-- a great handbook. thank you for advocating for that. i wanted to know if you do have a report about what you saw on the newcomer pathways'? and if you do have that report, what you observed at a particular school sites. i would like you to add the school site names and suggestions on what you think we could better implement. one of the things i just heard was that not enough translation is present to allow school sites to feel like part of the larger community. what can we do about that? those types of things. i would love to see your observations if you did go into the classrooms, that you did observe them personally. i love to see what you have to say about that. also, i think that we could use something by having a native

speaker their interviewing when we are interviewing teachers for our language immersion programs to make sure that they are completely fluent in the language. is that what you suggested? >> yes, definitely. we would like to have a native speaker there so we know how flu when they are with the language, writing and understanding. time to time, i hear parents say they can speak the language, but when it comes to writing, sometimes they cannot write fluently. especially chinese, that is really important. >> do you feel that it is the best to hire a native speaker? >> for all of the pathways,

because we are asking faculty to be able to teach that language, not only for emersion but by literacy, that we would check their fluency. i think that the san jose unified school district has records of a hiring process that includes a written and spoken exam. i think they are more rigorous in their hiring process. >> should we investigate that? ok. i share the same concerns about our special education students in the immersion programs and pathways. i've heard some special ed programs -- some special ed parents say they are discouraged from participating in the immersion programs. i thank you for bringing that up.

also, when the bcc goes out to the elementary and middle schools, i am wondering if we could provide the bcc with the school schedule and with access to the school sites and the administrators, so they can do a thorough investigation so that we can see what you saw. >> i remember one time, a teacher asked me, she only taught chinese, not another language. only taught chinese every day. she is a very good teacher. with special ed, sometimes the non-english parents do not enter

the pro gram -- they are concerned about what do you do. sometimes a different school will set up a different program for a special ed students. sometimes, the parents are not easy to go to the school. sometimes, they will stay in school. >> thank you. this is a suggestion and things for us to reflect on as a board. what happens to the special ed students there? i am wondering if that is possible that we could give access to elementary and middle schools? >> yes. [laughter] >> ok, good. thank you for bringing that forward to us.

commissioner wynns: thank you for your work. it is very important to hear from you and how programs are developing. i really want to thank you about this. it is great. this is something i want to show to other people. when i try to talk about our language programs, it is hard to be -- to do it in a concise manner that people can really understand. we are trying to talk about how they work together, etc. that is really important. i want to ask to the same question we ask you all the time. but expand a little bit. can we get an update on -- you said you need more members. i would like to know who has appointments that need to be done. i would also like to know how long people have served and we are supposed to have, as always,

and we did last year, a review of our advisory committees. we are supposed to reappoint people, there are supposed to be terms of a certain length, and we never pay attention to that. i love that people want to serve in this committee, but i do not think -- it is not enough to just say, who has opened appointments? i like to have a sense of the group dynamic, how long everyone on the committee has served. honestly, we never say, do you want to keep on serving on this committee, we just presume you want to or how you think the dynamics are working and if the group is not represented. if we could have some sort of mechanism to have a discussion, not like we did last year with what we want the policy to be, but how is it working and what can we do to continue to be

involved in that and to talk about the effectiveness of what we can do to help us be more effective. >> that would be really helpful. i think when we got our liaison, she asked me how long i had been on the committee and i could not remember, it has been such a long time. it would be nice to have that information and make a decision about whether or not we would want to continue to do that or not. i want to answer the question of commissioner fewer about the conservation report. we have a member of our committee who is our official liaison with you guys. because of the chance of date, we were going to becoming a while that -- we were going to be coming a whil e back. she is out of the country right now.

we will get it to you as soon as she gets back. >> one of our members is our liaison between the board and the bcc carry it we will ask her not only to give a report about what commissioners have open spots, but how long we have served. i would imagine those of us who are here want to be here to. >> i am proud to say that my appointment to the bcc since i've been on the board have served long terms. louise was there for 15 years and i think there is a value to continuity. i suspect that we do not talk about the value of having new members and people who have served a long time. again, we have had limited opportunities to talk about whether everyone is represented.

groups that come and go and things like that. i am hoping that now that we have looked at our policies, we have put in place the policies we need to have effective advisory. to check on organizational development would be helpful to me. commissioner maufas: following along on what commissioner wynns has said about your annual report, which i appreciate, but i would really like the board to consider having this body come to a more regular basis, may be quarterly. again, the threat of time in between that hearing from you, i think it is too long. i really value your input. it permeates across the

district, across general ed and special education, from our early education schools all the way to the high schools and beyond. i think all of your input is so important. you would not have to cover so many topics. if you came more regularly, i would like to hear in deft one or two topics and really here -- in depth one or two topics and really hear that. instead of presenting to the board at such a spread out --

instead of presenting to the board so spread apart, i think you should spread -- i think it should be spread out quarterly and more in doubt. >> i think we all appreciate. there is so much to cover. it would make our work a lot easier if we could pay more attention -- if we could have more time to touch base with you. vice president yee: thank you for serving on this committee. it is a lot of work. especially when you go through the observation period. it goes through a lot of time. also, this thing is very valuable. as commissioner wynns alluded to, sometimes when we -- this is valuable in san francisco, but it is just as valuable outside

of san francisco, because when i talk to our colleagues in other school boards, they do not know how to talk about this stuff. when they expressed to me their situation in terms of their programs, here we are so many light years ahead of them. not only in california, but throughout the united states. i think it will help was shine even more. i am just wondering -- i do not want to add more to your plate, but i will. [laughter] i have been very curious about this issue that i'm going to talk to about. i had been hoping to move on the preschool level, thinking in terms of language acquisition for a while. there are some of things that i'm trying to do at the early

education department that it is probably not the right time at this point. it would be really helpful for me and everybody else if you could think in terms of visiting some of our preschool level programs. even though we do not officially have a bilingual system, there is bilingualism inc. in some preschools. i want to get a better grasp of what we are doing in terms of language acquisition. i come from that background. and i know, if you're going to teach kids two languages, it is logical that you start earlier than not. for some of our kids who will

eventually grow into our duel immersion programs had come from our preschool, not to have it there, you have a one-year opportunity to start developing earlier. if we could do that, i think it would be so powerful for us to move on some concept of what we would do at the preschool low. i do not know if you have had any discussion about that already. >> the only discussion we recently has -- we recently had was what happened to the one of vista preschool families were not allowed access to the one of vista k-8 program. that was a big concern of ours. you are talking about us looking at preschool students learning their native language in preschool, because we are not necessarily observing e.o.'s

learning a second language for it would be looking at them learning the primary language in preschool. vice president yee: i do not know exactly. you could go into preschool programs where you have english- language learners or non-english speakers within the program with other kids. there is going to be some attempt to work with those younger children in there all languages care -- in their own languages. i am wondering how far does it go. if you are observing a clustering of preschoolers and you do not have a bilingual teacher there, those are not things i know about right now. maybe everything is well- situated and so forth. i am not saying one way or another. i just need to have somebody tell me what the situation is.

>> first, it is a preschool. the other may be a private school. it is not easy to go in and make sure they're doing their job. vice president yee: i appreciate that. i do not know if you want to go beyond the district programs. if you want access to any preschool, i will open the doors for you. i know pretty much all of them. commissioner murase: i have a few points of light to make in regards to the report. first of all, i want to thank all of the bcc members for their long hours of work to.

i also want to acknowledge cristina and jen for supporting the committee. the staff played an integral role. in terms of the request of commissioner wynns about the makeup of the bcc, i would suggest you get in touch with the parent advisory council. they do a superb analysis about how the demographics of the council match or do not match the suited demographics of sfusd. he always provides graphs, how many kids are from the different schools, how the racial ethnicities are reflected. that is a good model. secondly, i want to echo commissioner fewer. coons on your english guide. it is very valuable. i want to read one of the most valuable sections.

free translation and interpretation services -- it is very important for parents, families who are listening or watching tv to know that all of the families are entitled to requesting individual translation or interpretation. there is a form that is available to schools and on the sfusd web site to make that request. it does come to the central office. they can also make compliance with the school site cannot provide translation services. we have heard that a couple of times in public comment tonight. we have a policy that non- district qualified interpreters, including students and other children, may not be used for interpretation except in emergencies. that is very important that it be in the vault so that families are aware of this policy as a resource.

we want to meet as much of the demand as we can. i am also concerned about inclusion in our language programs. west oral elementary has done a great job of incorporating the special needs students into their curriculum. into their student body. i wanted to ask the superintendent where this discussion belongs about how to address the needs of english learners and special education needs. >> when we looked at revamping special ed, that was a concern of ours as well. it is going to be coming back. the new director that we are hiring is actually bilingual. he has worked a lot with these types of issues. the timing could not be better for us in that sense. the person coming has a lot of experience in running both

special ed and bilingual programs in california. i think she will be a real value for us at this juncture to take it to the next level. timing is everything. commissioner maufas: reeling a rotation of committees that will report to the board. we will definitely keep in mind the comments of commissioner maufas. i want to thank you for your comments. commissioner norton: i want to thank you for your service and the report. i really appreciate some of the discussion about kids who are duel identified as e.l. and special ed. there is much more thinking on about this than there was previously. my daughter was one of those

discouraged from learning a second language because she was identified as special ed. i also wanted to suggest that this would be a -- it would be great for the bcc to team up with special ed. this is a deep concern of theirs as well. a number of their members are non-english speaking for bilingual. there could be a real -- some great things could come out of collaborating with that committed. i can put you in touch with the chair of the committee and there may be some ways to collaborate on the work that you both are doing. >> i think that the special ed e.l. reclassification process that we develop was an ability to highlight the work of parent

advocacy coupled with sentences in a unified school district response. and looking at what other districts are doing. yolanda rivera was very involved in that. is there something similar to this for special and families? -- for special ed families? question there is special material on-line and is going to be translated. it is not quite as nice. >> for those people who are not on-line, are there are copies available? >> i believe there are. richard knows. >> thank you. it is online at this point, but it is undergoing some more revisions appear in -- undergoing some more revisions. it is a work in progress.

as you know, the document is only as good as how accurate it is. you will be seeing that and multiple languages very soon. we are in the process of finalizing the special ed. president mendoza: my thanks as well. i remember when this used to be a one-pager that did not make a whole lot of sense. we did not died deeply enough on how to get our english language learners the services and support that they need. thank you very much. i want to appreciate a lot of the work that you have been doing around our families and the immersion programs, making sure there are part of the conversation. we have changed a lot of our policies and have clarified a lot of our policies and published a lot of our policies because of the work that the bcc

has done. i'm curious -- this is translated in english, spanish, and chinese. are those the three languages? and vietnamese as well? wonderful. is this also on our web site? or is it going on to our web site? >> it should be available at our website. teh -- the e.l.l. staff is labeling these so they can go out to every family in the next couple of weeks. president mendoza: this is really terrific and we appreciate your service, time, and energy that you put in this and your commitment to the committee. >> everybody forgets that it is a hard job, but it is for the children.

they teach me everything. i say thank you to the interpreters. president mendoza: yes, thank you to our translation department. >> i should tell this committee that i have a staff volunteered. one of the biggest concerns i have with all our programs all our language friends in cedras's ago, and it is a real concern of mine, i have spent some time working with e.l.l. issues, my biggest concern is are we really serving the needs of the kids in these programs or are these programs just serving -- it is

great that people are learning in every language. i applaud that and think it is valuable. but we also need to make sure that the programs are there to serve the e.l.l. kids. we need to make sure they are learning and transitioning at the levels they need to be at a. how much time are they getting to learn english? those are issues -- i have been a bilingual educator since 1975. we have had these battles for a long time. the bottom line is that if they are not serving that purpose, then we have to revamp our programs. that is something i will tell you we are working closely with other institutions to review our data and we may have to look at that and modify what we do and how we do it because ultimately, it is about the kids being successful. if we are not want to do that, that is one of the reasons why, as all of you know, the

initiative of winter where people started questioning if the kids are actually progressing, are they actually doing what they're supposed to be doing? i want to be the district that stands up and says, and both e.l.l. kids and kids in the immersion program are learning at the same levels. for sixth grade and upper grades, they are functioning at the same level academically at both languages. that has got to be a revolt. -- our goal. that is something we need to be monitoring and pushing on. i will make sure that we are looking at that. >> thank-you very much. that is why we are continuing to ask for real research about how students are doing in our english hathaway's. we have limited resources.

we have limited teacher and monetary resources. we need to get the best thing for our money. the first district to push for start to become translated is a huge step forward for our district. i am proud to say our district did. also, an aging parents and how proud are we of our parents who are stepping up and voicing their concerns, requiring that the children are getting their educational rights met? >> i want to take you back on the music. i want to give you a brief history of the advocacy.

we have a translation office, but it is severely underfunded before and even now. it took a group of parents being spearheaded by christina wong, working for affirmative action, they did a survey and a study called "lost without translation." they interviewed many parents who were not english-speaking and did a study on it. it was from that survey and the study's findings that cristina wong @ chinese conservative action along with other parents advocated for more transition services -- for more translation services. we only see now that how many more parents they have been able to reach through this expansion of our translation program. i want to thank you all for the advocacy that you give us. we have talked about