7:09 supervisor avalos: love as in the air. my name is supervisor john avalos, chair of the city operations and neighborhoods services committee. supervisor david campos is with us, and he has sponsored today's resolution and hearing. please call item 3. >> item 3, a resolution urging the san francisco municipal transportation agency to adopt changes to the youth lifeline discount fastpass program for

qualified low-income youth. supervisor avalos: 90. supervisor campos will get to run this part of the meeting. -- thank you. supervisor campos: thank you. happy valentine's day. i think it is only appropriate that we are holding this hearing on valentine's day, and i wanted thank the members of the committee who have come out to this hearing. i see at least one member of the board of education. we have all been impacted by the tough economy, and as we know here in san francisco, as of november last year, the unemployment rate was 9.6%. this economic downturn has been especially difficult on low- income children. the number of public servants qualifying for free and reduced lunch has actually increased from 54% in 2008, 2009 to 61% in

the 2010-2011 school year. just to put some perspective on those numbers, to qualify for free and reduced lunch, a student has to live in a household with income below 130% of the poverty line. that means that to qualify, you have, for a family of four, you're talking about income of $28,665 a year. you can imagine how difficult it would be for that family to survive here in san francisco. in may last year, the mta increase the price of the muni fastpass by 100% from $10 to $20, and even though that may not seem like a large amount for some families coming you can see how for some families, especially a low-income family, that would be a significant increase, and that increase was made without any special

consideration made for low- income children that could not afford the increased air. was in recognition of those challenges that supervisor mirkarimi interest in resolution urging the sfmta to create a discounted fast fast for low- income youth. that resolution, i've had to say, passed unanimously, and the board of directors approved the creation of that program. to that end, they dedicated $1.4 million of the mta budget to the youth lifeline program and asked the san francisco unified school district to sell and distribute the passes. we're nearing the end of the 2010/2011 school year, and unfortunately, the program has not been implemented. there are many reasons for that, many complications, many challenges that have gotten in a way, including some legal challenges where you are talking about a student population. the point of this and then the

resolution is to modify the program so that irrespective of the challenges, we move quickly to implement the program. we need to make good on the promise that we made to our low income children and their families, and we need to do that as soon as possible. that is why my office, working with a number of organizations, has introduced this resolution, and i want to thank the offices of other supervisors that have been working on this. i want to thank the youth commission, community-based organizations that have also partnered with us. i want to thank the school district, the mta, and its board of directors, and here, we have the department of children, youth, and their families, and i especially want to thank the mayor because in a very short time, since assuming the office of mayor, he has made it clear that this is a priority for him,

and he has been asking questions as to why this had not been implemented. so we are here today with some developments that we believe are very positive in making the implementation a reality. the resolution before today urges the mta board of directors to use funds previously approved to provide free youth passes to 12,000 low-income eligible you for the last three months of this fiscal year. we believe that this approach is the most expeditious way to implement a program whose funding has already been approved and set aside by the mta board of directors. again, i want to thank the co- sponsors of this resolution -- supervisor john avalos, the chair of the committee, supervisor eric mar, the vice chair of this committee, as well as supervisors cohen, kim, and

mirkarimi. it is time for us to fulfill our promise, and the least we can do on this valentine's day is show some love and provide reprieve for our low-income families over the last three months of the fiscal year. just some additional information -- next year, the program will be implemented as a reduced fastpass in the amount of $10. the department children youth and their families -- will want to thank the director for being here -- have offered help in implementing the program. we will hear more from the department as we go forward with this discussion. again, i want to thank the mayor and the director for their involvement. today, we will also be hearing from the school district, who has been a strong partner with us. chris will speak first, followed by jane, of the mta, and then followed by the director from

the department of children, youth, and their families. if i may ask chris from the school district to please come forward. that won. >> thank you, supervisor. it is a pleasure to be here. i want to first say thank you very much to you, especially to your staff, and i also want to recognize the members of the youth commission and the other stakeholders in this who have worked very hard, and i also have to say worked very collaborative we with us. there has been a real team effort, a real sense of, "let's get this together, let's put this together for our kids," and we are very grateful for that. i have a brief power point

presentation. if i could begin. ok. you introduce this already, so i will go briefly, but the purpose of this is that the city has recognized the transportation needs and challenges that face our youth. this has been a huge concern for us in terms of truancy and in terms of seeing attendance levels for our school. the intent was to provide a discount muni pass to san francisco youth with the easiest access possible. i think what has been very cheap and has been a great challenge about the program is being able to do this in a way that really meets the needs of our youth. part of this was modeled after the adult life line past. the idea was to present a $20 pass for $10 for any student that fell within the eligible guidelines. given the amount of the passes

-- around 12,000 -- we believed that of the students in secondary level fell within the free with this launch level, within 130% of the poverty line. we are also frustrated with the time and has taken to do this, but i do want to point out that there has been significant work to date on what has happened with this. since may 2010, we have seen resolutions of support passed by both this board as well as the board of education. we have seen this process already started for our homeless and transitional-age youth. of the 12,000 passes that were set up, we were able to begin, because of the ease with the logistical challenges in this area -- we were able to begin the process since autumn 2010 for roughly 2000 homeless and transitional-age youth. we've had a number of meetings,

presentations, and collaborative work. we have also engaged in an extensive legal analysis, particularly around the sensitive data that is concerned for our students with free and reduced lunch. finally, we have also -- and this took significant time -- settled the memorandum of understanding between ourselves, sfusb and sfmta, and we have taken into consideration a number of the risks, whether it be financial, liability, schools that impact, labor contract impact -- the list goes on and on. but let me speak in more detail. what are some of the challenges we are facing? to frame this, first off, i want the supervisors and audience to understand that the administration of this program is not simple. it is even more challenging in what we have is a very lean time for staffing.

we do not have an infrastructure in existence at our sites for the exchange of cash. in years past, you would have had things like student stores, things like accountants who would be there several days a week. the latest number i got from the superintendent was on average, you have an accountant on-site maybe two hours a week. it gives us limited the ability to move this kind of a program in a way that has been a key issue for the youth commission and one we tried to honor. we have also tried to align this work with existing contractual agreements. is not a simple case of where we can change work habits at the site or central office to simply implement the program. the agreements that we have with our labor partners are in many ways strict and rigid, and we need to be in compliance with that. this takes some level of finesse and refinement to be able to work with in this program.

next issues include the risk of over identification of students at the school site. what i mean by this is that when we go to distribute these passes or go to sell these passes, rather, what you're talking about is doing this in a way so they you do not have, "these are the poor kids. these are the kids to when they are called down to go to a certain spot or certain site to pay for their passes" -- and let's be honest here. students at school find out what you're getting the past four, and that it is based on a certain income level, and that is what we're trying to avoid from an ethical standpoint and a legal standpoint. next item is that the use of the data for free and reduced lunch program is severely restricted. we are not in a position where we can simply take the data we have already in existence and transfer it over. the data, by federal law, is restricted to the use of free

and reduced lunch programs. we are not able to move that over. what we have to do is recreated in a way that can be set up so we can gather the same kind of data, but we have to do it in a separate new infrastructure. it is a redundancy. it is a bureaucratic mess, but it is what we have to do in order to follow the law and not risk funding for our free lunch program. the next two items on your i want to talk about is that with 12,000 passes, there is significant risk in being able to move that kind of money. we are talking about roughly the value of passes would be at $250,000. setting that up either at the sites or even at the central location requires an amount of risk. you are putting staff at risk. there are security issues. there is the ability for us to be able to accept that and be able to move it back all in a way that is safe for our staff,

save for the district, and keeps us financially viable so if there's any loss, we are able to secure it. the last issue here is around the -- and i know this is a huge issue for the youth commission and understandably so, and that is the issue of checks for cash or money orders. our desire was to make this as easy as possible. as i said before, dealing with cash, you are basically moving more than $100,000 in money and more than $250,000 in passes across the district. significant issues there. if we do this by check, we run the risk of if there is a bounced check, our understanding from our budget office is that costs the district $50 per bounced check. what we are at risk for is if we do this by check, the district is financially at risk for hundreds of thousands of dollars under the worst-case scenario. and then the last case, we could be as strict as possible from

the district can do this under money orders, but the problem with that as we have added on an additional fee to our students and we are very quickly defeating the whole purpose of this, which is to make this as inexpensive and easy as possible. that is a quick sampling of some of the challenges we found and why we found is not viable right now for us to do this as a district and be able to sell these passes. so we are very pleased, and i give the enormous credit, supervisor campos, to you and your staff for moving this forward as well as our partners with mta to bringing us what i believe will be a viable system. we are now moving forward with looking to not sell but rather distribute free passes to the most -- what we believe are the most deserving secondary level students.

what we have identified is that looking at our statistics, we have roughly 10,000 students between middle school and high- school will fall within the free lunch program. the other 2000 are covered with and our homeless and transitional age -- transitional youth. of those 10,000, we are said to be able to provide those for the month of april, may, and june, the rest of this fiscal year. we have developed the application form. it is now on our website. here is the address. i have also brought copies for distribution as a wealth. we will be sending out this e- mail to all the supervisors as well as our partners at the youth commission. we have identified the staffing requirements within our shop to be able to collect data immediately, so we are ready to receive this. the income data, while we cannot use the exact data we use for free and reduced lunch program,

we can use it basically in parallel to the way that the guidelines are set up, so the income data we receive, we will sort and be able to evaluate that using the same guidelines as set out by the federal government. the passes will be distributed to individual students the a school mail, and lastly, as supervisor campos pointed out, we are looking to set this up as a sale program for next year, but i am planning with the department of children, youth, and their families through their affiliates and be able to set it up there. that is where the program stands at this time. i'm happy to answer questions. supervisor elsbernd: just one question, chris. maybe it is not for you, but sometimes, there's a group of students that get lost in the cracks here. there are some students, and i admit not a large amount, but

there are some students who economically qualified to do not attend public school but attend parochial school and attend private school in san francisco. i did not expect the you have got an answer to this one, but i would appreciate hearing down the line -- not today, not asking for something off the top of your head, any thoughts you might have on how we go after that. i recognize it is a small group, but they are san franciscans, and they need this economic threshold, and they could use our help as well on what we could do collaborative with some of the parochial and private schools to help get to those kids. >> i think it is an excellent point. it is one that has been raised within the task force. it is what i do not have an answer for at this time, but working with the coalition of independent schools, working with the archdiocese, i believe we can find a way. we have to recognize that unless

there is an expansion of the program, working with that, we had to reduce our own allocation, so there is a number of issues to be worked out. supervisor campos: any other questions? what i would say to that, i think you raise an excellent point, and my hope is that eventually, we will get to a point where something can be done about those students as well. quite frankly, for me, division should be even beyond that. how do we, in a fiscally responsible way, get to a point where we could expand and make this available to as many youth as possible, independent of whether they are in public schools or not. i think this is a step, but i think it is important to remember that there are many students in san francisco in a private school system, and we need to make sure they are not left out. supervisor mar: thanks a lot to

the school district staff for explaining the difficulties of the risk but also the -- i think you call that the bureaucratic mess, to not implement this until the last three months of the year. it is very frustrating because the money was allocated, but i understand how complex it is, and i'm glad you're working with the mta and dcyf as well to make it happen. i wanted to clarify -- there's the 12,000 passes, and 2000 are for homeless and transitional youth. so the 10,000 remaining would be for anyone in middle school or high school or secondary school students, so that as middle or high school age -- is that right? >> that is correct. supervisor mar: and they have to sell identified as eligible for free and reduced lunch, but anybody who self identifies? >> yes. we have the application. i will be glad to give you a i will be glad to give you a copy