item. it is w11 and 15. i thought those were going to be bunched together and not individual, so i apologize. >> this is the contract under 15,000, so i see a lot of them under the same vendors. goothis made me think i guess accumulative vendor does not apply, so that is fine. the fact that the same vendor has been yearused, we have a grp

of contractors we call on that do not go through this process, but i am not sure how we go through the, although i understand these are all on different sides. we have the same issue with personal services contracts. since they are actually generated from the sidetes, they did not have any other way of knowing if another not school is being yearused, so i would likeu to comment on those things if you would your good -- if you would. >> i will try to be very brief.

these are the accumulations over the last three months of those construction contracts under $15,000 and now, particularly if it is a contract were public bidding is not required, and if it is not, certain other things need to happen, and one of those is that we get three votes, -- three quotes. it is true we do have a collection after five years of a number of small contractors who have been successful, and we like doing our work and seemed to be the lowest of those, but i

can assure euayou we give multie chances toda bid, and as people do not do a good job they do not work for us again. you will probably see next and one there are those who disappear. they are at many sites, and this person is an expert on what date collin destructive demolition, were you actually go drill alcohol region -- drill a hole and say there is more work. there is a process that is supposed to be followed commo, f which is to say we did it

correctly. >> if you could think about this process a little bit more and the way we get the information. the reason we have 15 contracts is it goes that is what we do, and i do appreciate that. the page before talks about the certification, and i know that is trustworthy, but we can have more information if we knew what they are doing and why there is a reason to be 15 contracts. >> thank you. can we vote on 15 please bowma? [calling votes]

>> thank you. good night. good iteitem s is a board membe. city and school districts select committee. >> i believe i was the only commissioner in attendance. >> i want to make an objection to the report we got, because this was not a meeting, and i do not think it should have taken place. i do not think they can say, let's sit down and talk and issue a report. >> this is the city it school. waxman and now commissioner wayne is a practice -- >> commissioner wynns is correct. you need a form.

>> are you speaking of the city college school district? we had a quorum of the body but not the sandford cisco unified board -- of san francisco unified board. we heard a presentation, which is lovely, and i appreciated there was a student and teacher and principal, and it was a nice presentation, so that is my report. >> should we have the presentation done to the full board of some point? >> i think it would be worthwhile.

it is about all the efforts being made in some of those neighborhoods, and there are some wonderful improvements being made. >> maybe we can check and see if there is a milestone point where they can come and present to one of our board meetings. commissioner fewer on budget? >> it was a lovely meeting except that we have our report on the budget but was not about lovely, and i blame the deputy superintendent on fivethat. we did have an interesting

reports. gjust to give you an overview that the educational placement center where it is funded, so approximately their budget is $224,000, and i am hoping the board receives this power awpoi. if not we can give every board member a copy. thank you very much. >> a report from the ad hoc meeting. city college? >> it is from commissioner yee,

and he is not here. >> there would have been a quorum of the body. were there four people there? >> i was not. >> there were only three people there. >> we will have that when we get back. he already did this, so he is providing us with copies on this, and commissioner norton on curriculum. he brought with him and seven people.

there was a lot of discussion about african-american students and lack of participation and lack of achievement in math and science thos, and we were interd in some of the ideas they brought us. they were identifying african- american achievements, really pointing out what they have achieved in these areas, and we asked staff to bring up these ideas. goowe got a lot of data, and it

seems obvious from the data we are given that we have a lot of students identified as gay in this district, and as we've probably are not surprised, there is a difference among races. there are more white students being identified times -- identified as gifted. also, how are we identifying high achievers?

it still is clearly a sorting mechanism in a lot of our schools, so this is a discussion we need to return to. i think we will bring it back to curriculum. we asked a lot of questions of staff, and i davis is a discussion -- i think this is a discussion. we are very concerned. some parents want their students to have access to an honors track. what is the promise we are going to make too high achievers? what does this take away from other students? and i do not think we have all the answers.

it was an interesting discussion, and we will continue to talk about that. >> i wanted everyone to know that the matrix of programs available in middle schools and we saw when we saw the proposal and discussion and everyone was enthusiastic about out, has now been done, and all the parents were really excited about that, so we asked information people to make sure that was widely disseminated and put on the website. >> there was, and i think that is a lesson to us that parents really want to know what their choices are pure good the last item is a discussion of our work around math and core

curriculum and aligning vat with standards, and one thing i thought was interesting is that many of them are constructed answers, so we are not preparing students for multiple choice as much as encouraging them to solve problems and think creatively, so this sounds very exciting. it sounds like it is going to allow us to build on the body of knowledge as kids get progress through the gravesdes and are nt going to be as discreet about focusing on subjects and focusing on math as building blocks. the committee will meet again on november 7. we will hear a report on our

progress. we will also be hearing about the early warning system, which is some data we are pinpointing students who are at risk academically as they enter high school so we know in eighth grade who the students are, and we know the students who may encounter problems, so we will hear a report on that. >> let's hear all of the committee's first, and i will give you a chance to do your updates. we will work to figure out with some holidays. we do not have an ad hoc on committee assignments. commissioner wynns: the committee has not met. the next meeting is on the 19th,

which is not our normal meeting. yesterday would have been our normal meeting, but it was on holiday. >> do we have a committee meeting on labor relations? >> no meeting in october. i will check with our legal partners to see if they would like to for november. good >> you have an update on your trip? commissioner maufas: i will speak more at the next board meeting, because i have materials to present. i was at the annual conference, urban schools council, but it was specifically our legislative -- i do not know what it was, and a fascinating component of that is going to new orleans,

everything particularly with regards to education is talked about in of pre-katrina, a post- katrina construct, and that was so incredibly intriguing and how they are dealing weswhich is res on what they believe of the residents that are still there, how to educate them to again live in new orleans, but i will speak at that at the next meeting. president mendoza: thank you. commissioner wynns? commissioner wynns: this past weekend, i was at the unity conference, of the latino school board members association and the coalition of black school

board members. a lot of people -- they asked me about that, and i have a lot of interesting material. then i just wanted to say this, because i just got this. san francisco has been named number one in "barron's" magazine as the 10 healthiest cities for families -- in " parents" magazine. the city by the bay rose to the top of our list in part because of its gutsy move to bring healthier foods to schools. san francisco booted soda and high-calorie, empty food five years before the state did and was one of the first places in the country to push for school gardens. california's with whole grain breads debuted in 2007. now, at least have have them. skipping, it says san francisco

also goes the extra mile to keep kids active, with playgrounds, recreation centers, and 60 soccer fields, and there are miles of car free roads during designated times so families can get without traffic worries. there is more, but congratulations. president mendoza: congratulations. commissioner fewer? commissioner fewer: i wanted to say that i could not be at the conference because i was judging a contest, and i saw many of our principles there. and then i attended the 11th annual conference, and i went to many workshops, and i met many people. they had 1600 acree registered attendees, and i am sure there were many more there, like

people like myself who just happened to to stop in and did not free register, but it was overwhelmingly a success. they fed everybody lunch. it was completely free. they had over 20 workshops, and every session, it was excellent, and i look forward it to their 12th annual. and i just want to give a shout out to mission high school and the principal there for welcoming the conference back to their school, and it is a fabulous location to have been in. i think next year, they might outgrow that location, quite frankly, just because of the amount of people that game, and i also like to mention that they are not only educating our teacher or our staff or people interested in education and san francisco but those in sacramento and davis, coming very far to attend this. commissioner: commissioner

fewer, many come from across the country to that conference, and they have an amazing history of attracting educators on the cutting edge of what is in education, and i just want to hear more about what happened, and i will talk to you. congratulations. president mendoza: superintendents? superintendent: we are hosting an event that is actually sold out. we have about 670 people registered for it, and we were planning for less than 500, but the organization is, you know, tenfold in a very, very short time period. it should be great. we have people from all over the country here. they are working with ell

students, everywhere in the country. it should be very exciting and very worthwhile. president mendoza: thank you, i want to thank warren again for the bluegrass festival, which was fabulous, and he again retreated our middle schoolers with respect and brought out lots of fun people, including m.c. hammer, and i also want to thank the marshall middle school -- the middle school, and we have a lot of folks come out, and we have a lot of folks participate on walk to school day. it was an exciting. and the other announcements? item t is a report of a closed session action, with by a vote of 6 ayes, the approve the expulsion of six students. they also approve the stipulated

expulsion agreements for three high school students. item u is one informational item. may i announced in first? i would get to you when i am done. ok, item u are in for mensural items -- are informational items. one is the acceptance of gifts for the month of july and august. we had one speaker, but she has left. commissioner norton? commissioner norton: there are a number of special ed para's that have been added, so why that was.

president mendoza: great. this meeting is adjourned. >> i am the director of visual arts programming at intersection for the arts. intersection for the arts is based in san francisco and has always been an organization that looks at larger social political issues through the lens of

practice, and we are here today at our exhibition of "chico and chang." the original inspiration was drawn from a restaurant chain in new york city. half of their menu is -- what struck me was the graphic pictures and a man in a hat on a rig truck carrying take that time is containers and in the black sea to representation of a mexican guy wearing a sombrero and caring a somali horn. it struck me that these two large, very subversive complex cultures could be boiled down to such simple representations. chico and chang primarily looks at four topic areas. one of the man was is whose stories are being told and how.

one of the artisans in the show has created an amazing body of work working with young adults calling themselves the dreamers. another piece of the exhibition talks about whose stories of exhibition are actually being told. one artist created a magnificent sculpture that sits right in the center of the exhibition. >> these pieces are the physical manifestation of a narrative of a child in memory. an important family friend give us a dining table, very important, and we are excited about it. my little brother and i were 11, 14. we were realizing that they were kind of hand prints everywhere on the bottom where no one would really see, and it became this kind of a weakening of what child labor is. it was almost like an exercise

to show a stranger that feeling we had at that moment. >> the second thing the exhibition covers is how the allocation is defined, a great example on the theme, sculpture called mexicali culture. another bay area artist who has done residencies in china and also to what, mexico. where immigrant communities really helped define how businesses look of a business' sign age and interior decoration, her sculptural piece kind of mismatches the two communities together, creating this wonderful, fantastical future look at what the present is today. first topic is where we can see where the two communities are

intersecting and where they start colliding. teresa fernandez did a sculptural installation, utilizing the ubiquitous blue, white, and read patterns of a rayon bag that many communities used to transport laundry and laundromats to buy groceries and such. she created a little installation kind of mucking up the interior of a household, covering up as many objects that are familiar to the i and the fabric. fourth area of investigation that the exhibition looks at is the larger concerns of the asian and latin communities intersecting with popular cultur one best example -- when he's exemplified is what you see when you enter into the culture.

>> this piece refers to restaurants in tijuana. when you are driving, to speak chinese and you read chinese characters. you see these signs. i was trying to play with the idea of what you see and the direction you read. when you start mixing these different groups of people, different cultures, i like the idea. you can comment on somebody else's culture or someone else's understanding about culture. >> one of the hopes we have for visitors is that they go away taking a better understanding with the broadest and the breadth of issues impacting both the asian and latin communities here in california and how they spell out into the larger fabric of the communities we live and work in.