they see it as a way for governments to have an excuse not to create jobs and do the things that will make the future better for them. instead, it is a way for them to have a foreign enemy or a domestic enemy to consolidate their power. and, there are drastic cultural differences. so, what i would like to see, and president kennedy over 50 years ago -- not over 50 years, but nearly 50 years ago, he made a speech about the end of war. it is really ridiculous concept when you think of it. with all of the sophistication and communication that we have come and the rest, we would even be engaged in war, or that people could be valued -- could value the worth of another person because they are not in agreement with them. i think we have to take the

debate to a much bigger place about the resolution of conflict, whether between nations are within nations, and the respect that all religions given for the dignity and worth of every person, and how do our attitudes and public policies support that and make it unacceptable and intolerable for any other actions to receive any accept ability. we have an interesting time. i'm hopeful. i have confidence in young people. they think in a different way about these things. awhile back, we were not going to communicate with this country and that country. for young people, they were communicating in real time, across borders constantly, and sharing their impatience with the status quo. every time you think one more

act of violence -- every time you think one more act of violence is going to end violence, you keep that we'll of violence going. it gives people the opportunity to say, let's talk. with that, i want to take us right back to where we are here. this sense of community, this respect for the dignity and worth of every person by the housing they will receive, the care they will give, the reflection of -- we have our cultural differences. that is reflected in what is being done here. it is really a tribute not only to don -- we have had many groundbreakings and ribbon cuttings over time, but also to the members of the board, the

private sector entities, financial services, whoever has been involved in this, we are grateful to all of you for making this day possible as well, and very proud of the over $50 million that is coming from the president -- from the recovery act. very honored that michael is with us today, as well as all of you. thank you all very much. [applause] we will be watching. thank you. the want to welcome everyone to the regular board meeting of the

san francisco unified school district. commissioner fewer: here. commissioner maufas: here. commissioner murase: here. commissioner norton: here. commissioner wynns: here. vice president yee: present. president mendoza: here. elvina fan: here. athena creer here. president mendoza: i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under god, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> item a is the approval of board minutes. there are nine tonight. item b -- there are none tonight. item b is the superintendent's

report. >> i am not superintendent garcia. he is representing san francisco unified school district at a meeting of all california superintendents, where they are talking about lots of matters of importance to our budget. he wanted us to send his salutations this evening. i would like to remind everyone in the superintendent's said that we want to wish you a happy and prosperous lunar new year, in celebration of this year of the hare. schools will be closed on thursday, february 3. on friday, february 4, school and district offices will also be closed for a furlough day. february 3 and 4, there will be no school. speaking of furloughs, it is

unfortunate that they are necessary. there may be students and families looking forward to this upcoming weekend. we do realize it is a burden for others. we do not take these furlough days lightly, but we could not balance our budget and operate our district in a way that is best for our students without the furlough days. we appreciate your understanding and community support. speaking of the budget, at our next board meeting we will have a longer presentation on the budget and the possible implications for san francisco unified school district. in the meantime, i would like to call on deputy superintendent lee to share additional information, and a brief preview of what the budget road ahead looks like. before he starts, i want to say [unintelligible] >> thank you, deputy superintendent and acting superintendent. this will be short.

we are going to flash a few bullet points by way of a timely but abbreviated preview of future discussions based on the budget proposal that governor brown recently made. this is, i believe, our first board meeting since we have gotten a semblance of a sense of budget proposals for k-12. for the communities benefit and also for the board, we wanted to highlight a few key points. part of this is noting that a lot of what we are hearing in the community dialogue about education is a little bit different than what seems to be the case. there is a perception that k-12 is baird -- is spared. there is a big qualification to

that general motion. i will describe that in a moment. the governor has proposed a state budget for the next fiscal year that is responding to an estimated $26.70 billion budget gap for the state. the proposals have several broad parameters. one is deep cuts, about $12.50 billion of cuts, to non-k-12 areas of the budget, shifts of government services to the local level, and some reliance on one- time savings and borrowing, not nearly as much as has been proposed by his predecessor in previous years. there are about $12 billion of revenues. the largest portion of those are an extension for an additional five years of temporary taxes that were voted on by the legislature two years ago,

specifically a 0.25% surcharge on income tax, a 1 cent increase on sales tax, a 0.5% increase in vehicle license fees, and a reduction in dependent deductions. these are part of his budget proposal. it is a combination of revenues and expenditure reductions. with respect to k-12 education, the proposal does protect funding for k-12. that is based on an acknowledgement that education has borne a disproportionate share of the cuts in the past few years. we will show more statistics about that. it is very interesting to see how that breaks down into specific numbers. that is especially over the last few years. for tonight's purposes, there

are a couple of features of that flat funding proposal. one is that there are no mid- your cuts. -- mid-year cuts. we had been worried about that earlier, and that is not proposed right now. flat funding is basically proposed by the governor. that does mean that there would be no cost of living adjustment. that has been calculated as being scored are tabulated for k-12, which is 1.67%. that is not proposed to be funded for next year. even in his scenario, which would protect education funding, there would be no cost- of-living adjustment. the biggest point is that the protection from the cuts requires those revenues to materialize. there is about $2 billion of

revenues of that $12 billion i mentioned before that are linked to k-12 education. in order for those to occur and to be made available, at two things would have to happen. one is that the legislature would have to agree by a two- thirds vote in both houses to place on the june special election an extension of those temporary increases in revenues. if that were to happen, a majority of voters would need to approve the ballot measure. so that is a major question for all school districts in the state, and because we do not know whether those revenues will materialize, we and other school districts have to plan for two specific scenarios. one scenario is the more hopeful scenario, which is that tax increases would be placed on the

ballot and approved by voters, and funding would be more or less similar to what we have for the current year. under that scenario, the average unified school district could still see -- there are a lot of technical reasons for this. but there are small reductions in that scenario of about $19 per ada, a little less than $2 million for a district of our size. in the second scenario, either the legislature would not place the ballot measure on the special election in june, or, even if they did that, it would not be approved by the voters. in that situation, there would be an additional reduction of about $330 per ada, per unit of average daily attendance. that would be more than $20 million of additional cuts for

scenario b. as is always the case, and maybe now more than in a typical year, there are changes in other assumptions. the pace of revenue collections, expenditure forecasts being updated. even aside from this question about the tax packages being proposed and/or approved, there are other assumptions that will be changing between now and the adoption of the state budget. that could be in either direction. things could get better. things could get worse. that could of easily change the political context. in terms of looking ahead, we want to remind the commissioners and community members of where we were last june. the board passed a budget for the current year, for 2010-11,

based on a projection of a $130 million budget deficit over two years. -- $113 million budget deficit over two years. even the scenario -- though scenario a is much better than scenario b, that does not completely bridge the gap between revenues and expenses for our district, as well as other districts. there are expiring school stimulus funds from the federal government. we still continue to fund step and colorado increases for employees, health and retirement -- step and [e = -- stepped cost of living increases

for employees, health and retirement programs that are increasing at an alarming rate -- all of those things coupled with slightly reduced funding combine to create continuing budget reductions. one event which is coming up on february 12 -- will be holding a school planning summit. representatives from all of our school sites and many district offices will gather to begin the site planning process for next school year. in that regard, we will be doing a lot of analysis, and trying to do the best job we can of paring school site budget allocations. we will contemplate both scenarios. all the school community members will hear more from us before then. i will leave it at that for now. as the deputy superintendent mentioned, we will talk about some of this more at our next

meeting. thank you. >> thank you, deputy superintendent lee. we really want to emphasize that on february 12 we will be bringing our school communities together, and representatives from school site councils, to begin the budget process. we want to encourage a turnout for that session. president mendoza: you have a question? commissioner murase: i had a question for mr. lee. thank you for that synched presentation. you went over the tax package. i am concerned about the dependent deduction. by definition, the families of our school districts take a vintage of the dependent deduction. we are asking them to give up part of the dependent deduction to be able to fund schools at a

reasonable level. is that correct? >> commissioner, i believe in certain respects that is correct. i am not totally clear what the amount of that is. i imagine this is part of the state income tax proposal. i believe that all of these are currently in place, or have recently expired. so all of these tax extensions -- they would not be, for the most part, additional tax increases right now. they were passed two years ago. they were intended to expire in two years. the proposal is that they would remain in place for another five years. we can do some research on that. commissioner murase: it is important for us as a board to be able to articulate how important revenue measures are. president mendoza: thank you.

commissioner maufas: deputy superintendent lee, i know as we move through the budget ourselves, our families and staff -- we have a web site folks can send questions to. questions that would be broader public questions can get answered. >> yes, commissioner. we can do that. i think we did a fair amount of multi-modal engagement last year as well. we had a series of workshops, opportunities for community members to come and talk with us in person, including in my office. we had a variety of documents on our website. we will certainly build on those here. commissioner maufas: thank you.

my second question was -- you mentioned the shift on some government programs to the local level. i know we do not have the full breadth of understanding of what those things will be, but will we have some idea of what is involved? >> we can certainly give a more detailed description of those specific proposals. we can do that either at the next board meeting on february 8 as part of our budget update -- commissioner maufas: i think probably as we go along, anything you know and that we can let our families and staff know would be appreciated. thank you. president mendoza: thank you. >> great. commissioners, this evening we have two distinguished service

and special service awards. to present the first distinguished service award, i would like to call the assistant superintendent to talk about the first award. >> good evening, commissioners. it is my privilege to recognize principle chris rosenberg. this acknowledgement is well- deserved. [applause] chris rosenberg has been a longstanding instructional leader in our district, most recently as principal of star king. he answered the call to action to come served in the superintendent's zone, leading

the changes at john muir elementary. we are very pleased to have him there. some individual comments from teachers and parents frequently recognize some of the positive changes that are occurring there at john muir elementary. we know "the chronicle" has been documenting it in a year-long series. chris rosenberg has been successful because of the elevated expectations and accountability that he holds for each and every one of the students who walk through the front door, as well as educators who served in the school, for his colleagues, as well as himself. i think that is what is making all the difference as he engages in this new charge. i do want to invite chris up to say a few words, because he is never short for something to say. [applause]

>> thanks, boss. i appreciate it. thanks so much, guadeloupe. it is a pleasure to be up here. i will be short with my comments tonight because you set me up like that. it is thrilling to be up here. i appreciate it. it is great to be acknowledged by your colleagues and peers. i feel like the real key to success is the people we have working for us. i have been blessed at starke king and john muir to have a remarkable stuff that works for me. i am lucky. my success is due to them. i am thrilled to have a fantastic supervisor to add to that as well. i think my performance review is coming up soon, so keep that in mind. [laughter] thank you also much. i appreciate it. -- thank you all so much. i appreciate it. [applause]

>> congratulations, principal rosenberg. we would also like to call up to present and say a few words on the special service award marlena from our payroll finance department. [applause] >> good evening. i want to thank the payroll operations department for their fantastic job, especially during the time when we had the famous fire at 135 van ness. i think the staff for the wonderful job they do. they support everyone who works for the school district. i also want to thank joe for his continuous support. thank you. [applause]

>> could we have the staff come up so you can present this to everyone? [applause] >> nice meeting you. >> nice to meet you. >> congratulations. >> thank you. >> on their behalf, here you go. can we have a round of applause? if you are an employee, please stand. [applause] >> thank you all. item d is our student delegates

report. elvina fan? >> so far, we have been continuing on summit planning. we are trying to get community- based organizations to have workshops that would help future student leaders to be better prepared for teachers, especially with the budget being so bad. we have stood indelicate applications -- we have a student delicate applications for anyone who would like -- we have student delegate applications for anyone who would like to sit here next year. a former youth commissioner came by to talk about a resolution urging the san francisco board of education to create a task force charged with improving health education curriculum's at all high-school, where there would be a comprehensive re- evaluation of health education in public schools.

also, on the weekend of february 5 and february 6, there will be a youth leadership program, where students from all around san francisco get to attend, basically, a huge workshop, seeing how the school district is like in different districts in the community. president mendoza: thank you. did you give the date on that and the time? >> the youth leadership weekend is saturday february 5 and sunday february 6, and saturday is from 9:30 to 5:30. sunday is from 9:30 to 3:30. president mendoza: where will it be located? >> at south beach harbor appear -- harbor pier 40a. >> we have our pac

representative. >> good evening. thank you for having us. we have kind of a longer board report because this year there are so many things going on. we have so many priorities. as your advisers, we are working on those as well. one of the things we have questions about is the superintendent zone in the city. we have been hearing some parent concerns. there is constant confusion about how this incredible amount of money is being spent, and who is making decisions about it. a lot of people have questions on whether or not it is the

district. is it the schools? who is going to be spending this, and for what? it is just a constant thing that we are hearing from lots of different people, from lots of different places. it would just be really helpful to get a clear way for parents to figure out what is going on. we at one. heard something about progress reports going out about what -- we at one time heard something about progress reports going out about what is happening. anything that could clarify the process of what is going on in the schools. there is also questions from parents that we heard about the whole reassignment of teachers. just the process. some of us on the pac have taken time to look at the grant. a lot of it is focused on academics, which we are very excited about. some of these schools are barely

reaching 10% proficiency. unfortunately, we have failed these students for years, and we are excited to know that there is money going in there. one thing we really need to focus on is make sure that real reform happens. these are patterns that have been going on for years at the schools. it would be really nice to know that real changes are going to happen for these children, so each kid could be performing at their own potential. i have heard people talk about -- teachers talk about how hard is to reach a certain demographic of children. that is somewhat disappointing at times. also, this weekend, i was walking by one of the schools, and there was a teacher there on sunday, working hard,