allocated the funding to the school sites and said, "here is the funding bill you will get. they know how to do this. they are having a really good results. if we're going to have more inclusion programs, we need to win power at our school sides to make those decisions, so that was a good thing. and deputy superintendent ca rranza brought up why do they

not try to organize a meeting for special ed. it is basically what are the factors contributing. i do not think there is not anything you know necessarily, but when you look at those numbers, it stairs right into

your note -- it stares right into you. there was the one started giving his perspective. my freshman year, i was walking to school with 20 friends, and now, there are three of us. it was interesting because we have always taken the social justice perspective or in moralistic perspective -- or a moralistic perspective. if we do not address this, it does two things. the other thing is, as you all

know, they are in jail, which cost society a lot of money. for me, personally, i think it is a good argument. the social justice piece. and in the article, it talks about the superintendents', in 2001, the average stay was 2.5 years. it actually went up in 2010. you almost made it to the average. and then it talks about the pay and the salary. it also goes to the ethnicity of the urban areas.

this one is really heavy, so please take a look at it. it really breaks down the surveys, according to the business operations, and this is coded by numbers, so it does not tell you which schools are involved. i hope i did not mis-hear him, because i did not see a single entry. i was excited. where are we with all of these indicators. once i started comparing with

other districts, -- i hope we can get involved in it. one last thing. the cool thing about this conference is that every attendee received a computer, a laptop. it was pretty powerful. would you are supposed to do -- what you are suppose to do is to bring it back and donated to a worthy student. -- and donate it to a worthy student.

a student that is needy and so forth, and since i am hoping that is going to happen, we had a keynote speaker, and he was from new york, and commissioner wynns, what does he have to do with education? different people have different passions. he was great. he has a very high passion for education, especially for african-american high school kids, so this whole book is called the "younger brother." -- called "young brother." i bought five of them. the nice thing about this is it is targeted towards high school kids, and he was explaining.

it was basically letters he had written to them, mentoring. it was kind of nice that i bought it and was hoping it was a good. i have copies, so whoever gets this will get this from me, so that is it. that is my report. commissioner: i was not at the conference this year, but i think it is worth noting that a former commissioner received an award, which carried with a $10,000 scholarship that she can award to a student in a district. so congratulations to her. vice president mendoza: under this item, i would like to just take the privilege of being the chair of this board meeting to just make a couple of comments on an article that came out this week in regards to the board, and i just really want to defend

the integrity and commitment of this board, and i think that commissioner yee just demonstrated what professional development does for a board like ours, and this is really important to ensure the we are on top of a lot of the work that is happening, especially nationally, and with all of the guidelines that have come out more recently, it has been very important for us to stay on top of this, and we anticipate more federal grants than we ever have before, and i think it is through our efforts of understanding and learning through multiple venues that we have been able to do this, and i also just wanted to make a comment about the work that goes into that, because it really does help us to work better as a board, and i am thinking that all of this is that all of the students receive high quality

education, in many students have been working hard over many years that this stays intact, and i just want to mention the work of the board. clearly, we need to tighten our protocols and make some very clear changes. beyond a reasonable and responsible, and we have all committed to doing that. the current leadership has had sessions to make sure the we are looking more closely into that, and we will be working it closely with others it and presenting something to the rules committee to make sure that the integrity and commitment of this board once again remains intact, and i suggest very strongly that we have all made efforts to make sure that what we're focused on is the achievement of our students. with the bat, i want to say, " go, giant," and, unfortunately, i would like to pass this over to commissioner wynns about a

loss we have had. commissioner wynns: one person passed away on friday evening, surrounded by his family. there were also his siblings and his mother, maria. many of you know mauricio. he was active in a number of things. he was a mainstay of the vernal heights community. where i have lived for 35 years. he ran for the board of education. i was happy to support him. mauricio was a really special

person. i will miss him tremendously. i have to tell you that if you go to progress of grounds and have coffee in the morning, which i, awesome it -- if you go to the whole borrow heights community go by and i almost always saw mauricio there in the morning, which was pretty often. he was born in san francisco december 18, 1959. he went to catholic schools in san francisco though his two sons attended public schools and he went to u.c. berkeley. he served, he was the youth and senior organizer for the bernal heights neighborhood center from 1989 to 1999 and executive director to 2004. he has sat on various boards and commissions, president of the coleman advocates for children and youth for 10 years, was on the jamestown

board and others and in recent years has been the leader of efforts to in quotation marks save the bernal preschool and the bernal mural campaigns. he really was an extraordinary organizer. i can tell you that if you wanted a bus load of kids on saturday you called mauricio and he was there. he was usually driving the bus and i will end by saying he would be so happy that the giants are in the world series and i'll be thinking of him when i'm watching those games. so the board wants to express our condolences to him and to his family and the community and a rosary will be held tomorrow evening during the world series at 7:00 at driscoll's, 1465 valencia street, and a funeral mass thursday, october 28 at 10:00 a.m., st. paul's church, 29th and church street and a gathering will follow.

and i just want to express my love of mauricio. thank you. >> thank you. commissioner. meeting adjourned.

>> welcome to coulterwire. the san francisco arts commission and department of public works has joined forces by battling graffiti by launching a new program called street smarts. the program connects established artist with private property owners to create a vibrant

murals which is a proven an effective strategy for combating graffiti on private property. artists, along with his crew, recently transformed a building turn to vandalism into a masterpiece. let us take a look. >> part of me has so much compassion for other graffiti artists. i understand why they are doing what they do. for me, it was something that was so hard to get out of. the lifestyle in general. j and tagging is addicting. i used to be on these routes. i have compassion for these guys. a lot of these guys are super

talented. i am just trying to find the median to still be involved but still do my thing as an artist and work with the city, like we are doing. we are doing this wall in a collaboration with the san francisco arts commission. basically what they are doing is trying to get rid of some of the tags and by putting up murals. they are cooking up graffiti artists with business owners. today, we are trying to get a lot of this wall buffed out and covered it. then we will spray on some sketches of what we are going to do. the rain is coming tomorrow. it should be here for a few days. we want others to know that there are artists working on this wall. the owner of this building, she

has had to pay a lot of money to keep on paying over these attacks. >> we have paid as much as $400. the fed typically have been talk about four times a year. typically, it happened right after we have been notified that we need to remove it. the painter will go up there and paid over the graffiti and make a perfect canvas for the tigers to come back. this program appeals to me because we were looking for a way to stop the taggers and the ugly graffiti. this program has beautiful work done by great artists that we thought would look great on our building. cameron talked about a few difficulties that he thought would be great. he called me and we talked about a theme of what he could do to the side of the building.

he took some pictures and e-mail them to me. >> we are going to do all kinds of animals and plants. also, we are all to doing graffiti letters. if you one other taggers to respect our, you have to respect graffiti art. >> if you had a lot of characters in it, you will get more respect from business owners and stuff like that, but letters will give you the respect of the graffiti artists. i have actually had in my name in this patch of seaweed. >> what if we did it a giant blue whale?

>> i was going to do a puffer fish. >> the program for the children is just so important. this is important, too, but you have to get at the kids to find out why they are doing it and direct them in more positive ways. i think what you are doing is great. >> have a good day. see you later. >> dana has been great, she has been a sport about the project. it was cool for her to see it and actually like it. as an artist, it means a lot to us. we are going to make it look really clean today. then it should be done. we have had this mural of for

about six years and it has not been tagged. it really works as a deterrent. a lot of us graffiti artists have been waiting for an opportunity like this, to express ourselves on walls. and there are so many walls around the city that could be beautified. i am so thankful that this opportunity has come about. >> my word encourage anyone who is thinking about it to really jump on the bandwagon. it is looking beautiful. when i came here this morning, i was notified that taggers were there last night, but fortunately, they did not touch our building. >> to check out the mural in person, stop by 65 polk road. in addition to being a street smarts artist, he has been teaching students about the

value for public space and creating public art for the communities through a program called where art lives. for a full list of other in your locations and to learn more about the efforts to combat vandalism, visit >> many people are not aware of this building was built in 1936. as a board to preserve the history and make the students aware of that history. the partnering between sfmoma and the arts commission means they will be more aware of the artwork that we have here, the artists that painted a, and the history behind this itself. >> students came from george washington, and it was wonderful to have them on a panel.

people from the school board, those who have been painting for years, some conservative errors from the getty. to have them tell us about the works of their school was important. it represents african-american artists to during the 20's and 30's used an incredible body of work. it is one of the most incredible works of art in the city, bar none. it is a huge mural of incredible works. >> the san francisco civic arts collection has been in existence since the turn of the century. it consists of everything from monument to golden gate park to market street, other works in the collection, from the wpa era, the quite tower, the works

from the george washington high school. we have the contemporary education, where they depict some of the vocational arts that were taught at george washington high school. what is interesting is the artist's and corp. of some of the -- incorporation of some of the architectural elements. they used the speaker from the p a system as part of the design. on the opposite side of the library, we have a large fresco which depicts the academic subjects that were taught at the time. it serves as a foil to the other fresco in the library, we have academic subjects on one side, vocational subjects on the other, and result is the concept of a well-rounded education. additionally, what we plan to do is the academy of hospitality and tourism will be part of, so

the students can share with other students, faculty, the neighborhood, and others to come by and what to look to the artwork we have. >> by working with the students, we hope to raise awareness of the collection and foster stewardship. we brought diego rivera to the city. i think the wpa art work is characterized by stylized robustness and a pervasive occupation with a historical. in this panel, we have a depiction of george washington moving west. what is interesting about it is the image of lewis and clark here is in black and white, something that is occurring in

the future, painted as though it was in the past. what is interesting about it is the very obvious conclusion of slavery. the number of students were expressing unease around some of the themes. the additional mural would be placed in the school, one with more positive representation of the student body. in 1974, they completed three panels that were placed in the library -- in the lobby. they depict native, latino, asian american, and african- american heritage and culture. >> that artist was talking about the history coming alive.

that is what we want for the students here. i also think they might share that with past alumni and the community, so they could no the treasure that we have here in the schools. many people have the same experience i did when i first walked into this building three years ago, being the new principal. the grandeur of these murals is fantastic. many of the students who have come here have come here and are very proud of these murals. they're so happy that they're still here and are being preserved. >> to learn more about the civic art collection, visit because we have a great waste water system here in san francisco, we do about 80 million gallons of waste water here in san francisco, which means we basically fill up 120 olympic sized swimming pools

each and every day here in the city. we protect public health and safety and environment because we are discharging into the bay and into the ocean. this is essentially the first treatment here at our waste water treatment facility. what we do is slow down the water so that things either settle to the bottom or float to the top. you see we have a nice selection of things floating around there, things from bubble gum wrappers, toilet paper, whatever you dump down the toilet, whatever gets into our storm drains, that's what gets into our waste water treatment and we have to clean. >> see these chains here, this keeps scum from building up. >> on this end in the liquid end basically we're just trying to produce a good water product that doesn't negatively impact the receiving water so that we

have recreation and no bad impact on fish and aquatic life. solids is what's happening. . >> by sludge, what exactly do you mean? is that the actual technical term? . >> it's a technical term and it's used in a lot of different ways, but this is organic sewage sludge. basically what it is is, oh, maybe things that come out of your garbage disposal, things that are fecal in nature. it's sludge left in the water after the primary treatment, then we blend those two over and send them over to digestion. this building is built to replace tanks here that were so odoriferous they would curl your hair. we built this as an interim

process. >> is there a coagulant introduced somewhere in the middle of this? . >> this coagulant brings solids together and lets the water run through. that gives us more time in the digestion process, more time to reduce the amount of solids. these are the biggest ones in the world, like we always like to do in san francisco. they are 4 meter, there's none like it in the world. >> really? wow. >> three meters, usually. we got the biggest, if not the best. so here we are. look at that baby hum. river of sludge. >> one of the things is we use bacteria that's common in our own guts to create this reduction. it's like an extra digestion. one of the things we have to do to facilitate that is heat that sludge up and keep it