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 copy of this before i leave. it is basically a self identification and an affidavit. very different form, but similar in structure to the way we administer the free and reduced lunch forms. supervisor supervisor mar: i know a lot of the youth in the district are limited english-speaking, so i

hope there is the process to raise awareness in the communities of color that this be available. can you explain how a community outreach will be done? >> it has been put on our website. as i said before, we will send it out to all of our partners. one reason for the delay is because we wanted to get the cover letter translated into spanish and chinese. that is available there. the office to which this is directed -- we do not have a chinese speaker. we do have a translator in spanish. we will do outreach using the monday reminders to our principal at the secondary level. we will figure out the best way to get this word out. supervisor mar: i know a number

of the organizations that are here from communities of color can speak to this up for the last three months of the fiscal year. i support supervisor campos's vision that this free muni pass be available much more broadly beginning the next fiscal year. thank you. supervisor campos: before we turn it over to the mta, i see commissioner fewer is in the audience. i do not know if you wanted to add anything to the presentation from the school district, but the main thing from this end of the aisle is simply making sure that the school district sees that all steps are taken to make sure this program is implemented as quickly as possible. welcome to the chamber, and

welcome -- and thank you for being here. >> we passed a similar resolution supporting a resolution to have a youth lifeline pass for low-income students. i would like to also add another part of our resolution, our concern for our students and students of private schools. when the have turned 18 but still working on their high- school diplomas, we have had an issue with many of our students being issued tickets -- not just one, but two tickets, amounting to $150. these are high school students. they have turned 18 before their graduation date. we feel the m.t.a. should grant them immunity -- i mean an exception. they should not have to buy an

adult pass. they are full-time students. as you recognize in your resolution, we have a lot of low income students, including students who rely every day on writing muni to schools, work, and home. the board of education is working on a transportation plan that will eliminate a lot of our high school bus transportation. we would appreciate the board of supervisors looking into and asking mta if they might make exception for students who have turned 18 but are still working on high-school diplomas. supervisor campos: if i may ask janet martinson of the mta -- of want to thank her and the

entire mta staff for working so diligently in the last two months to try to make this happen. i also want to think the director and executive director for their efforts. >> thank you for bringing this resolution for us. i am janet martinson. i am mainly here to voice mta support for this resolution and to talk a little bit about the mta's actions. the mta has been working collaboratively with supervisor campos's office and the school district to support implementing the youth level and program. in regards to the mta action moving forward, since the mta board did previously approved the allocation of 12,000 monthly

passes per month to low-income youth at $10 per month, it will need additional approval by the mta board in order for the mta to be able to provide the same passes for free for the remainder of the fiscal year. we are planning to have that heard at the march 1 mta board meeting. that is all up i had to say. i am available to answer any questions. supervisor campos: i do want to thank you and the rest of the staff for moving so quickly to put this item on the agenda. this is something that has been moving very quickly. we greatly appreciate that. it was not an easy thing to do. i would encourage you to continue to do what you have to do to work collaboratively with us and the other sister agencies and the community. thank you very much. >> thank you, supervisor.

supervisor campos: if i may ask the director of the department of children, youth and their families -- thank you for being here. i also want to reiterate my thanks to the mayor for his interest in this and for moving so quickly to make sure that all of the city resources were made available to expedite the implementation of this. thank you and welcome to the committee. >> good afternoon, members of the committee. i fully support this resolution. i am here to avail myself to work with mr. r metro -- armitraud, the youth commission, and ms. martison to develop a discounted past delivery system for next year that is going to

be streamlined, sensitive to the needs of our youth and families , and something that is administratively sound and sustainable. winter -- we participated in this process closer to the end of this process, after many months of conversation between the school district, mta, and members of the board, primarily so we can call the school district develop a system for next school year that will meet the needs of our families. we will make the commitment to work with our partners in developing the planning process and creating a delivery system that will work from all of us so that come august, when school starts again, we will be able to have, once again, a streamlined system. we actually do partner very

closely with several institutions that are housed in said the school already, which i believe will help us facilitate the delivery of these fast passes, namely the wellness centers. we operate those in all of the public high schools. we have many after-school programs throughout the city in all of our schools. we also have family resource centers that we operate throughout the city. i think there will be lots of options for us to meet the needs of the community. i look forward to working with our partners in doing this. supervisor campos: thank you come and director. if i may add, i think it was a great idea for the mayor to include the bcyf in the discussion. as part of your ongoing work, you have a -- established

relationship with many people in the school district. i think working with the mta will help move this forward a lot more quickly. i think it is a great idea. thank you very much. that is it in terms of the presentation. i know we have a number of speakers who are here. with the chair's commission -- permission, we will move to public comment. i know it is valentine's day. we appreciate the comments, but i know people want to get home at some point to their loved ones. so two minutes per speaker. if i call your name, please come up. i apologize if i mispronounce any names. maria gonzales, frank lara, olsen martinez, carmen lee, norah calderon, jonah abernathy.

if you can please come forward and speak, you each have two minutes. thank you. >> good afternoon, a supervisor. my name is joanne and i am a member of power. i want to make a quick comment. i would like to see the comments come first for the experts come and speak. sometimes, we do not get our answers from the experts. we take our comments and leave, but we do not get there in point -- that their input on what we commented on. i have three kids and one adult child. i have a budget of $980 a month. i spend $450 on rent. i spend a $200 on fast passes to get on unique a month.

-- get on muni a month. this is for a family of four. the would like free passes. it would stop the children from getting on the back door to try to get their education. also, i would like to see it because 80% of my neighborhood does not know anything about what is going on down here. i would like to see some of the outreach go into my neighborhood so they would know what is going on about these test passes. i did hear one of the supervisors mention a unified school district. one of my daughters goes to a charter school, and they do not give this kind of information. i would like to see it go into the tractor schools. more parents are putting their kids into charter schools. my other comment is that i agree that the passes should