mayor, the supervisors, the district attorney. so they are all individual appointments. i know as an employee of the mayor that there actually is a clear vetting process that happens. there is a commission secretary that goes through each and every candidate and has some time with them to talk about expectations and to talk about what their qualifications are. so there is a clear process that happens. we just happen to be a board that brings it all together, and fortunately we have been able to agree on the candidates. but i will say that i will not be supporting the commission recommendation tonight, and catalina knows this. i have a tremendous amount of respect for you, and i am glad you are going to be representing us. this is more for me about principle and the idea that we do not have a process in place for such an important seat. this is the third year we have let this go by, and i think i feel very strongly about that.

you will have the votes, and i know you will, and i am glad you will be serving as our opponentee to the commission. roll call, please. >> roll call. >> five ayes, thank you. >> thank you, catalina, and welcome aboard. >> the next item, we are going back to the adoption of the title 3, local educational agency improvement. i need a motion and second. >> so moved. >> second. >> thanking. a reading by the superintendent ? >> good evening. we this item applies to our district l.e.a. plan, and we are here to ask for your approval for an amendment to

the plan. this amendment pertains to our services to english learner students. due to the fact that we did not meet our targets for the last two years for our english learners in english language arts, commissioner maufas reminded us we need a glossary. we are talking about lea for e.l.. i am sorry. i didn't bring the glossary. we actually have good news about serving our english learners in many areas. we have met all of our scores and targets there. we have met c.s.t. scores for our english learners in math. and we have redesignated a higher number of students than we have before from english learner to fluent english proficient. the one area we have not met

the target was english language arts. this gives us an opportunity to look at it again, and bring it together in revised format. that is what the addendum is. we would like for your approval and will answer any questions. >> 124r any public comment on this? seeing none. commissioners? any questions or comments? ok. back to you. >> read this? >> yes. >> that the board of education of the san francisco unified school district adopt the improvement plan addendum, i.p.a. that will ensure that the local educational agency will meet title 3 annual measurable achievement objectsives and will in the future for english learners and english language arts. the implementation will be monitored through june of 2012.

>> thank you. roll call, please. >> six ayes. >> thank you. i'd m is discussion of other educational issues. superintendent garcia? >> i just wanted to give you a brief update, and i would like deputy superintendent richard caranza to make the presentation. >> good evening, president mendoza, members of the board of education and superintendent garcia. it is an honor to be with you. we promise we are not going to taken a lot of time this evening, but what we wanted to do is bring to the board a mid

year update if you will on beyond the talk version 2. as you know, we have spoken in the past about version one and version two. version one was the vision of the strategic plan, our aspirations if you will. version two is the implementation of the vision in measurable and con concrete terms. before we launch into the actual pourp presentation, you should have a document that is 22 pages in length. we have provided copies of that document for the public as well, and it will be posted on the website. the 22-page document provides affirm detailed information about each of the initiatives included in the version two of the beyond the talk implementation plan and gives

you an idea of who are the sponsors of each one of the projects, who are the project managers, annual goals and also a description of the project so that it is hopefully understandable to the public and that we have he hadded out all of the education-ese if you will so it is understandable to everyone. >> as you know, beyond the talk was adopted in 2008 by the school board. version two was developed and reviewed by the board of education in the fall of 2010. the focus on beyond the talk 2.0 is on implementation and key strategies that accelerate towards a prekindergarten and post secondary continuum for success. i will talk about that more in a minute. the revised beyond the talk is being presented tonight for the board's review. now if you recall, our superintendent has spoken very eloquently about the continuum

of the educational experience of students in our school system. in order to make the closing of the achievement gap a reality and to a i chief our goal which is students graduating career and college-ready with 21st centry skills, we can't not only focus on students with skills at the high school level we have to start in pre-k, and not only go into great 12, but into grades 13, 14 and 15. if students aren't successful in clelf without remediation, then we haven't really done our job as a pre-k-12 system. if you look at the point along that cycle as a district, we are going to be sticking the dip stick in and measuring how are students doing. are all students ready for kindergarten?

we have many of our educators in our district that are working as we speak on developing what those metrics are going to look like for student readiness for kindergarten. we are going to look at fourth graders in terms of them being ready for middle school. we are going to look at english yards and math skills in the fourth grade. we want to make it clear what students should be able to do in the fourth grade. we are looking at middle school graduates ready for high school. english language arts and aljeb ra. at the high school level, are all of our high school graduates college-ready or career-ready? we have some exciting work that we are doing that we will bring to the board with our community partners. unions in our community that are just chomping at the bit to get involved with us and develop programs for our students. so our students meeting the requirements, and are they

passing? what is the pass rate the k.c.? as i spoke to you about, on that trajectory, what is the success of our students in the post secondary institutions. as you know, the board has engaged in the process of reflection, and that reflection has really identified 13 priority projects. now we have also talked about the fact that in isolation thinking, those 13 projects stand alone. however, when you really look at the work of the district along this continuum, the five points that we want to measure student progress along the way, we really have three big areas that all of these initiatives fall in. one is the instructional core. the second is a differentiated school and student support for our students. and third is systems and structures for engagement and accountability. as you look at this slide, under each one of these areas,

can see where each one of those 13 priorities that the board and the superintendent have identified as priority work fall. so we are working on all of those priorities. but what is really powerful about the work and the way the work is developing in our school system is that all of those 13 priorities are very much inter2009ed one -- inter2009ed one with the other. you can't talk about early learning without talking about college and career readiness putting those students on a trajectory to be college and career-ready. or talking about a quality middle school and what those experiences would look like. and you can't talk about that without talking about inclusive practices and differentiated instruction. they all web together, and for organizational purposes, we have grouped them into those three areas. now, the district and the

schools also have priorities. what is very clear to us as we move through this work is that the district and school priorities must come together to build a strong instructional core with differentiation for the learners in our schools. these priorities are reflected in the area and school balanced score cards and the budgets. if you look at the diagram we have in this slide, at the very core, at the very center of our work is the core curriculum and the metrics that we use to assess whether students are meeting those targets or not. folded within that work is also of course the special education redesign that we were engaging in. the work we are doing around our english language learners, a plan, and then early learning, quality middle

schools and college and career readiness. they form the triangle of expectations and learning for our entire school system and is really the heart of beyond the talk 2.0. we have a wonderful way in education about envisioning and conceptualizing. one of the areas that we rarely pay attention to is implementation. so we are very excited to share with you some slides that talk about what we have done this year around project management to actually be able to implement and track our implementation with goals and with targets that we have identified, and people responsible for different parts of the project. i would like to ask our executive on loan, laura, who is going to talk a little bit about our project management structure. >> thank you, commissioners. so on this slide what you will see is that we have put in

place a project management system to ensure we can build the immeltingation infrastructure and muscle of the district to take these 13 projects from vision to reality. the project management structure starts with the document that you have in front of you that actually -- rereviewed the the first draft at the end of september with this board. after this board approves those priorities, i worked with the two deputies and the project managers to develop a project charter, which the next step in the process, which is basically scoping out what are the deliverables, who is in charge, what is the budget, how are we going to measure success, and what are the key milestones. we did this for all of the projects. they are almost fully completed now. what i do is me with all the project managers on a monthly basis and the sponsors to make sure we are staying on track with the milestones and to identify any issues or

challenges that the projects are running into so that we can have the sponsors provide the support to help move those projects forward. the other thing we do is hold ourselves accountable for monitoring the progress. so once a month i write a report for the sprlt and the deputies, and -- the superintendent and the futures, and they share that with the -- and the deputies, and they share that with a progress report on how we are doing, are we staying on track, and what are some of the issues so we can bring that to cabinet and resolve those. one of the issues is how to we integrate all of these initiatives so they are not really sthand-alone? that is what we do at the cabinet meetings. actually in some of our projects we actually have meetings where we connect two or three of the different projects if there are issues that we have to resolve together. then the next piece that we are almost complete with that we will be bringing to you is what

we call the buy monthly progress monitoring report. it is a 13-page report on all 13 projects that we can share with you as the board. we will be bringing that in probably the next two weeks. that gives us an update on all the projects. we do that so we can share with you and the public to have more of that transparency and accountant for how we are doing -- accountability for managing the initiatives. we are also sharing that with funders. we are going to talk a bit about how we believe this kind of transparency and accountability is going to help bring more cohesion and increase the amount of resources we can bring to actually invest in this plan. then at the end of the year, we hope our communication team will have an easier time putting together an annual process. we will have been collecting that data all along the way. that is the project management

initiative that i have been asked to support the district in, putting in a project management system in place. so making sure it is integrated into all of the score cards as a performance management piece this. is the project management piece to say there are many missions that have to be done across schools and depths that don't fit in the b.o.c., but have more extensive project plans. on the side panel, this is more detail than you may want. that is the project tool box. part of my job is to build the capacity of all the project managers. depending on the complexity of the project, we look at these different tools. i will say that the four metrics you are going to see on the first progress monitoring report for these projects, we will be looking at the leveled of stake holder engagement, the tracking to milestones, the use of project resources and then

other project metrics that relate to student achievement and the actual outcomes that these projects are trying to achieve. on the next page, almost done, is an internet site we built so all the project managers are trying to go a little into making sure we have a shared work space. we also want to give board members access to this space so that if you ever want to learn more and say mcgahee, i would really love to see the project charter for the family engagement plan, you can go out there and get as much detail as you would like. then we will have some of these documents also available to the public. because again, we really believe being transparent helps us be held accountability for doing what we say we are going to do to make the projects come to life. >> two quick slides. laura is able to work with us through a grant from the san francisco school alliance.

we have an agreement, an m.o.u. with the san francisco school alliance that spells out clearly what their role is in this work. their role is to recruit corporate and fin thropic investors and other key partners that will help fund our key project initiatives. in times of dwindling resources, we are looking at being focused on what it is we are implementing so we can go out and make a case to investors in our community about why they should be working with us and supporting the work that we do. the alliance has convened key investors and partners and appropriate community-based organizations, providing leadership to the team, as well ased leaders to the specific projects initiative, which is laura. and to ebb sure a-- ensure accountability. and finally, and this is not to

be diminished in any way, but to communicate the good work happening in the district to the broader community and other goals and alliances. in terms of next steps, we will do the following. provide regular progress monitoring reports to you and to the funders in our community. we will complete analysis of financial and implementation requirements for strategic projects within the current budget cycle and provide prioritization and internal and external plans for strategic projects for 2011 through 2013. that is a quick update on the beyond the talk, 2.0. i do want to encourage everyone to look at the 22-page document because it provides a good deal of detail around each of the projects. and we will have a two-page summary as well for you. we would be happy to entertain any questions you might have. >> thank you. commissioners, do you have any

questions or comments? commissioner norton and commissioner fewer. >> i was just interested in the project website that you developed for this. will we be getting information on how to access that? >> yes. >> ok, great. >> all commissioners, you will be receiving information on how to access that site. >> thank you. commissioner fewer? >> yes, thank you. i will read this and go through it with a fine tooth comb. but in the meantime, as i have noticed in this document right here, this one, i see that in different areas you are working on different aspects within that area. for example, in early learning, i see that your goals are really around a structural goals of the department and how do we build a new infrastructure to meet the goals. and then i am looking at

college and career readiness, and i see that the goals are around implementation and actually prepping students to take the a.p.g. what i don't see there, and perhaps it should be not in this plan, but sort of the thing like the safety nets that we are working on. like is there an emphasis on -- i know we have the goal -- every child in the first ninth great class. i see in the plan there is a lot of emphasis on the ninth grade class. i am wondering about the safety net for those students. because there will still be some that won't be ready, quite frankly. what is going to happen for those students, and what do we

have in place for that? we implement college readiness programs, and i am looking at them, and i feel like something is missing here about sort of, again, the counseling at our own high schools and middle schools. how do we prepare our counselors now to help prepare our students to be ready? is what happens with the training around that -- maybe that is written in somewhere. anyway, some are those are just the first brief comments i have on this. thanks. >> thank you. commissioner wynns? >> thank you. i appreciate this. i can't read -- i need a magnifying glass to read that. i am looking at it carefully

because i am trying to see how specific it is. so as soon as possible, you are going to tell us how to get access to that without killing ourselves, right? i am interested in what -- i appreciate the communication emphasis because what i had thought for a long time is that we have not been very good in developing a simple -- and i don't mean simplistic, but accessible message for people. i want to know how we and the public can check on our progress. so i am interested in in whether the website plans that you have referenced here are going to have a way to see -- and i see that you do have some places -- actually just a page in the back. i see on page 17 that sort of says -- it doesn't say these

are done. i'm hoping it isn't just going to say done when it is done. i understand it is not, but i want to know what the benchmarks are and how we can check on them, and i want the public to be able to know that. even though i found this a little simplistic -- not for us, but in other places. there are many school districts that have used this kind of a planning mechanism where in particular parents, teachers can say here is our goal. they mostly used measurable test score data, but i am going to say we have a goal related to engagement in outside activities for students. our goal is we have a certain percentage by such and surf date, and here is how we are doing on that. i hope that, as we have talked about, that as time goes by, we

will be narrowing that down. in other words, we will be able to say this year we are going to concentrate on these things. we are doing ok in these areas, but we want to increase the trajectory here. here is our specific goal. i would like to know what those specific goals are once we get them and to be able to communicate to people because we actually have the data and information how we are doing on meeting these goals. if you can -- i don't know if you have anything to say about that, and it is ok if you don't -- actually, i guess i'm just saying that i hope in our next update we will have closer to that and will be able to talk about benchmarks and knowing how we are doing in various areas. >> thank you. i think commissioner fewer and commissioner wynns actually make very good points. keep in mind that this is a very broad overview of the

entire process. each one of these initiatives has a very detailed project plan with very measurable goals and objectives. what we have talked about is the next time around is take one or two of them and do a deep dive so that we are actually looking at what those measurable objectives look like and what they are like. >> thank you. any other commissioners? commissioner, yee? >> i just want to thank staff for actually putting this together in terms of conceptualizing in terms of how to better communicate these issues. i love the way you have weebd -- weefed -- our district's priorities. the 13 things you put on this particular page. i like the way it was framed. it includes all of our priorities just about in there. and i am assuming that as we

move along not so much the monthly report, but the buy monthly report, that we -- the bye monthly report, that we will get a better handle in terms of what you are doing. every time we talk to a staff member about any of these projects or any of these components, i realize that there are so many moving parts and that it is hard to capture everything when i have a 30-minute discussion with a staff member. then i realize that as i speak to a staff member, there is a lot more collaboration or breaking down of silos within our district.

in the past i would say i didn't see that. one department would just do their own thing, and they would plan something around english language learners, and then another department would plan something around english language learners. everybody was doing something different, and i would say how do you put these things ago. the basic answer many years ago was we don't. i am really happy with what i am seeing in terms of the work that is being done, but i think this would also help me a lot in -- a lot in getting a better idea of what is going on. thank you. >> thank you. any or comments or questions? seeing none, thank you both. we appreciate the update. our next item is the france african-american historical

society and the kinsey collection. i want to thank our guests tonight for being so patient. this was a big board meeting, as you saw, and we really do appreciate your coming out and sharing with us the wonderful collection that both commissioner maufas and i were able to see a little bit of at the kick-off at city hall. so welcome, and we appreciate you being here. >> press the button. >> great. thank you very much. commissioners and superintendent. i am al williams, president of the board of the african-american historical and cultural society. the best place to start is to express my admiration for all of you, the work you are doing here and your perseverance and your ability to maintain a hig