in place by 2013 and 2014. and then to develop a three-year phase-out plan for our current routes and stops that will -- that will not exist by 2013 and 2014. >> in terms of a time line of what we would do next and get to a point where we both have -- and you -- new transportation policy and also a new transportation infrastructure with routes, we're very conscious of the fact that our enrollment cycle for 11-12 is going to kick off in november. and that before families submit their choices they will want foff a sense of what -- want to have a sense of what kind of transportation will be available. so we're very conscious of that. and we're also conscious of the fact that this is a major shift. we're not just talking about a reduction. but we're also talking about a realignment.

so not only will there be fewer buses, but there will also be a different strategy and set of goals and objectives around which the rides and stops will be developed. and we recognize that that is something we want to make sure we take time to do and that we get feedback from the public as we're doing it. so with that in mind, we are hoping that beginning tonight, actually, we're sharing some goals and object and i was we'll get your feedback and tomorrow, we have a meeting with p.a.c. and p.p.s. and some other groups that are very supportive and thoughtful about this issue to start thinking about what our communication strategy, our public engagement strategy should be for october, november, and the beginning of december. and the goals are that during that process that we would sharare and the goals for transportation, and that we would get feedback on the objectives and the approach. and from the community and from -- and the community includes

district community as well as the broader public community. so we want to make sure we have conversations with the principals, administrators, superintendents, cabinet, and as well as parent organizations and to gather that feedback. and at the same time, we would be -- based on the feedback we get from you tonight, mr. garden and others, would begin to start developing more specific information about what a potential infrastructure might look like given the goals and objectives. and that we would bring that more specific information back to the board at the november 8 ad hoc committee meeting. and that we would submit a substitute motion for second reading and board action on december 14. and that would be for the policy. not for the routes. but based on the feedback we would get from the community and the board and the discussions about the goals and objectives, we would want to make sure that that was reflected in the student assignment policy. so, for example, tonight, we

recommended some specific adjustments. like the afterschool. and the phaseout. we would want to incorporate language into the policy that reflected that. and there might be other pieces of feedback that we get from the board or through the community conversation that is we think should be reflected in the policy itself. the routes obviously and the work that would guide the development of the routes. so we imagine it would be an amended policy that would come back for second reading reflect ing all the feedback we receive. in january we're hoping to share details of the proposed infrastructure for the 2011-12 school year. that won't be stop specific. it won't have addresses. but it would basically say something to the effect of from, and it would say a neighborhood like the mission. there will be transportation to. and it would name the schools. but it wouldn't have the street address. and that we would have all of that information finalized by the -- by july. the actual route information. as well as the three-year implementation plan. so by july we would be able to say in 11-12 this is where the

routes are but for 2012-13 it would look like this and for 2013-14 it would look like this. as parents make decisions they will be able to see across three years how they -- how the transportation infrastructure would either change or provide opportunities that weren't in place before. and that that could be a factor for family planning purposes. so it's not easy to make such sweeping changes. we want to do it in a way that's transparent, that provides opportunity for feedback. but that also moves quickly enough that parents can actually start to make decisions. and before they submit their applications. the deadline for applications is in february. so if we come back in november -- on november 8, that's actually before the enrollment fair. so whatever information the more specific information we have for the board on november 8, we would incorporate your feedback at the enrollment fair on november 13.

and then continue to share out additional information as it became available. so that's the time line that we're proposing. so our goals are to tonight gather feedback and we have four questions. but, you know, obviously these may not be the only questions and you may have other questions or suggestions. but in general, we wanted to get a sense of your thoughts about the goals and objectives. do you think these are the correct goals and objectives for us to build a transportation infrastructure around? and what your thoughts are about the recommended adjustments and -- in terms of the afterschool and the phased-in approach and the reduction approach over a three-year period of 57% reduction in the yellow bus service for elementary. and if if you have any specific amendments to our approach and time line, our -- and if you have any specific questions, you would like us to explore with the community, as we launch a community engagement

process, if there was anything in particular thaw -- that you wanted to make sure we got feedback on. and starting with the conversation tomorrow to start fleshing out and begin the community engagement process and again, if we're thinking that this community engagement process is having conversations with community based organizations, parent groups, administrators, district staff, as opposed to thinking about communicating directly with individual parents who are currently using a route to say what it would look like. because we don't have that information yet. the ones -- so once we have more information in january we could do more target information with families who might be impacted by any changes. but this would be kind of a broader, a different type of conversation over the next couple of months. and that we would begin designing the transportation infrastructure based on the feedback. so we could start getting more specific. >> commissioner. >> i'm sorry. i have to speak first because i

have to leave early and i can't hear the other board members' comments and i would love to hear them. i missed -- i haven't been on budget committee for the last year and a half so i've missed some of the conversations since when i was on budget committee and we first started looking at the transportation budget. and so i may be a little bit out of that loop. but some of my memory in terms of why the board wanted to reduce transportation budget was not necessarily to reduce services but to explore other ways to counter some of the costs. so one was whether parents would be interested in paying a fee. to help offset some of these costs. based on a sliding scale. and i know that there are a couple comments from parents, well, if you send us a school really far away, it's not really fair. i get that. that's a question i would like us to engage our families on. so versus reducing from 44 to 25 buses, would there be an interest in paying a small fee. and i didn't know exactly how

to calculate it. but roughly there's 4,000 students. you think the general -- i'm sure some of them take twice more than once but it roughly comes out to $1,000 per school year. so i know that was a conversation piece. i would be interested in hearing about that. for me, the larger concern was not general ed transportation. that wasn't the area that i was looking to cut. i was interested in how we could cut special ed transportation. without of course hurting the specific needs that our special ed students have. but the amount of money we spent per student is ridiculous to me. like i don't understand how we can spend anywhere from $4,000 to $7,000 a student. as much as we get from the state just to transport our special ed students. and i still don't have a really clear understanding. and i know i talked to commissioners about -- the -- i still don't -- i still don't understand it. and that's -- what do other

districts do? that's the $15 million of special ed. general ed is only $5 million. even if we reduced it, we save $2 million which is great. we need all the revenue that we can get. but that to me is where we should be focusing and how we can save but still effectively serve our special ed community. thank you. >> thank you for the presentation. i did like the goals, though. i think that it's great to have it in alignment with the student a signment process. in terms of -- targeting -- isolated neighborhood. and also ensuring that all of our students have access to afterschool programs. i think that those schools are great, and it makes sense for us to really be aligning our transportation priorities to our student assignment priorities. that to me i really like. >> ok. commissioner kim has to leave which is why we went straight to her comments. but that conversation about

just the financial implications of transportation is going to be ongoing in the budget committee. and i think here our purpose is to really talk about aligning our transportation policy with our student assignment policy. and everything. through this committee. the implication, all the implications of the student assignment system and policy. >> except that we still have not had our conversation about students of special ed. which is very, very knitted together with special ed transportation. so i think your point's well taken, commissioner kim. we have -- we have to have that discussion at some point. >> so -- contrary to what we have on our agenda, i think that we need to separate the board discussion, some of which we've already started about this item, from the second item. and i don't think that we want -- i think we're -- i think we are going to be confused. i don't know about everybody else if we try to have the

other presentation and then talk about both of those things. so i would like us to have our discussion about the transportation issues and i think we need to take public testimony on transportation. and the presentation that you just heard, if there's any member of the public that would like to testify on that specific issue, the transportation proposal, or ideas, that have been floated here or presented to us, please come to the podium. identify yourself. for the record, you'll have two minutes to speak. >> good evening commissioners, danny robinson harris, chair of the child development committee. just two points. in thinking about the transportation process, please keep in mind the issues. i've been working in the bayview community for over 20 years. and i know that the parents of the community truly depend on transportation to get their children back and forth to

school. the second thing is i want to bring it to your attention if you have -- if you haven't, the governor recently signed the bill for a newly enrolled day for kindergarten. and the implication for that is -- and please keep an open mind that in the next three years, we will have another group of children, 200 to 400 children, that will not be able to go to kindergarten that will be in the transitional kindergarten program. and will that impact transportation? thank you. >> thank you. is there anybody else that wants to testify on this? ok. >> you can testify at the end also. >> most on the other item. -- mostly on the other item. commissioner norton. commissioner mendoza. commissioner mendoza: thank you. so i had a couple of questions

on page 11. when you were doing the kind of -- talking a little bit about lakeshore. and those routes. so if the buses -- if the routes go through particular neighborhoods, so, for example, buses that come through bayview and go through bernall because families that live in bernall go -- or even to glen park, go to lakeshore, will those routes continue or are we just trying to eliminate routes that -- for families who may not necessarily need the routes versus those that need them and if it along the way, are those routes going to stay intact, i'm trying to sort out what we're trying to do here in terms of shortening some of the routes but if they're long the way are we still going to do those routes? >> we -- i think what we're

starting with is looking at the objectives and then building -- starting to build routes based on the objectives. and we'll have to analyze that route to look at the length of time, whether we can -- whether we can make that route and then i do think that there are -- after that, possibilities to look at is are there opportunities to add stops. >> yeah. i think we wanted to evaluate all of the stops. i mean, a lot of our stops are at schools. so we're picking children up from one school and driving them to another school. so we also want to think about the location of all the stops. leak how many stops are near public housing? or near shelters, homeless shelters? but there are considerations like is there space for a bus

to pull over? we just haven't had that level of detailed conversation in a very long time. i think as a dribblingt. -- as a district. so we're going to start at a high level and build a baseline, what would the vision of the future be and analyze each stop in relation to the objective. and as long as susan was pointing out, it doesn't have an impact on the total amount of time a child spends on a bus, and we also have to be congress any zant of the fact that -- congress any zant of the fact that every time we leave a stop, it might impede our ability to maintain a coherent kind of efficient infrastructure. so we'll take that into consideration, too. >> thank you. i just want to caution making sure we have some criteria set up for that. so that as we make decisions across town, that they're falling into place in that regard. on page 17, the -- the three

major implications and the afterschool programming, i want to make sure that this coincides with our objective to have afterschool for all. and to make sure that we have after school on site. and the idea that we have so many -- i didn't realize that we had so many offsite after school programs. i thought it was maybe a handful. and we were just kind of accommodating folks because it was on our way. so -- and didn't realize how many we had on site. so i just want to make sure that that is a conversation that gets folded in and that the afterschool programming piece is part of that discussion. on page 20, so we're reducing the general education transportation formentry schools, i know that we -- for elementary schools, i know that we still transport middle and high are those going to be eliminated completely or is that just for special ed? who's currently being transported to middle and high? and what's that going to look like? >> this year, we eliminated as

part of the budget deficit action plan we eliminated high school general education transportation. we do have i believe about five buses that make trips to -- i don't know if it's a combination. i shouldn't say. but we do have buses that make trips to middle schools. our proposal for now is to -- given that we haven't -- that we've put off some middle school feeder patterns for development over this next year, that we keep those middle school routes until we have a middle school student assignment policy. >> i'm just curious, if we're going to go from 44 buses to 25 buses, what happens to the

surplus fleets? are -- >> the contract is reduced or the buses -- if we wanted to add, it would just add, it would just increase our contract, but so the buses would just go away. they are not ours. >> right, commissioner. we have a contract with, per student that basically under which we pay for the buses that we use on a daily basis throughout the year. so if we were to reduce the number of buses in the fleet next year, the year after that or at any year during the term of the contract, then we would see a proportional reduction in the amount that we pay the contractor. there are some limitations going the other way that if we were to contract for a certain number of buses, and depending on the availability of buses in

the contractors fleet overall and how many are committed to other school districts, i don't think this is the situation that we're in, but just so you know, if we were to contract for a certain number of buses and then for whatever reason find ourselves wanting more, then there might not as much flexibility to increase the number of buses above the number that we had contracted for. but going the other way, we would see a reduction in the costs. >> great, thank you. that is actually helping, we own some of the buses and we did sell them. >> thank you. >> commissioner norton. commissioner norton: so i have to say that afterschool plan really, really gives me the heebies-jeebies. this looks like pulling the rug out from under the families that really depend on this transportation. i would feel more comfortable going -- i think the broad priorities are the right

priorities. i would feel more comfortable with the afterschool part of it if we could say to schools where we're eliminating a bus to an offsite afterschool program that is not sfusd, that we will guaranteed you a capacity onsite program. that is where we want to be and where we should be going. it's such a huge ask to say to parents, sorry, you signed up for this school and you have been busing your kids offsite to this afterschool program. it's not available anymore and we'll send you somewhere else. i don't think we can say that. if we're prepared to say instead every time we take way a route to an offsite afterschool program, we will provide you the capacity of anon site afterschool program at the school. >> thank you, commissioner. we will have an afterschool program in the event that there is not one available at the

elementary school. currently there are some schools that offer afterschool to maybe two child development programs and for nonsfusd program. so any given school may have six afterschool programs it provides transportation to. we're recommending exploring, for example, in any situation, is transportation is afterschool available at the school site? if it is, that would obviously be questionable as to why we would provide transportation as it can be provided at the school site and that we would look to see how many afterschool programs would we need to provide transportation to, is one child development center sufficient or would it not have the capacity, what would we need to maintain two? do our child development programs do not have the capacity to support the students and if not, what afterschool programs would we need to maintain in order to make sure the students would have access to it. we recognize the district has this initiative that it's looking to provide onsite

afterschool programs to the students. that's the potential direction the district is going. we'll work very closely with that team to make sure we're supporting the future vision for it so it would be aligned with that rather than working in isolation. commissioner norton: i appreciate that. i don't think it's good enough. i think that we need to guarantee that we will -- that we will -- there will be capacity onsite for students that are losing their transportation to a nonsfusd program offsite. i really think we have to do that. that's where we're going anyway. i am thinking of my own daughterer's elementary school and there are various children who go it to various offsite school programs and others are bussed to over programs two of which are not sfusd. it's a mess. it's a total mess. if we're also -- so what are we going to do? are we going to say to the kids

who are bussed to the non-sfusd program,, you need to go a different offsite afterschool program but not the one that we have been busing you to? that leads us down a path we don't want goal. and the goal for the district has been very clear, that we want capacity on our sites, at our elementary sites for every student that needs afterschool. if we are going to, as part of this, it seems important that we make this commitment that onsite we're going to build the capacity and as we do that, we're going to take away the capacity to the offsite programs. so that's my, i mean that's my major reaction to this. i have one more thing i wanted to say and i got myself all worked up and i don't remember what it was. if i think of it. chairman maufas: communicationer yee. commissioner yee: so i actually like the way you have framed

the goals and objectives. i'm very supportive of it because we have had this discussion of reducing the costs of transportation for a while, but in the past when we had that discussion, we really had no framework to work from except reduce the cost. so if we at some point agree with these goals that you have set forth, i think it would make it a lot easier to have a discussion around what to reduce or keep or whatever. one clarifying question that i would like to ask before i say anything else. in terms of our reimbursement for transportation about using general funds, what is that amount? >> we receive four general ed

transportation, this is not including the transportation for students with disabilities, we receive dedicated funding of about $2.2 million from the state. so that is not flexible money. it's not two or three, so that has to be spent on transportation. commissioner yee: that's helpful. my thinking is that as a baseline of how many buses we would support, it would be that amount of money. and it seems like the 25 you want to get it down to is pretty much that amount of money. so i guess the way i'm looking at it is i am in support of reducing the buses to that number as a baseline and then we could then build back up in terms of looking at the special things that we need.

i support commissioner kim's statements that one of the alternatives to just us paying for the buses is that parents should be able to pay for some of the bus costs. so if the 25 were the baseline and then we find out that, oh, geez, for instance, the afterschool programs are not san francisco school district-related, maybe the parents were willing to pay for transportation to the private, to their private afterschool programs. basically we're supplementing those programs at this moment. so that could increase the number of buses. you go back up on to it. that's the way i would approach it is really look what the baseline is and what we could afford and then figure out some

of the issues that we have and see somehow parents could pay for it and then make a decision whether or not we want to dip into our general funds or not to do other things. so that's sort of my general comment for, that you asked. was that the question you asked? ok. chairman maufas: commissioner wynns, could i add one clarification to the discussion about the dedicated resources? also, we were -- what i commented on was the state categorical funding for transportation. there is one other piece that i had put as a related point of information, which is that under no child left behind, we still, who knows when the s. c.a. is going to get reauthorized and when that

happens, what provisions will be in place regarding transportation, but under current law, we and all the other districts that get title one funds do have a reservation to spent at least 5% of our title one funds each year on supporting transportation to students who would authorized be assigned to or attend to program improvement schools. that in a way under current law again, subject to change, but right now it could be thought of in a similar way as dedicated funding. >> how much is that? >> i think it's about $500,000 but we actually spend more than that because we can -- >> we moved some of that money, title one, some of the general fund program support for general ed transportation on to title one funds because of that provision, correct?

>> correct. the minimum is to spend 5% on transportation. we spent more than that because in our view, if our current system, we think that's a higher priority in some respects than the you will ter in that use of those funds which is for supplemental services, private tutoring. >> to follow up, are we considering that in our calculations here, what we are thinking about. we don't know if it's going to be sustained as a provision. >> i would say we are considering that inasmuch as through this three-year phase in. commissioner yee: i want to say that i also agree with the phasin. i'm glad you're -- phase-in. i'm glad you're not doing it all at once.