of providers in our neighborhoods that have continued to serve on with behavioral and mental help support. we want to share practices that have shown promise in several of our schools. i can list other ways a community schools approach will have ramifications. there are some ways that will help us to define our extended learning model as well as developing summer bridge academies for our kindergarten students, as well as readiness for grade 5 making transition to 6 and great 8 making transition to nine. >> are overarching goal is that all of our students meet their academic targets. >> in order to do all of this

work -- how? what are the means? we have already launched dedicated superintendent zone at teams by reorganizing centrally to be more in schools directly. we are working carefully with school principals and communities to assure given their priorities that there are budgets and resources available to them -- personnel, money, and time aligned to those priorities. we expect that our school improvement grant application will result in the $45 million and have often recommended, which will help directly support 10 of our 15 schools in the zone. we continue to be aggressive about pursuing external grant funding. we have already been successful with a couple of significant grants with the support of the alliance and others.

human-resources staff and support -- i wanted to put an example around some of the ways our departments are being responsive to the needs of the zone. we will continue to place the emphasis in the queue. the other is the investment in human capital as a resource alignment to the effort by dedicating our resources to the professionals in the school. >> our overarching goal for all students is to meet their academic targets. i need to do this more often. that is our right. [laughter] for the third time, all of our students -- not particularly. i am better one on one. [applause] all of our students will meet their academic targets.

they will all the college and career ready. that we have quality schools in every neighborhood. and that students and families with in the neighborhoods will choose to stay within the neighborhood and attend those schools. we will demonstrate school improvement models and that will be the foundation for improving all of our schools even more. there will be lessons for larger systemic reform. >> we clearly find ourselves at the beginning of this effort. it is a continuous cycle of improvement that we have given new. it sheds a bit of light around how we are beginning to frame this work in collaborating with our school communities in making that analysis. immediate next steps are to continue to engage our school

community on tailoring their specific plans by taking our councils, pdas, and other involved partnerships -- ptas and other involved partnerships. we want schools to revisit their specific plans and make sure what was originally outlined meets their needs after the have reflected on their data and inserted their upgraded priorities. we cannot do this work without involving the range of the professionals in our schools, engaging our labor partners to help strategizing about how to capitalize on what is going to be a significant but temporary windfall to invest in our schools and professionals so we are left with sustainable quality schools. >> i would like to add that we are very excited about this opportunity and want to thank you for giving us this

opportunity to do the work. president kim: any comments or questions from the board? commissioner norton: i appreciate the presentation. but i guess i have a couple specific questions. my big question is how does this really look from the ground at some of the schools we're talking about. a number of these reform efforts are things we have described in the past that we were going to do in the bay view and some of our most struggling schools. we are doing things differently, but what is different on the ground? can you give me some examples for how this is going to feel different? >> actually, this is the first time i think there has been a targeted team. it is triage almost to go in.

we have a team of very highly respected -- very capable professionals. we are going in, evaluating, seeing things that in the past the assistant superintendent has had so many schools there were not able to spend as much time on and did not have the personnel. we are able to do that now. so we are seeing needs that are bubbling to the surface that affect academic achievement that have not been seen before. we are coming up with things like ways to increase instructional time as a result of seeing targeting each of the schools, being there several times a week. we have our people working to increase attendance. there are just little things that were slipping through the cracks that had not been

identified. that is the beginning stages. then there is the professional development. we are developing ways of doing zoned professional development. we are reaching all of the teachers and not just a school of teachers. >> some tangible ways you might feel or observe the difference is parents will be much more thoroughly engaged about understanding what expectations are for learning in the classroom grade to grade, quarter to quarter, and have clear measures for understanding how their students are doing. in the classroom, you might see a second teacher during the lift receive block, either providing demonstration lessons and, working on a specific strategy, providing intervention support using tailored curriculum materials with a set group of students. you might see partners and

coaches working with grade level teams and instructional leadership teams as well as the principal in defining their action plan. our neighborhood cbos are meeting regularly, collaborating in ways that are also impacting on the school and neighborhood. there are daily ways we expect you will see things different that are more meaningful, and building capacity. feedfecommissioner fewer: i hada couple of quick questions as well. >> everything about the way we are going about this work is by -- this is what our teams have been doing the first few weeks of school. we have been taking a careful

inventory of what is in place and have they implement a structure to provide first come second, and third tier support interventions for students. we are taking a similar approach in thinking about our schools and how we respond to their needs. as we bring in resources, we need to have a clear sense of what is needed so we can tailor those in very customized ways. everything about how we are doing this work we hope is about having clear differentiation for our students, teachers, and schools. commissioner fewer: is this hour demonstration project for the district? not to put you on the spot. we have been talking about implementing an rta-like structure. is this where we are starting? -- commissioner norton:.

>> we hope to demonstrate what effective school reform looks like. it is innovative so that it is captured in a systemic way. what we would like to do is that whatever we are doing in the superintendent zone that is showing results we can replicate and scale at other schools. so when superintendents talk about the differentiated level of support by school, by classroom, by community, it is completely about an rti-type model. in a very long winded way, yes. commissioner fewer: thank you for this presentation. i just have a couple of questions. i did not see anything around restorative justice in your from

work. if you look at these schools, these are schools that some of them may not be involved in restorative justice implementation. but i am assuming some of them will be. i did not see that in the category at all about discipline and how we discipline, and the change in the culture in which we will discipline. i hope to see that inc. when we look at reform. i would like also to use this as a test case in the zone if we have restorative just as practices. how would you change the culture of discipline bursa's punishment -- versus punishment in our schools? i think part of a a barrier is the language of the bureaucracy of our system. i hope that when you are meeting with parents and speaking about the zone that we break it down in a way that is not

intimidating and actually has a real personal meaning to what is going to happen to their children in the transformation and what parents can expect. my next point is that we have been working very hard to give different services to reform what we do around parent engagement, bringing it to an empowerment model. some of the things you outlined that you may have in schools might be something different than what the system as a whole has said to support a cultural shift from dependency to empowerment. i wanted to keep you in mind that we should probably have updates about the direction of parent engagement so that it actually complement's what you are doing and supports what you are doing, so they work together. these children may not also be

going to schools in this zone at three years from now, but we want our parents to be empowered and have a strong sense of efficacy wherever their children may go. the other thing is around the current engagement we already have existing cbos doing a lot of that work. i am glad to hear you are around the table with them and they are not being shut out of this process. today in our agenda we have mous and agreements with many of our cbos which support the direction you want to go with superintendent zones. looking at this, i am very hopeful, but i echo what commissioner norton said. i would like to see what it means on the ground. the only