great staff at our school sites. that's the second year in a row that our first day of school opened up with really just two vacancies and that's amazing for the entire school district and the report is so comprehensive, i hope it comes forward in early next year as a other educational item information because i believe everybody needs to hear it and i want to applaud the h.r. department for how diligently they work and their level of professionalism because i hear so many more positive reports about staff interactions with the h.r. department and that resonates because you are first face that somebody who's trying to obtain employment here at sfusd, you are first people they see, and if it's not a good experience, that doesn't bode well for the district as a whole. the other important items that will come back for the february meeting for the ad hoc meeting

for personnel matters and labor relations was teacher and paraprofessional consolidations. i believe this topic should have come before the entire board because we care so much about consolidations and what has been past practices, i think all board members should be aware of that and what those changes are going to be. and i know that information will come back. i know the h.r. department is creating a written brief for the entire board so i'm grateful that is in process and that will be distributed to all board members because you need to know, as you will probably get emails or have received emails or questions from folks from the outside regarding the consolidations and this is the educational department in teachers and paraprofessional consolidations. the other issue was the early education department again and the staffing reorganizations.

i know the board had a briefing on it but we didn't know what it would look like going forward and now that we've had time in the reorganization, we've had partners express concerns and i think the entire board needs to hear that. we heard some of that public comment tonight from ms. johnson-miller. now that we have time into the work, i think the feedback is relevant and the entire board should be monitoring that so that is also going to come back to the february meeting. i want to note something that happens at the personnel matters labor relations committee and that i heard feedback out in the wind. you know, we staff quite a number of folks in sfusd and for us to be able to create a space for our labor partners or our staff people to come forward and express their concerns or, you know, something that they want

to tout as positive for sfusd, i think the personnel matters and labor relations committee is a great space for that to happen and i want to encourage us, as board members, to be open to hearing that feedback, positive or negative. we need to hear it. and i think the committee provides a space where there can be the dialogue we don't have here at the board where it's people speaking to us in the public comment and we can't engage them or hear deeper context to the conversation. that's what that committee was created, to create the space, to have the dialogue before situations get into crisis mode with our, again, labor partners and staff. i want to encourage board members, those meetings are augmented, to come ask questions to the folks that are employees and what happened at that particular meeting, a member of the public came to express, not a member of staff, but something

that was going on that the board is taking up right now. they find the space and i think that space is perfect for us to have those interactions and the meetings, again, are augmented so it's a perfect opportunity for other board members to hear some of the concerns that our labor partners and staff may have with us. and i think it's a good thing. there may be a level of tension in the room but that's ok, as well, because we deal with tense situations all the time as board members and we want to encourage that dialogue. thank you. >> thank you. so, there was no city school district committee this month, no ad hoc committee on student assignment and no ad hoc school district city college joint committee. other reports from board members? commissioner muracy? >> i presented my colleagues with a a copy of the golden belt

awards from the c.f.a. conference and i want to congratulate oakland unified school district for receiving three awards and i'd like to encourage our own district to submit the many, many award-deserving programs for a future conference. finally, i also shared with my colleagues from my day job, we are hosting an inaugural teen poster contest for anti-human trafficking month which is january and the dynamics of human trafficking are very similar to bullying. you have a victim, a perpetrator and a sea of bystanders that we need to activate to the call out bad behavior. if you know any middle school, high school students, the deadline is friday and we have very few submissions so far. if you have a middle schooler or high schooler in your life who would like to draw, take action against abuse, the information

is available on the school district website as a community outreach service. >> commissioner norton? commissioner norton: i wanted to say that commissioner murase, myself, vice president wi and commissioner wynns attended the conference, and congratulations to commissioner wynns because it was her big day but also there was a lot of really interesting sessions, particularly jamie vulmer, who did one of the general sessions. i'm blanking on the name of his book. what is it? anyway, "schools can't do it alone." that's what it is. there was a number of really interesting sessions on what the thinking around the state is on teacher evaluation because that definitely is a topic that a lot of districts are taking up so that was very interesting. and i took copious notes so if

you're interested in anything particular, i'd be happy to do it offline. >> just to follow up on that. i wanted to say that the general sessions for the first time this year, the three general sessions at the conference, jamie vulmer's speech, zalman chawn and we need to talk about him and the state of the state where he had experts talking about the budget and the political context, are all available online through the month of january. so is that right? or through december, until january, through december. you can go online, i think it's aec.csba.com. >> i looked to watch one of them and i couldn't get it. >> that was during the conference, right? >> it was right after the conference. >> we thought they would be immediately available because they were streamed live for the first time, too, but they weren't available until the

monday after the conference because there was no staff, they were all in san diego. we should talk about staff, all of us that want to see them, they're online, but also staff might want to see some of them. >> thank you, commissioner yee? vice president yee: besides the teacher's evaluation, there was -- i went to a workshop for superintendent evaluation, too, so i'd like to share that information with you. the -- this is kind of interesting, the cohn institute, when we listened to him a few days later, i was in austin, at another meeting, and the topic was scaling up. it was interesting. >> commissioner fewer? commissioner fewer: . i did not attend cfba but i was part of hosting a workshop on keeping safer school environment

for lbgq youth. i'd like to thank our partners, transgender law center and gca network that they both presented and used our resolutions in their presentation as really good examples of keeping our schools safe. and then i also just want to say congratulations to gate weeder college, our partner program with city college of san francisco, they will be having their graduation this friday and i believe they're graduating three students. thank you. >> thank you. go ahead, commissioner lee. vice president yee: i'm going to start informing not only the public but my colleagues on the school board that there's going to be a summit that i'm promoting with other people that's going to be focused on

the pre-k-to-third-grade alignment effort that we're undergoing in our school district and the purpose of having this summit is to have a larger discussion with our partners in the city and the non-profits and the parents and there are some intermediate activities that are taking place right now with parent groups and teachers and having teachers exchange visitations that i've been setting up that should move us into a more thorough informed discussion when we have this discussion. so it's going to be on february 25, it's a saturday, from 8:30 to 12:30, and it most likely it will be at everett middle school. i'm trying to find out whether it's available or not but it seems like the most logical

place at this point to have that and we've identified a keynote speaker, national person from the nekc foundation, senior vice president that president mendoza have met. ralph smith, he's going to come. he's focused on his national initiative which is the grade level reading initiative that's sort of taking hold in quite a few cities so it's a perfect match for him to come as a speaker and there's other people that's going to be involved so hopefully we have a nice co-chair from the city. president mendoza: thank you. we need to talk about other stuff. too. a couple of things. i wanted to thank the cast of fala, they were in town the last few weeks and two of the cast members, iris wilson and melony marshall spoke at burton high school and balboa high school so

our students had an opportunity to meet with broadway actors and that was really cool. i want to congratulate richard heron and his corral collaborative project, chosen by the white house, to sing at the tree lighting ceremony so they leave on friday. he's bringing 23 of our kids to the white house for three days and they're singing on december 19, and that's really an honor and privilege to be able to do that. there is a snow park that's being built in front of city hall and that's going to be open to all of our students, all of the children in san francisco, both saturday and sunday and there's an open house at city hall from 11:00 to 3:00 so that all of the supervisors and the mayor opening their offices for our families to visit. i want to congratulate the principals who participated in the mustache for kids, thank you so much for all the money you

raised for your schools and awareness you raised for the need for more funding for our schools and i want to thank the benyov family for their contribution of $1.5 million for homeless families, many of our own families in transition will benefit from this donation and it's a combined effort with the city to open up over 100 public housing units and the hope is to have as many of our families housed before the holidays so it's a home for the holidays. and so big fat thank you to lynn and mark benyov for their generous donation and salvador lopez barr, our point person, has been terrific working with darius cahon, the city's person, so we'll be combining a lot of the efforts that the city and school district have to make

sure our families are cared for. >> i want to ask, what's with the cap? president mendoza: that was on my list, too. thank you for that, norman. so today we honor the mission high school football team for their aaa championship on turkey day against washington high school. and it was a 12-7 victory. mission high school's first victory since 1954. so all but three students came out. the thing that i'm proud about that, that's worth noting, is the mission high school football team almost had to dismantle two years ago because they didn't have enough kids that have grades supporting their participation on the football team and joel monahues, their football coach, came in and has kicked some butt and the kids, all of the boys, are doing over 2.0. most of them are actually 3.0 or above. and they are outstanding

students and they all came out and we had a great visit from dwight clark, dennis brown and guy macintyre from the 49ers and they all gave the boys football caps -- 49er caps and they took photos with them and it was just a really special moment for the mission high football team so congratulations to mr. o'bano and his 2011 aaa championship football team at mission high. commissioner murase? commissioner murase: . i want to thank president mendoza for your year of service as the president. i want to thank you. president mendoza: thank you. any other comments? >> happy holidays and happy new year to everybody.

president mendoza: commissioner "modern moffat? >> i want to thank the schools i've visited and it's a thrill to see them in rehearsals during the day with the principals there and teachers there and students trying to get their performances just right and as i pass by or i'm on my way to visiting someone, it's so nice to see that happens during the holidays and at all the schools, whether they're the youngest or the oldest of our students and i just wanted to appreciate them and their endeavors because i know i'll visit a lot of schools before the break and their holiday performances in the next couple of days. >> thank you. vice president yee: it's been such a long time since we had a general school board meeting, i've forgotten all the things in between but the commissioner has triggered that for the thanksgiving holiday i was able to go to a couple of schools that celebrated it for the first time, these students basically

celebrated thanksgiving for the first time ever because these students immigrated into the united states in these two schools, mission ed center and chinese ed center so it was great to see them actually getting a good sense of what thanksgiving is and how thankful they were and several of them especially in mission ed center -- education center, they had some of the kids read their poems in spanish and talking about how grateful they were because of their parents being able to get a job or not get a job and people helping them out and it was very touching. president mendoza: it was really wonderful. ok. item t is the report on the closed session actions. closed session of december 6, 2011. the board of education approved the expulsion of one high school student, k.c., approved the

suspended expulsion of one middle school student, c.z. the board of education approved an 18-month contract for one deputy general counsel and the board of education by a vote of six aye's and one absent approved a 30-month contract for one assistant superintendent and the board of education by a vote of four aye's and four nay's approved an 18-month contract for one general counsel. item u are other informational items, notice of classified personal transactions and acceptance of gifts for the month of october and i just want to do a heartfelt thanks to my colleagues, as well, as i adjourn this meeting as my last school board meeting as president of the board of education for san francisco. thank you so much for all of your great collaborations. good night, everyone.

>> i am the executive director of the san francisco redevelopment agency. thank you for coming. we are here to celebrate and acknowledging the spirit of this block of kucom.

-- nucom. we have a close collaboration with the mta, dpw, and leadership from our elected officials. thank you. the investments that we can see here today in the public realm, incredible streetscape improvements, and then in the private rel., through the local -- low-cost loan program for homeowners on this block to update and maintain their homes, demonstrates the mayor's commitment to revitalizing our city's neighborhoods, starting here in the bayview hunters point community. in doing so, creating local jobs for san francisco residents. thank you, mr. mayor. with that, i turn it over to you. [applause] >> thank you for the introduction, tiffany.

thank you for coming down to our brand new nucom avenue. for supervisor cohen who was with me, our public utilities agency, redevelopment agency, public works, environmental protection agency, as well as others, if santa claus has a choice on which st. he will visit first, i think he will come to nucom avenue first. it is a well-designed street, one that we started -- 16 of these all over the city. this became one of the most important ones, where we are getting the blessing of our planning department working in close collaboration with our

model blocks program to design these streets to make sure that we do the most environmentally friendly but also resident- family types of things. you will notice some of the good treatment here, and some is hard to see, and of course, it is going to rain. instead of going into our storm sewers, this will help to feed into the plants here. whether they are on islands or the new, permeable landscaping. this will slow traffic down, increased the beauty of the street, make it much more engaging for our residents, and also helps with the trees that have been replanted here to increase the beauty of the street, but making it that much

more enlivened with greene streets. at the same time, it took a few more months than anticipated. it was expected to take four months. when dpw dug into the main sewer line, they discovered some major work that needed to be done. they wanted to make sure that the sewer line would work perfectly, as well as each of their feeds into homes. while infrastructure is sometimes hard to imagine or see, you will be -- you are standing on the street that will probably be the best for decades to come. you will have an unstoppable sewer. no longer those backups. the fire chief will have a pleasant time going down the street to make sure that the

services are there. as i said earlier, this is a beautiful project coming in, not only the designed for infrastructure, but the work force that was put together. i want to thank the contractors that worked so well with our citybuild program. 18 of that group are president spirit within that work force, they completed 43% of the work hours on this street. that is a very good standard, the highest standard we have had. we made that commitment at the beginning that our local folks would be hired, san francisco residents will be hired, and they did very well. of course we can do better, but with the 16 beautiful streets -- we have eight of them already completed. that includes van ness and we

have five under construction. three or four others under planning, like market street. from the puc to redevelopment, planning,vs department, police department working gear along with the contractors, they all have to be thanked. the most important people i want to acknowledge today are the residents who live here on the street. thank you for your cooperation. q were working with us on day one to embrace the idea that we could use infrastructure to enliven our streets. i see a lot of smiling faces. you want to see santa come here, too. you are not displaced.

this is your home. you what this street to reflect the duty of all of san francisco. thank you for working closely with everybody, thank you for your patience, thank you for welcoming us in to share in this new street. [applause] >> thank you, mr. mayor. supervisor malia cohen is a staunch advocate for her residence, as well as the residents of district 10. we thank her for her leadership on this project and we are pleased to partner along with her and the residents. >> thank you, good morning, everyone. seven months ago, many of us were standing here doing a groundbreaking ceremony. here we are making sure that our walk and talk were in line with each other. i told you that this was the

beginning of a rebirth for a new neighborhood. here we are along an infamous street. those of us that know this area knows that there had been good and bad activity. here we are one block off of third street, celebrating the work of san franciscans, a shining example of our local hired initiative, and i want to the knowledge the public partners that make this a reality. we have new roads, and everyone is here, a physical manifestation of the partnership, not just on the city sought but the contractors, private citizens, working to make san francisco better, one street at a time. i am very happy to be here. thank you. [applause] >> thank you, supervisor.

infrastructure is the backbone of our city. we could not have done this incredible project without the hard work of our partners at dpw. [applause] >> let me join the mayor and supervisor for thanking everyone for coming out. i do not know how many of you know what the street used to look like, but this is a huge change for the community, a victory. streets around san francisco, we will continue to make sure we have sidewalk landscaping. these gardens you see, when it rains, they will absorb water and reduce the amount of water that will end up in our sewer plant. the papers will also collect water.