surrounding the inclusive practices and we will follow up the next night with staff at the committee of the whole on the special ed redesign. >> the crick -- the curriculum committee we start at 5:30. president mendoza: thank you. augmented rules and policy and legislative commission. commissioner murase: my report will be brief. we reviewed legislative proposals and relied allegation on csba recommendations. i have that available if there are members of the board who would like to review the specific legislation. the committee is looking at a formal process for appointments to different committees that we have and the first step was really developing a full roster of the various committees and task forces that we appoint to.

so i want to thank nancy for her staffing of this particular effort and it's still in process. we will continue to keep you updated as we come closer to a formal written policy. president mendoza: thank you. and a report on the committee of the whole, we had a presentation on the 2011-2012 budget overview of the developments since the tax extension has not quite yet gotten onto the ballot. so we're looking at an additional $25 million in cuts in addition to the $113 million that currently exists and we're also having our schools consider their schedule b or their budget b with, option b, b for bad. and so we're preparing for the storm that's going to be hitting us very soon and these tax

extensions, if this doesn't happen, is really going to devastate our school quite significantly. and i know that the superintendent and staff has -- have met with the principals and we're just preparing for next year. and then we -- i think that's actually all that he covered on that. item t is a report on the closed section actions. -- closed session actions. commissioner wynns: i just wanted to very quickly mention an event that i was able to attend last friday which was kind of ribbon-cutting, i guess, for the project at gordon j. lowe which is a joint project with a number of city partners including the public utilities commission which is rainwater collection project, where water is collected off the roof of the school, held in sis

alternatives, comes down a pipe system and is used to warden the gardens, -- wattwater the gardens, one of those that i was amazed and pleased we were able to do at all, gibbon the neighborhood and the size of the school yards. so it was really quite extraordinary and a mural describing the sistern and water collection system. this is a project, one of our green school yard partners, but it's a living library project. and it was rling amazing and there were a lot of people there and i think we do a lot of wonderful projects just of this nature except what's unique about this is that it was funded by the p.u.c. this is about managing groundwater, diverting water, even in, again, the most densely populated neighborhood in san francisco and according to board of supervisors, president david chiu, who was present, the

second most densely popularitied in the country second to china toub in -- chinatown in new york. it was quite wonderful and i wanted to refer to that and to really give kudos to the people involved in it. but more to the model that we actually, working with something that clearly is of great benefit to our students and to our schools, with limited resources, but that actually is a kind of perfect model of collaboration with other agencies because it meets their goals, using mostly their resources with a little -- the minimum amount of resources from us. and has great benefit to us and to our students. that's it. president mendoza: thank you. other commissioners? commissioner ye. -- yee. vice president yee: thank you. i just wanted to add another happy note to our board meeting. this is an opportunity for may 7 , we're going to have five

schools participating in this program on a saturday. a city college from one to three. and -- from 1:00 to 3:00. and basically it's to take off from the documentary about the kids in new york ske citi where they learned partner dancing in the fourth and fifth grade. this is going to be about 50 or 60 fourth and fifth graders from these five schools that will be participating and they're going to be dancing things that they'd never think they'd be dancing. they're going to be doing salsa and swing and it's going to be great. i've seen them practice for the last two months, basically, and they're getting pretty excited about coming and if you have time, please come and support them because this is the first in san francisco and you're going to be basically missing history because i anticipate that this is going to grow and grow and grow and also if that's

not enough, the middle school jazz band will be there to accompany them. so please come if you have time. >> where at city college? vice president yee: yeah, i'm so sorry. city college at the new wellness center, it's the beautiful place and they have these huge, humongous dance classrooms and studios and it's in room 301. president mendoza: is this this an organization that you started? [laughter] vice president yee: yes. as most of you know i have a passion for this and i just love the fact that when i saw that movie, the positive stuff that comes out of this, it's not just about dancing, it's really about a lot of other things in terms of the discipline that they acquired to learn this and it gives them some focus, just like any other art form, this is

going to give a lot of kids opportunities to do things that they really enjoy. so i'm right in the middle of forming this thing. if any of you want to participate in informing it, just -- in forming it, just let me know. i need some help. commissioner murase: i wanted to report that last thursday i attended an indian family night held at horris mann middle school. there are 350 native american families in our school district and i'm pleased to report there's an active parent advisory council that meets monthly in the indian resource room at horris mann and i was able to report about the decision to change the burnett campus to the havard school because as we learned peter burnett, the first governor of california, has been very -- has some very racist policies, including extermination of

native people. so they welcomed that news. i just wanted to share that the cam county of science haas has some upcoming free day -- the california county of science has some upcoming free days. may 13, 14 and 15 will be free for families in zip codes 94127, 94131 and 9413 and families can look that up on the academy of science website. president mendoza: thank you. i attended the district four, district seven budget town hall. i'm not attending fun stuff like you guys. but it's been really great that the mayor and supervisors have been including the school district in that discussion and i know that others have been going to the district meetings and there are a couple more left and then we also attended their rec and park egg hunt that they had for 4,500 students and many of our students actually performed onstage as part of the entertainment. and we got to be part of the rib

cookoff which was really fun and then we attended a really great event last night held by mo-magic and they were celebrating, it was their fourth year and it was just a really wonderful event to see our students performing and to see so many community members in the western edition come out and support their efforts. that was great. >> rosa parks school community invited me to be on their v.i.p. cable car in which i did. and also with chris and his son quinn and we had a fabulous time. i wanted to thank the rosa parks community for the invitation and i hope to join them next year. vice president yee: sometimes i don't remember when things happen. not sometimes, always it seems like. but did the visit from -- that

visit was in between -- ok, i should mention that. madam leo is from china and she's, i guess, we couldn't figure out exactly, but she's like the equivalent of hillary clinton and very high level official that came to san francisco but -- after -- visiting the president. and they made it a decision to visit one of our child development centers and when they were planning it they had anticipated that, ok, she's going to be there only half an hour, it's a tight schedule and once she got there she wouldn't leave. she just loved it there. the kids were great, the staff was great. i have to give a lot of credit to the facilities people who went in there for several days to get the place prepared for the visit and she actually

stayed there for about an hour. not even then, when she was ready to leave, they jumped into the car and everybody thought, she jumped back out. and she brought out her photo album with of her grandkids to show us. it was so cute. all that, she really made an argument of how important child development is in preschool and so forth and when she was talking about the fact that they're going to expand their budget because they're doing so well in china and expand 50% of the -- you know, into their child development budget. they're going to train, this is bizarre, they're going to train next year, what, 800,000 new teachers. >> 800,000 preschool teachers. vice president yee: yeah, next year. superintendent garcia: did you ask her for foreign aid for news is vice president yee: i should have. >> she said they were going between 2010 and 2012, that they

were going to increase their education budget, not just preschool. by 50%. president mendoza: any other reports? thank you. so we have item t is a report on closed session actions. and a claim against the district in title p.b. case number 2011010277. the board of education by a vote of five ayes and one ncaa. and one absent. approved a settlement. item u is other informational items and in our agenda we have the quarterly report on the williams uniform demraints january through march 2011. informational ncaa notice, classified personnel transactions. item v, this meeting is adjourned. good night, everyone.

>> welcome to culture wire. the city rolls of the red carpet to host the international film festival. the actors, directors, and others in among luminaries around the globe. we will get a sneak peek of this year's exciting program. >> welcome to "culture wire." in april, the 50 forces and

francisco international film festival will be taking place. joining me to talk about the programming is the director of programming for the san francisco film festival. rachel, welcome to "culture wire." i look forward to this every year. my first question is, what will be the opening night film? >> we have a terrific film for opening night. it is called a beginners and as an american independent film that stars ewan mcgregor and christopher plumber. >> what kind of music is that? >> house music. >> it is a hard to describe story with a lot of humor and heart. >> what are the other highlights? >> there are so many great

films. it is hard to pick out the favorites. we have over 200 films and the festival. we have some other wonderful american independent films like the centerpiece premier that stars john c. reilly. including the closing nine film that really shows the crossroads of internationalism that the festival. >> it is not just about the two weeks of the festival. you guys also run really fascinating programs for the bay area. >> really don't stopped screening films. we have a series of festivals in the fall for the fall season. and we often do week-long runs

at theaters around the bay area so that people who want to see the kind of films that we show at the festival can see them all year long. and we have a wonderful filmmaker services department. we can provide fiscal sponsorship and a lot of great advice. finally, we have a really robust education department. people that want to learn about filmmaking can take some of our fantastic glasses. >> one of the things that impresses me about the film festival is sort of the impact that it has. i know you guys are the longest running film festival in the americas. >> it was always a great festival for the city of san francisco, so our constituents are the people of san francisco.

we want to do what we can to reach out to as many kinds of populations as we can. one way we do that is by bringing in guests. that is one of the things that makes a festival exciting. not only do get to see films that you might not otherwise see, but you can meet a director or an actor and hear about their prospective making the film. the one thing that i always like to tell people who have never been to a film festival before is that it can sometimes seem daunting from the outside because he will pick up the program guide and it has 100 name movies and seems a bit hard to navigate in the beginning. but it is really worth it as you know from coming. the atmosphere in december, the interaction with other guests, the films themselves make it a

great couple of weeks. >> it is important to participate and take advantage of this treasure trove of films from how many countries? >> is usually between 40 and 50 countries. >> it is an impressive range of filmmakers and the national perspectives that gets represented in the film festival. thank you for bringing this festival to san francisco every year.