>> in my district? it was said. president: i need you to finish up. >> thank you. >> good evening. my name is -- and i am also a father and a parent of a foot crater in a first grader. but also as a sophomore at balboa. i am also here to advocate for ms. franklin. her body of work has been above and beyond what i could imagine. i was also appalled when my son came home, and the feeling he showed me was disenchantment when this is the person, dr. gray, to them, our kids aren't dumb. .they are not may be making the standards, the standard uh-uh tests scores.

-- the standardized test scores. they may not be where they should be. just like in my sophomore year in high school. when she was there, you could see the connection she has with kids. school president for martin luther king twice. my daughter is the president. just different activities. the gardening. just on friday, candlestick park. of whole school was there. it is devastating that my kid does not even want to go there. "i do not want to go to that school. i do not want to go to the school, dad. can we move?" i had a nephew there. it is just really disappointing.

as another parent said, we did not have any warning korea there were no letters going out. they did not tell us anything that ms. franklin was one to be dismissed. we are not very happy with the situation, and we appreciate you guys. thank you. >> hi, ibm olivia hendrix. -- i am olivia hendricks. when i think the future washington students, i know they will not get the opportunity to experience all the wonderful things i have which have allowed me the chance to go to college. education is always what is to suffer when problems arise. we are told that knowledge is power and that with it we can do anything. you have lied to us.

>> hi, name is emily hernandez. ibm and 11th grader at george washington high school, -- i am an 11th grader. there were opportunities of the school as well as the band program. taking what was interesting to me. by cutting classes, not only are you and the state of california lessening the value of mine and my fellow classmates education, you're also eliminating from them key components which should be part of every child's education. every student, particularly here in san francisco, one of the most open-minded and educated cities in the world, should have

the opportunity to play an instrument and speak a language. although times are hard, especially in california, it is your responsibility to keep the cuts away from our courtroom. this is so we can continue bill level of of finance we have been accustomed to. >> good evening. i am a teacher. .i am pro note of them. those were my two students. my daughter. working to keep the cut away from the classroom, f/a-18. [applause] -- thank you. >> i teach choir of the presidium middle school in washington high school. i know there are a lot of people from washington, and we're very concerned about the lower student population.

i grew up here. if you take away students from one place to fill in another place, you end up ruining it. what is really working. you also have full-time teachers, and i will speak on behalf of music, because i am wearing two flags, the washington flag in the music flag. there are these experienced musicians to help and full-time students. teachers. the cut happens, and then they decide they do not want to work there, and then the crowd this is an age money -- the proposition h. money gets taken away. the problem is we have a great program going on right now, and it has been shown in the evans set up -- in the accelerated level of musicianship city water, and it has been noted by people who have been hearing the students year after year, so if

they can cut off in a grade, after they have spent all of this time honing their craft, and it is not just the music. it is the balance between that and creativity. it is the two programs together that makes for a strong individual. we all know that because we have all experienced it korea i know you are trying to cut a big high that is very limited right now, with very limited finances, but i am hoping with your creativity, you will find another way to deal with this. thank you. [applause] commissioner: our last batch of speakers, gloria, lisa, lawrie, megyn, ken, and tom.

states v. -- thank you. >> [speaking foreign language] >> good evening. my name is loria. .i am a para a of an eighth grader. i am also a community member and

the member of an alliance for community empowerment. i am also concerned about the security >> [speaking foreign language] >> this is why i am here today, to use this wallboards rainy day fund for a layup notices for teachers, paraprofessionals, and others. >> [speaking foreign language] >> in to look for solutions that will cut from the top in the administration and not for our kids. the of the programs that affect our kids.

" we would like to try this petition for the president of the board, ms. mendoza, and for superintendent carlos garcia. >> thank you. >> good evening. my name is helen archer. i have two children at the district. a junior at george washington high, and another elsewhere. i have served on the pta. i am not an educator, but i am an experienced administrator in nonprofit health care, and i think one of the challenges we have is to stop trying to solve our new problems with old solutions. cutting teacher fte's is an old solution to our new normal.

i'd like to say a few things. instead of looking at sheer numbers, i would recommend the process to eliminate ineffective we have many young, capable educators who are being laid off and we are retaining people that you would be embarrassed to be employ. you could ask any parent and they would be able to give you the names. i recommend a performance management program that works. we know from the statistics that it doesn't, the one you have now. the second thing is that central office reduction should take precedence over cutting classroom resources and to continue to focus on the classroom resources is an error in judgment, in my opinion. and lastly, we run a lot of small schools. they have very high fixed overhead. consolidation of schools from a size perspective i think would be an effective solution.

thank you. [applause] president mendoza: thank you. >> good evening. my name is kayden crantser, field staff for local 1021. as of last week, we start receiving phone calls with our folks being approached by their various supervisors informing them of layoffs. much to our amazement because we had not been notified by labor relations or by ajar, neither did we receive a list of folks being laid off. now, i have contacted, today, and some of those folks being targeted are members of our bargaining unit, which we will deal with that. i contacted today labor relations and the answer i received from labor relations was this was the practice in the past. that's not the case. i'm hear to tell you that we would feel rather respected if we could have a list of folks being laid off prior to any conversations occurring with these individuals since they have not yet received any

notices so that when we receive phone calls from our members asking us what is going on, we actually have a cogent answer to give these individuals. that's where we're at at this point. thank you. [applause] >> good evening, superintendent garcia, president mendoza, members of the board, my name is ken trey and i'm on the executive board of the united educators of san francisco. my colleagues were in san francisco participating in the c.t.a. state of emergency. the sense of emergency is something we share. we know that the problem is statewide and that there are funds in california to keep the schools running and those moneys happen to be in the hands of the very wealthiest members of our state and we have to move toward a fair taxation system ultimately. but in the short term, we're

going through hard times, and many of us from middle class working families experience hard times. those are the times when our old man gathered us around the table or our mother and said look, we're all going to tighten our belts and we're going to get down to essentials and all the frills are going to go away for a while and we had a sense of family and we pulled together. unfortunately, in san francisco unified school district, that's not happening. all the cuts we're hearing, the parents and the teachers and the students tonight talked about that, all the cuts are impacting the classroom. the layoffs are going to continue. the pink slips are going out. where are the cuts at the top? show us. show us where the money at the top, the money furthest away from the classroom, the money that is least essential, where are those cuts? there's $18 million in san francisco ready to keep

people in the classroom, paraprofessionals and teachers and principals for that matter. we have $8 million of rainy day fund and $10 million for federal funds for educational jobs. it's time to spend that money now. it's time to heal the family if we're going to fight the fight in sacramento together, if we're going to shake hands as we did yesterday as the bus went off to jeat, we have to make the cuts where may belong, at the top, and spend the $18 million now, rescind the layoffs. we have two teachers from el dorado, two parents, and another teacher from marina middle school to comment on the board and the superintendent's lack of action, refusal to rescind those god awful pink slips when you have the money to recall them now. thank you. [applause] >> superintendent, deputy

superintendent, commissioners, and student delegates, ladies and gentlemen, my name is lori fetzer. i work at el dorado elementary school. i'm also the mother of two students at fairmont elementary. once cedric douglas, an american abolitionist said, find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong that will be imposed on them. i am here tonight with the sole purpose of raising awareness in the hopes that this awareness may somehow lessen injustice and wrongs. i refuse to quietly is submit. i understand and believe that it is the goal of this board to strive for equity and social justice. to that end, at a board meeting around the same time last year, a slightly different mayor's disability council up of this

board, it was recommended or requested an equity report. perhaps commissioner norton or commissioner wynns would remember that. in absence of this said equity report, i feel compelled to, one, in the name of accountability, also a goal of this board, request followthrough on such a document. and, two, in the name of equity and social justice, bring to your attention the state of affairs at el dorado elementary school. this year, eight of 14 classroom teachers received pink slips on march 15. they received eight of the 37 that were given to elementary classroom teachers. last year, 11 of 14 classroom teachers received pink slips on march 15. the year before, the case was

eerily similar. i am sure you can imagine what this does to staff morale. i am sure you can imagine what this does to the sustainability of programs. i am sure you can imagine what this does to building capacity. president mendoza: i need you to wrap up. >> i'm sure you can imagine what this does to the social emotional needs for stability that is inherent in elementary school children, i'm sure you can therefore imagine what this must do to student achievement. the negative effects would be felt in any community. in this case, it furthers the predictive powers of demographics. we have a burden, let's share it. [applause] >> my name is megan cluesa and i'm a special education teacher

at el dorado elementary school. i was also here last year for pretty much the same reason. year after year, the predictive power of demographics comes back to el dorado to show us that we will lose a significant number of teachers in the layoff, whether it's de facto because they can't wait until august to know how they're going to feed their children the next year or because the layoffs finally do go through, we lose staff every year. you heard from art teachers that work with us earlier, you heard from a former art teacher, a music teacher that worked with us. these are people that bring joyful learning to our school. that's another one of the important values that this district holds, along with social justice and equity and accountability and we're asking you to follow through with those things because those are important to our district and they're important to our school. we hold those values strong at

el dorado. we believe in them and we follow through with them. we're doing everything we can despite the fact that we're facing huge layoffs and huge cuts to ensure that it won't affect our children. we are going to make sure we to everything we can next year to provide a free, appropriate public education for every child that we come in contact with and we're asking this school board to ensure that they do the exact same thing for our students. our students deserve the same free, appropriate public education that every student in the state and the district deserves. we don't have parents available to donate $10,000 to our school program. we have parents willing to dedicate time and action to get what our children need. what we need from you is the same commitment. thank you. [applause]

>> good evening. my name is lisa kimble and i'm also from el dorado. i'm the president of the p.t.o. at el dorado and i come with our vice president, mr. xavion anderson, and i'm the mother of two children at el dorado, a kindergartener and first grader and as our teachers teachers hae mentioned, our school is facing the loss of half of our teaching staff next year. as we're in the process of creating a vibrant school community and working with our extremely dedicated teachers and principal, can you imagine any business losing half their staff? i mean, what kind of an impact would that have? i mean, many businesses would fall apart. it's going to be very difficult for us to continue creating a connected community when we lose half the staff.

so we're here to ask you to do anything you can to prevent those layoffs for our school. we need our teaching staff. our principal, mr. schuman, does an incredible job at retaining staff. last year he prioritized keeping the staff, entirely cutting our supply budget. we had essentially zero supply budget so that we could retain the staff because he cares so much about creating that connectedness in that community and we put a lot of money into professional development and continuity across grade levels. all that work will be lost if we retain only half of our staff. so i'm here to ask you to do anything you can to prevent those layoffs and find the money elsewhere in the budget. we need our people. we need our teachers. thank you. [applause]

>> good evening. i am a teacher at marina middle school and also the parent of a student at lowell. i'm addressing you this evening regarding the $10 million from the federal funds that are available to our district, and the $8 million in the rainy day fund. we at marina have three vappa teachers. all three of whom have received consolidation notices. and that predicts the loss, the complete elimination, of our vappa program. please think about what happens down the road with the removal, the complete absence, of high-interest electives like these. what will keep our at-risk youth

from dropping out of school before graduating from high school? second, watching administrative positions proliferate in the district in this time of austerity is hard to understand. i consider myself politically astute and i have yet to hear any convincing reasons that justify this kind of staffing and this kind of spending. i ask you two things. please use the money, all of the money from these two funds to rescind the layoffs now. and to keep the cuts away from the classrooms. thank you. [applause] president mendoza: thank you. this closes public comment. next item is item k, the advisory committee reports and appointments to advisory committee by board members.

board members, any appointments to committee? seeing none. item l, special order of business, public hearing and adoption. i call the public hearing and adoption to the tentative agreement between the district and service employees international union, seiu, local 1021. i need a motion and second for the tentative agreement, please? thank you. reading by the superintendent. >> the requested action is that the board of education adopts the public hearing and tentative agreement and the related public disclosure document that has been ratified by seiu local 1021. i want to thank president karen bishop of the seiu and their bargaining team as well as the district bargaining team. president mendoza: that's your reading? do we need to put anything in the record?

is that just the recommendation. >> to approve. president mendoza: o.k. thank you. i don't have any public speakers signed up for this item. any comments from the -- she's been asked to be removed. are there any comments from the board or superintendent? seeing none, roll call please? thank you. [roll call vote was taken] [the motion passed unanimously] president mendoza: i need a motion and the second on the wage benefits for board-designated unrepresented classified management employees who are not members of the district bearing unit? >> move. >> second. president mendoza: thank you. reading by mr. ruiz. i need your microphone on, please. >> the requested action is that

the board of education grants classified employees working in classifications designated as unrepresented management the same retirement benefit as its largest classified civil service bargaining unit. this classification is not represented in the district and as a result these employees are not covered by a capital collece bargaining agreement and the district's policy is to have all employees pay a fair share of their retirement. the requested action is that the board approve this motion. president mendoza: thank you. i see no public speakers signed up. any comments from the board or superintendent? seeing none, thank you. roll call? [roll call vote was taken] [the motion passed] president mendoza: i need a motion and a second for the wage benefits for board-designated

unrepresented and confidential employees who are not members of the district bearingianing unit. >> the board of education grants employees working in classifications designated as unrepresented and confidential the same wages benefits as its largest classified civil service bearingianing unit. these classifications are not represented in the san francisco school district and the employees are not covered by a collective bargaining agreement. since it is the intent that the district grant them the benefits, the district recommends this action by the board of education. thank you. president mendoza: thank you. i see no speakers. any comments from the board or superintendent? seeing none, thank you, roll call? [roll call vote was taken]

[the motion passed unanimously] president mendoza: thank you. thank you, mr. ruiz. >> i would like to thank tom reese for all his hard work and the team and the collective bargaining units, it took a while but we're there. president mendoza: i need a motion and a second on the resolution of the board of education of the san francisco unified school district levying the special tax within community facilities district number 90-1 for fiscal year 2011-2012. >> moved. >> second. president mendoza: thank you. >> good evening. with your permission, may i read the relevant portion? thank you. president mendoza: yes. >> resolution of the board of

education of the san francisco unified school district levying the special tax within the community facilities district number 90-1 for the fiscal year 2011-2012, the board here by levies the special tax within cfd91 pursuant to the act set forth in ordinance 108-10sp1 which ordinance is by reference incorporated herein. president mendoza: thank you. i don't see any public speakers signed up. any comments from the board or superintendent? seeing none, thank you. roll call please? [roll call vote was taken] [the motion passed unanimously] president mendoza: thank you, mr. armentrot. i need a motion and second on the resolutiont