talk about how a system of care would look like, disrupt the patterns of siloing on behalf of youth. so with your help and encouragement going to be able to find ways we can do data sharing in an intervention, prevention and early intervention mode rather than after they are in custody and have to figure out, gee, what do we do now. i would like to take questions later, but that's what i would share now. >> and now bill from the juvenile probation department and we will open up the questions. >> good afternoon, supervisors, commissioners. i'm here to assure my perspective on the state of affairs dealing with youth, who not only have fallen through the

cracks, but some have fallen off the cliff. and make it their way to juvenile justice center either by doors of did he tension or front doors with referrals that come from law enforcement here in san francisco. and i'm here really to report the good news that in the five-plus years i have been here, i can't say that the -- can say that the state of affairs of our collaborative efforts with the unified school district, with the department of public health, with the department of children youth and their families and all other city partners has never been at a better state than it is today. we are playing nice in the sandbox. people aren't throwing sand or eating sand, but using our ways of getting along together to build things together and be creative.

the work the san francisco unified school district provides a common thread and ingredient to our whole way of treating youngsters in our system while the cases are pending ajude occasion, while we are in the who done it stage, all the way through disposition and placement stage and the efforts in reuniting youth with a proactive comprehensive educational program while they are in our success educational program while they are in our success todd, while under our supervision and creating pathways to educational programs upon their release and upon their return to the community has never been more effective than it is today. so i have made these representations at the last time this group met. and just reinforce our efforts. the oversight that's provided by

our department, division and leadership provided by the director of administrative services, the assistant chief probation officer who is now serving as the acting director of log cabin ranch has worked to go with other agencies in the city to support our efforts with the youth that find their way to our doors. i'm available to answer any questions that this group has. >> i think there will be a lot and rely on the panel that we'll ask questions and sort of let you figure out who is the best to start. supervisor aleto pier. >> thank you. i was interested in something that was said. my question was when you were talking about the schools and

the children who go there, what i was curious you had mentioned kids who are expeled and homeless kids. homeless kids have not necessarily broken the law and haven't gotten in trouble and i'm wondering how they end up in the county schools? >> before, it includes the pregnant minor. the county system of funding provides programs for those people and when we were writing our mission statement years ago, that came to light also

>> mostly through hill top high school but all the students in the san francisco unified school district, but the funding comes from the county side as does special education. >> the funding doesn't go to the child but to the institution? >> it actually does both. when you are in the county system, it brings in more money per pupil, especially if you are on probation. i don't know what the number is, it goes up and down, of course. let's say another $2,000 for students who are on probation. the county has an advantage that a student who comes into that, you can get more money. the cal state provides x amount

of dollars. >> why couldn't that money transfer with the child? any reason why they can't use the money in the public school system? >> the city and county, we work very, very well together and make sure that whatever is the most advantageous for the students. the unified school district provides a lot of the funding for the county system although the funding goes back and forth because we know they are the same students especially at juvenile hall where the students, their home school might be linchingon high school but at juvenile hall for x amount of time. there are extra dollars that come in. , why don't the homeless kids go into the public school system? >>

>> we are calling them youth in transition and they are in the comprehensive high schools. in some cases, there are youth who are in less stable housing. it is easier for them to go to a place like the county program, because there is flexibility what time they arrive and smaller classes and more accommodation. and there is funding that comes into the district. it is mckinney vinto funds and there is a coordinator for the district. she works out of the pupil services. and she is responsible for facilitating the access for youth who are in transition so they can go to school.

there are real regulations about how quickly they need to be enrolled in school and don't have to have certain documentations that other youth need to have, money set aside for school uniforms, backpacks and tutoring and most of the children and youth who are in transition are actually in sfusd. >> is there a difference between children who have parents or a parent -- the whole family is homeless versus kids who might -- >> homeless and run away? both categories are eligible for these services. >> more go into the public system than the county system? >> yes. i can speak from my experience. we work very closely with larkin

street youth center and many youth transition from there into our school, because it was a bit more flexibility. alan: one other -- supervisor alioto-pier: is it school policy if a teenager that gets pregnant? >> no. if we put all of our pregnant teens in one place -- >> that would be illegal. >> but we do have a wonderful school that i'm very supportive that i want to see continued because -- no two children are alike and no two situations are alike and hill top is our continuation of high school and does a wonderful child and child development center there, but i don't think you should be mandated to go there. >> it's against the law -- maybe

50 years ago, but that's illegal. there are some benefits for young women to go to the hill top program. it's got a lot of add junk services available right there on the site, prenatal classes and care and after birth, there is a nursey, so mothers can go there. supervisor alioto-pier: would be nice if we had those services for adults. >> commissioner kim. president kim: amazing school. some of our best teachers, not just for pregnant teens but young moms so they continue to stay on until they graduate. my concern is we aren't doing enough outreach to our pregnant teens and young moms because i don't think all of our students know about it. but once there, it is an amazing

community and they build a community. last year, they graduated their first dad as well. it's technically for all of our young parents. i have some questions on -- and i know not everyone is here on data sharing and what that really means. we know the problem is we aren't sharing data and known that for years. what are some of the steps we can take with our city agencies and school district to overcome those barriers? what i would be interested in having tiers where we name the students so if we know that 60 students are in three of our system, we actually identify who those students are and when we meet as, you know, this in these meetings, we talk about these students as a group, similar to what we have been doing in our schools where are teach hers are

discussing students and you learn how to work with a stupid in one classroom and are able to share that and wrap around services continuously for that young person and have different tiers. and as much as we can kind of work with those people. i'm wondering, what is it going to take to get that that point? some of our systems have trouble gathering data. but i want to know the first step, second step, what can we do? >> answering a little bit of that question and maybe claudia could follow and we have elaine here. and so i would start off by saying with tark, there are people apart of the agencies and so they are receiving services

from multiple disciplines. and what we have come up with is that if these agencies partner in some of the opportunities that we offer, like, for example, the tark coordinated care meetings, they could agree on a confidential forum to be able to move forward communicating about any of the client needs. besides that, we had talked about through s.f. can do some of the data base sharing efforts. that would help to be able to move that forward because it would allow us to do this universally. someone would go through s.f. can do and there would be a case manager there and would allow us to communicate. that is future, just in the moment in time, just supporting with help, we were able to convene a lot of the departments that worked together and really

enforce the sentiment that it's important to get everyone at the table. i'll refer to claudia about other ideas. but besides that, i think we would need something more system attic and we would need the funding to be able to support them. pier president kim: is the number one obstacle funding, because i don't want to come back and find out that the problem is we aren't sharing data. what are the first steps we can do? is it regulations, policy? >> let me speak if i may with respect to any attorneys who might be present. i think the biggest challenge is, you know, policy from the unified side of the table, you know, violations of confidentiality laws and ed code

and how do we get permission, the very similar left of things -- simplest of things. parental things. sharing of information between our counselors and the tark staff. and so i think a good start would be getting an interagency group of attorneys to talk about if there is a directive that we want to make this possible, what can they do together to make this happen for us. it is frustrating. president kim: would this be primarily the city attorney's office and our legal office at stusd? would that cover it? >> some of the reading has to do with health information and so it is confidential. there is law that governance the protection of health

information. each -- health is health protection. criminal justice and juvenile, and school district. so the only situation when you have an abused or neglected child, the law requires and allows sharing information. our departments work closely together for the past 10 years to build much more sharing and we have a weekly meeting. every wednesday we meet and we go through sharing of information about the most vulnerable children at that time and try to come together with all information and bring together. probation is there and health is there. but there are many more possibilities.

president kim: what information can we already share because i was at the public defender's office and maybe because once you are incarcerated, you can get all the information that you need and that's an unfortunate place to be at to compile a young person's services and needs and student records. is there anything that we can already start to share now, like transcripts? what is allowable? >> well, what i can say is, we can share quite a lot if we have a consent form from a parent. most school sites, they certainly share attendance data with probation officers and they will share transscripts. beyond that, very little at this point. president kim: do we have a sense of the number of students in our multiple systems?

>> i can't say i do. >> i think the figure was 100 to 110 is the figure that were in all systems at the same time. the child welfare, juvenile system, mental health system and the school district. there are several hundred more. there are about 100 that are in all the systems at the same time which is a pretty telling number. president kim: one of the reasons i think we meet as a body is to be able to figure out how we can make this actually work. >> for me, i'm most interested and i don't want to talk about the problems we're having but moving towards either a time line or list of priorities. this is the first step we can take as the city and school district and this is the second step and having some kind of plan of how we can move forward

to meet, because at least 110 students, they are at risk and will soon enter adulthood and will lose our services and so whatever we can do to prevent them from slipping is really urgent. for me i'm curious to find out what we can do to make that happen. >> i wanted to talk about a couple of things. the two issues i want to get some feedback on, one is what are our objectives? and one of the things i think helps to measure success is what are our goals and is there a mission statement related to young people that require

coordination between these multiple systems, because they are in those systems? and it would seem -- these hearings, because of privacy, because of how we work, are very much at a high level, talking about a lot of acronyms, but these young men and women who have come into the juvenile justice system in the past decade are coming in with enormous educational deficits and many years behind in reading and math, very challenging conduct. so the principal, would not rather have a handful of these kids and makes it harder to meet the needs of the larger student population or one or two kids can flip a classroom of 25 kids. and so i'm wondering, have we thought about what are our

objectives here, what is a measure of success if a student comes in and is seven years behind in reading and math and we have a year and-a-half left, should we be thinking about what we would like to see happen in this case? i recognize some students will turnaround and you can change things. but the difficulty is, it becomes hard to quantify or communicate that level of success. and so, here at the board, you tend to find that the violence prevention dollars or the dollars that the board of supervisors has to put back and most of the agencies that do that work are engaged annually in a multi-month multi-pronged effort to come before the board of supervisors. and it's extremely disruptive to these organizations truthfully

that have to spend their time motivating clients and participants and coming out and it's frustrating because these hearings last for hours and supervisor daly has chaired the hearings and done the most to restore these funds. is there a way to look at what is our mission, what are our objectives to kind of quantify it more so it is consumeable for the general public and others to understand the importance of this work? and i recognize it's challenging, because violence prevention, you are trying to prevent something from happening and you don't know whether you have or haven't. it's one of these things it's hard to get a handle on. but some of the most impressive people i see doing nonprofit work in the city are in this field and they have dedicated

their lives very passionately to it and are extremely loyal to these young people and very truthful to them, even that they are more skeptical on average of the police or the institutions that are perceived to have failed these young people along with families and other support systems. and so i don't mean to ask a -- i guess i did mean to ask a sort of broad question about it, but i think those are two things that i would like to suggest would help us in this movement and effort is to really quantify a bit where do we want these young people to go and maybe that is happening. and then i think beyond it, i think we need to kind of communicate what this work represents in a comprehensive and thoughtful fashion that resonates with the public, because i don't think they get this.

i don't think they understand it. and even as we talk about it here, there are so many acronyms we are throwing around here that i can't imagine somebody who hasn't worked in the city government for a decade could follow when we talk about. when you get your cart and say what is the a.i.c., i have no idea. but that is actually a person. there has got to be a way to communicate this in a way that people kind of get -- i mean, i think the public understands better what we are doing in the public health and homelessness and they understand community policing. they can get better what we are doing than what this is, which is intangible to the average citizen of san francisco, who i think if we got them more on board would be supporting these agencies as well as the city, because that's one of the challenges, that some of the agencies that are doing the best work that are most deserving to

have the kind of structural support that you see in an organization like larkin street don't have it. family foundation, they don't have that board or annual events and it's not because they aren't doing good work and lashingen street deserves every dollar they get from the private sector, but you can't bilk up "business times" and see that they are bringing in c.f.o.'s and a lot of these agencies, jamestown, girls 2,000, that all of these groups need to be communicated better to the business community and to other communities that i think have a vested interest in having our young people who are at risk succeed and abating this climate of violence that continues to challenge our city and most cities in america.

>> solved the whole problem right now. i did want to say that claudia and i for years in the county schools and court schools have said let's see if this works. and i have to say in recent years, the school board certainly and janet who is now my boss, the assistant superintendent for high schools has had these kinds of visions and very supportive of trying new things. let me give you an example, secondary, when we moved there, the population was around 60 students and it was disappointing at that time because it came from three schools that had that population for each. after the second year, had a change in leadership and the way the school was being run. i may have said this before, i asked the students what would bring your friends back to school? and they gave me some ideas.

for example, they gave me alternative schedule. if students could only come up until lunch and leave at lunch. that's not all schools, but that's better than nothing. they are taking care of younger brothers and sisters and started an online school to support a lot of people and changed the funding and moved things around. and then we added -- g.e.d. program and some other music programs and next year, we tripled the population because the students were telling their friends, look, you can do this, do that. as a principal of the court schools right now, i deal with that on a daily basis, a student coming in who is 17 years old, could be homeless, could have multiple issues, and you try to sit down with that student and figure out the best path for

that student. in the recent let's say three years, there are more options for those students. so i was seeing that with a student today. we mapped out something for him. he is coming back into school after not being in school for four years. what do we do with him. i showed him the options he could take. and he bit into a couple of them, which is great. and we will try that. and if it doesn't work for now, we could try the g.e.d. program, the city cards program, online schools, there are all kinds of things that claudia and i have done forever and it is with the support of a lot of people. we try small programs and see if they work. i think care is an example of that. people are saying what do we do with 20 students not going to school. how about we build a program. we added cyber high school, online high school. we added g.e.d., combination of

programs with civic center secondary. now with big picture, we are taking a lot of those students that evidence for years and years and trying this with them. it may not stick with all of them, but we are trying these small programs and i will leave you with this, for me, the best way to try to solve this problem is ask the students and they will tell you exactly what they need. for example, if a student is not going to a comprehensive high school, they are telling you something about their fit with that high school and that's ok. let's try something else with that student to see if it works. >> commissioner mendoza. vice president mendoza: a couple of comments to add to the presentation. part of the work we have been doing is trying to align our community-based organizations with the strategic plan and that has made a huge difference.