after-school program. last question is this. these are the tiebreaker questions. all of these things i have kind of referred to this a little bit in my earlier question. all of these questions have the same limitations that all the data we have collected up until now have. the only people for whom we can collect information are people who apply to schools at which they apply. this process is designed with a lot of well-intentioned, and i hope it is going to work a lot better than the process has in the past. the same limitations are there. people have to believe it is going to work, and only then can we see the effectiveness. i presume that is going to

change over time. that is the idea, if this worked as we hope it will, it will work much more effectively and it won't work up to our expectations the first year, but we will get better over time. i guess i just want to say that we are going to need a lot of data about the people that apply and what school they apply to. and these questions should help us find out more about how they are applying. i hope we will be able to do that. i am hoping that we will be able to develop data that makes that clear somewhere, that maybe some of these things are always at the footnote or have a column saying that this is the pool of

applicants, and these are the schools to which these people applied and this is how it changes over time in order to learn and show the public about the effectiveness. if it is ok with everybody, i would like to ask if there is any public comment on this? we are going to get too far if we wait for public comment. if you want to comment on just this part, come out to the microphone and identify yourself for the record. >> a couple of comments. it might have been addressed about the software and open source. i think it is incredibly important to make sure that people can see that. the other thing about the race question, i want to reiterate,

the public does not believe that race is not taken into consideration. if there is any way to get that information after assignments are made, it would go a long way the building trust and that is not being used. the final comment -- i think they have touched on this little bit, a lot of the racial isolation that currently exists as a result of the fact that there are certain communities that do not participate in the assignment process now. we can have the best assignment process and the world, but if communities do not participate, there will be racial isolation. the question is, why do we think that there will be better participation? if not, what is the district doing to try to get better participation?

>> i wanted to echo what the previous speaker said about releasing the software that is going to be used for the summons system. i think pursuant to his point earlier, it will go away -- a long way to establishing trust. they can look at and in general foster better trust. >> my name is matthew nathan and i am the parent of an incoming kindergarten student next year. i wanted to thank you for approving a system that appears to be with a more transparent than the previous one. and i want to echo some of the comments made earlier. in terms of data collection, i understand there is a lot of

different data that we need to collect, like using different colored paper and having different sheets of information to have low-cost ways and further communique the separateness and distinct message of the data. having not applied to the schools, i did not know the rationale for why we are collecting the ethnicity information or home language information, so it is a different section that has the ethnicity data, there might be ways to communicate that more effectively to parents. and i want to echo the call for more assignment data early. preliminary data, initial data.

i think it will go a long way to continue to develop trust, that the process really is working and there isn't a secret black box and i do not know how to dispel the rumor, but is there. >> i just wanted to make a brief comment about what come fewer said about having a more uniform start time. i know that when i was looking at schools, one of the things that i loved about that was it was a late start time. and there are other people in the community that shows garfield because it was a much earlier start time and that worked better for their schedules. from what i have heard in the community, i don't know if a uniform start time would work the best for all parents.

>> i am hoping that we will also look at the 2010 census and see how those numbers sort of, you know, correlate with our numbers about attendants and to is actually living here. thanks. >> items wanted to make sure i have captured the key point. one of those is looking at data just beyond the assignment data and looking at the census data. when looking at capacity for attendance area and in drawing the attendance area, we are not able to draw areas that will accommodate all of the students that live there. we know that there will be attendance areas that can't accommodate all of the applicants. we want to see if they are applying to the school and other information about the attendance

area. a number of commissioners suggested some of the things that we collect data on including start times, after school, and having a deeper understanding of what kind of surveys would look like. we can share them with the board and make sure that you are aware of what we have been collecting. we look to include information about pre-k. and also, a number of commissioners suggested that we think about having certain data available for the first annual report so we can determine if there is anything that needs to be changed for the second year and looking at attendance areas and other factors to see if adjustments should be made.

commissionaire er yee: another thing that could be useful is looking at the number of applicants, the people applying for kindergarten. since we have that data, to me, it is useful because if the gap gets narrowed, they are probably doing a better job. >> let me go on to the transportation presentation. >> on changing topic to transportation -- >> sorry. we know that we have people that

are here for the special- education assignment process. we were wondering if therir desire is to hear that item and leave? i do not know if we have people who are here specifically to hear about or testify on the transportation issue? we will do the transportation first. please go ahead. >> i will talk briefly about the fall 2010 community engagement process, the substitute motion, and the approach we are taking to develop that information. susan is going to go in more detail about the -- exploring the possibility of revenue,

gathering revenue for transportation. there is a document that describes the student assignments -- i mean, the transportation policies. we are going to talk through that first, and there is a substitute motion as well. these documents are available for the public also. the first document is called the new transportation policy for general ed students. it also provides background content, some of which was shared at the last committee meeting. we have had a number of different conversations with different community groups and different public agencies like the department of public health. we talked to the folks involved with safe route to school. one of the things that has become clear to us, if we are

going to have the community engagement process, they need something more concrete than just policy goals and objectives. they want to know how they will be impacted. will i still beat the -- or will i still be getting a bus? we are not at this stage where we have that level of detail until the winter or january. the first is sharing policy level information with community stakeholders. it doesn't have ride level information, but it has information about why we are changing transportation, what kind of transportation currently exists, what are the policy goals and objectives? and what kind of questions are we going to explore? that information is outlined in this document that is called a

new transportation policy for general education students. the other document a wanted to bring to your attention with the substitute motion itself. we are submitting a substantive motion because it is different enough from the first motion to be considered substitute rather that amended. what we really attempt to do in this, while the concept hasn't changed much, we're hoping to provide a lot more transparency and it makes it clear to families what the goals and objectives of the new policy would be. there are seven goals that are outlined. the first is about supporting choice as a tactic in school assignment to create a diverse learning environment. the second is supporting equitable access and also providing limited transportation to support

reasonable access for area schools and to support the middle school assignment process, and transportation isn't contemplated for high school. we want transportation ltd. to after-school programs -- and limited to after-school programs. yet to provide general and -- ed programs. there are a series of questions that are outlined in this public engagement process document. those questions start on page 4 of the document. we articulate the series of

questions that we would explore. and the answers to these questions will help us determine where we should build stocks and where they should be. -- stops and where they should be. this is to give you a feel for what kinds of questions we are looking at r developing aoutes and -- lookint at and developing new routes and newhall transportation. -- nelooking at and developing new routes and transportation. and that we also are imagining a significant shift in where the stops are located.

the current stocks and routes were created in the '80s when the board approved the diversity index lottery student assignment system, the transportation policy was not revised. over time, we have seen a decline in so we are expecting thatwe are d have a significant impact, and i can think about resources for transportation, we have spent some time looking at what our -- are there any opportunities? one of the ways to address the budget situation is to reduce services or to adjust services and in other ways to explore the possibility of generating

revenues for that and the board has brought that up and asked us questions in prior meetings to tonight susan as some information that she can share with you that goes into a lot more detail about that particular element of it. >> so the state department of ed sets maximum rates that school districts can charge per roundtrip per passenger. it is $4 .18 per passenger trip or $8 .46 per daly roundtrip. if we were to charge the maximum, the $8.36, it would cost a family, per child, about $1,500 a year. so $1,471.

they do -- the state laws set out two exceptions to students who cannot be charged fees. the first is students with i.e.p.'s that require transportation and second, they say no indigent student should be charged. this is usually defined by free lunch eligibility. so when we went out trying to ask the question what could we do, what would a fee structure look like, we took three approaches to explore this idea. the first is to say look at a full cost recovery model. is it possible for us to recover the cost of a school bus through the collection of fees? the second approach we took was to look at comparisons for reasonableness. to compare with other forms of transit within san francisco as

well as comparing ourselves with other bay area school districts to see how much they charge and if they charge. and the exceptions for all of the approaches that we go through here is that we're assuming that if we were to have a fee structure, that no fees would be charged to students with i.e.p.'s that require transportation but also students whose families qualify for free or reduced priced lunch. we are suggesting that we expand the definition. the state definition to both students who -- whose families meet the qualifications for free and reduced priced meals and we can go through this, but basically, in the s.f.u.s.d. we currently don't make a service distinction between families who qualify for free meal or reduced

priced meals. i do have some information in the following slide that shows sort of the income eligibility guidelines for reduced priced meals, so for example for a household of four, to qualify for reduced priced meals, you -- you have a family income of less than $41,000 a year. and just so that she knows a medium house hold income is around $72,000. these are fairly challenged families. the next slide. in sfusd currently we have 62.1% of elementary students who qualify for either free or reduced priced meals. that gives you a sense of our

school district. moving on to looking at the full cost recovery model, so basically can we through the collection of fees cover the cost of a school bus? cournt bus contract, we -- a bus, per bus we pay about $100,000. there is a maximum of 63 elementary students who can ride per bus and there is a maximum of about two to three roundtrips that a single bus can make per day. two long trips or three short trips. so it all depends upon the route that the -- the school bus route and that may allow it to make three trips or it may allow it to make two trips. then obviously there are some administrative costs with any fee structure that we put together.

there would be application processing to cover fee collection, so cover the bus path development and distribution as well as management and oversight. so the bottom line is it is highly unlikely that we would be able to collect fees to cover the costs. if 62% of students qualify for free or reduced priced meals that leaves only 38% who are possibly fee paying. if a bus carries 42 students per roundtrip saying that a bus will operate around 2/3 full, using the district average, 16 of those students or 38%, will be fee paying. if that bus makes three roundtrips per day, 48 fee-paying students would be served. even if we charge $8 a day, that

is going generate between $67,000 and $68,000 at maximum so it wouldn't cover the cost of the bus, much less the administrative costs of running that program. so, i have provided other ways to look a at it. can you go to the next slide? in a full recovery, to cover the costs of a bus, you need to generate $568 per day in fees. so i've got a chart here that shows you charging $2 through $8 per day, whether you could generate that amount of money and basically it would be nearly impossible. and i do it showing it with one roundtrip per day. two roundtrips as well as three roundtrips.

so then we can move on to -- so when we realized that it was highly unlike they costs -- full cost recovery was a possibility, we began to look at comparisons. what seems reasonable. because we didn't think $8 a day was necessarily reasonable so we looked at muni rates. the youth pass is $20 per month and adult is $70 per month. if you think that a child and adult would travel together, that would cost about $4.a 50 per day -- 4.50 per day. if a child is traveling by themselves, it would be $1 a day. . $1 a day. that is around $900 annually. with an adult. $200 annually with a student only.

we also looked at what other bay area school districts wering ranging from charging them nothing to $920, which is what they do in palo alto. i averaged it and the sample about $381 annually. the next chart shows sort of the other school districts, what they charge per roundtrip, either by semester or annual fee. some of them actually do charge on top of their fees a processing fee. an application processing fee. the next chart, just so that you guys have a way of being able to assess what annual fees might look like, $a $2 round fare per day is about $350 per student.

$4 is about $700 and so on. you get a sense for that. so we looked at what -- what we might be able to do if realizing that you couldn't recover your full costs, what kind of revenue could you possibly generate if we charged sort of the bay area average of about $380 per child, per year. so on the first mold, we're assuming that our -- model, we're assuming that our 25-bus fleet are going to run two roundtrips per day. so basically they are two fairly long roundtrips. these 25 buses we're going to say carry an average of about 42 students. that's every bus would operate each run at about 2/3 capacity.

if you took district average of about 38 students, being fee paying, that would be about 16 students per trip. with families being charged $380 per year, per child, per year, the maximum amount of fees collected would be about $300,000. we did another model where the buses make three roundtrips holding all of these same assumptions and the maximum fees collected in that model was $456,000 per year. the one thing we wanted to say about these two partial cost models are that they are fairly aggressive models. it is more likely given the way -- given our new transportation

policy guidelines that a lower percentage of fee-paying families would elect for school bus transportation as well as when you charge a fee, people may choose other forms of transportation. current bus loads are less than 67% full or less than 2/3 full and these bus loads are also based on elementary sized students. so if you have some large fourth and fifth graders you are not going to get 63 students on a bus. and especially with model two. where the school buses are making three roundtrips per day. it means that you -- first of all, it assumes that elementary school times are staggered into three set different times. and that you will be able to

alter the school's start times to accommodate the bus schedule and it also assumes that students will pay for the entire year opposed to just a semester so it is incredibly aggressive. and there are also the other costs to consider, which are the administrative costs associated with the program. we did want -- we thought that you might be interested in or ask about what we thought administrative costs might look like to administer this, so we did some really rough estimates and we think that it may be. -- approximately 120,000 per year. this this may be -- this is based on the paper system or a pip-collection system. we may -- we are looking at wanting to integrate this with