come on up. >> thank you. good evening, thank you for allowing us this opportunity to speak. my name is michelle mcmahon. i'm a parent of a first and third greater at marshall elementary. i'm also a member of the executive p.t.a. and a member of the s.e.c. speaking on behalf of marshall parents, many of who we have here tonight, stand up quickly, some students as well, we want to communicate our frustration and disappointment in regards to the district's involvement with moving occupy san francisco to mission street and mission and 15th street over the last couple weeks.

as members of the 99%, we do support occupy and the movement, but as parents, we question the district's involvement in what would have been a city sanctioned homeless encampment around the corner from marshall elementary. and down the block from one of the most crime-ridden corners, 16th and mission. we have to raise the question, if there was a vacant lot on the other side of town neither another elementary school with a different school population, would this deal have been made with the mayor and the city? had occupy moved to mission street, we are certain it would have created additional safety concerns for the marshall staff, our families, many who live next door or very close to the proposed site and our students. as soon as the news broke, we made our safety concerns known to our principal who shared them with you. we were told that you, the district, didn't have any information to share with us as

parents. i would like to thank board member murase who was the only board member or district employee to add least acknowledge the parent email that was sent on december 3. all we were looking for was some reassurance from you, the district, that you had thought about the safety concerns of the marshall community and that you were at least open to discussing those safety concerns with us, or at least the possibility of discussion if they did move to mission street. we got no response. if that had happened, we would not be here tonight. lastly, we just want to say, it's sort of a nonissue at this point, but please be true to and accountable to the parents and the students and have a plan if something comes up like this again there is no reason that the marshall community has to be hanging for a week in a stressful situation wondering

what our fate was. we just needed some communication and we didn't get that from you. thank you. [applause] >> hello, joe keflin, parent at marshall school. it's a great school, thank you. my son is learning a lot there and we walk to school. a lot of times we walk over junkies passed out on mattresses and stuff right next to the school and it seems to me like to be -- i know it's not going to happen now or hopefully not going to happen, to put 500 homeless people in actually the parking lot that our teachers use is kind of unexpected and a little strange that someone who would make a decision like that, especially when the teachers already have it hard enough and they didn't have anywhere to park for two weeks. so thank you, bye.

>> i have a little bout of laryngitis. i'm going to do this anyways. thank you for the time. my name is fernando lopez. i have a first grader at marshall elementary. two things i heard tonight. one is that the superintendent hurt the kids in the district during his opening remarks and another board member say dodge a bullet. we feel like we did both of those. we dodge aid bullet and we were about to hurt the kids in our district had we moved occupy san francisco about 200 yards from our school. as you can see tonight from what i viewed, communication is key. so what we're asking for next time and i'm here representing the administrators, specifically the principal and the latin community that really felt the tension in our school, but was not understanding what was going on. next time, you know, if we can get involved and not learn our news from s.f. gate, the

"chronicle," here say, it would be very helpful. we have a very small community and a small school, but we have a very, very tight-knit community. and we were all very up in arms and we were very tense for a good week, week and a half. again, i ask that next time something like this comes up or if it involves, you know, the safety or the well-being of our children that perhaps, whether it be a community or whether it be some sort of outreach that we are involved. thank you very much. big fan of sfusd, by the way. [applause] >> good evening, my name is paul roits. i'm a parent of a second greater at marshall elementary. thanks for hearing us tonight. just to reiterate what they said, you know, the fact that occupy didn't take the city's offer really doesn't make what we're saying here tonight a moot point. our point is that we were not involved at all in this process

or the decision. we did some research on the crime. we compared the crime rates just 500 feet from the school and a half a mile from the school, from marshall elementary to the closest public school at fairmont. it was between five and 14 times. we are challenged there already. again, it was whether or not you believe in occupy, any of that, it's the fact that our principal was surprised by this and out of all of the properties that the city can choose from, you know, to put it in the, first of all, the mission district, and second of all, just a block away from a public school, out of all of the properties, that's what really has got us concerned with the decision process, the decision process itself and then the decision to not include the local community.

thank you. [applause] >> good evening. i'm matthew cost, not michael cost if you're taking notes there. it's a pleasure to be here. i'm a parent of a third and first grader at marshall elementary and on behalf of the marshall community, we are here tonight to express our concern with how things were handled with the potential move of the occupy movement to the mission. it appears to us that a deal was made without consultation of this board. the first we learned of this deal as parents is when it became public. there was no communication prior to this to the marshall elementary school families. in fact, when we reached out to get information, we were unable to get details which was not and is not acceptable to us. it's hard for me to believe that such a deal, that such poor communication would have occurred in our school was in a different part of town. in fact, it's hard for me to believe that this type of offer to the occupy movement would have ever been made. we don't think the school board understands or knows who marshall as a community is.

it's been said already here tonight. may not be the biggest school. we may not have the political clout of other schools. we may not even be in the top 10 or 15 choices when parents decide to send their kids to school, but we are a family. we are a close community that cares about our families and kids and works very closely to ensure we provide a safe learning environment. we are not blind to occupy our school. in closing, we wonder why the board didn't consider how this move would have impacted the safety of our children and that is just an irresponsible decision in our opinion. hopefully tonight you hear what is being said and make sure no other school goes through the stress that you put us under and that every school feels that you have their best interests at heart in the interests of the holidays, let me please give you a friendly reminder of who you serve. you serve the parents and the children of this community. you do not serve the mayor. thank you very much. [applause]

>> good evening, commissioners. superintendent carlos garcia. i am the chapter president for the school district chapter s.e.i. i'm speaking on a little bit different issue tonight. i'm speaking on our house parents, our house parents that some have been laid off, some are -- hours have been reduced and also some of the time and the hours were given to custodians and our student attrition workers which are in our same union which i believe that the new director thought that this deal was going to be cheaper. well, i see it as money going from one pocket to the other side of the pocket. you see you have 6 1/2 and the other half is in the bush. it's the same thing.

so i would appreciate if you all would take a look at what the plan that the new director has for the child care department, the early educational program and take a look at it, a real good look. i don't see any cost savings. they say it is, but i don't see any. sciu, it's our position that you take a look at this plan and see what is really going on here that it's not fair to our members and they need jobs and they need the hours and this date and time, no one can afford to lose their job. we thought all the cuts were over, but it doesn't seem like it. it is still going on. thank you. president mendoza: thank you. superintendent. >> yes. to the marshall parents, i think your requests are very reasonable and on behalf of the school district, let me be the first to apologize for all of

this. there is a lot of things that went on and it's difficult to cover them all, but what your comments are, they're right on and the communication is the most important thing. sorry about that. [applause] president mendoza: so item, actually that closes public comment. item k is the advisory committee reports and appointments to advisory -- >> and incident alley, marshall is a great school. i have been there several times and i love it. >> advisory committees by board members. we have a bilingual community council, the b.c.c. annual report. >> did you ask for appointments? >> not yet.

>> good evening, superintendent garcia, deputy superintendent, board president mendoza and all of the board of commissioners. thank you so much on behalf of the b.c.c. for giving us the opportunity to come and speak to you for our annual report. we have been looking forward to coming and addressing this body for a while and want to thank you for the opportunity. what we're going to do is we're going to introduce the b.c.c. members that are here. then i'll explain the short agenda that we have, each of us has one of the agenda items that we will present and then we will receive any of your questions and comments my name is kim garcia. i'm the co-chair of the b.c.c. this year. i have served on the committee at my children's school for

elementary for the last couple of years. i am the parent of a spanish immersioned kindergartener this year. >> my name is lisa guiterrez guzman. i am the bilingual representative of the united educators of san francisco. i'm a bilingual in the san francisco unified school district and have been for many, many years. i was a former chair of the b.c.c. and have been a member appointed by jill wynns for a long time now, been many a report. >> my child is a high school student. i come here a long time for the group. this year i'm the b.c.c. co-chair. >> i have a child in eighth grade. i have been the chairperson for

the past six years. i just finished my last term and the newest member of the b.c.c. >> we have four topics that we would like to present on and in our report. there are appreciations, our observation for the 2010-2011 school year, reviewing this year, 2011-2012 observation goals and focus, and concerns that we have as the b.c.c. i will be presenting our appreciations. lisa will be talking about our observations from last year. cindy will be reviewing this year's observation focus. and edwin will be presenting our concerns. so, we have a good list of appreciations that we would like to bring to the -- to this body.

it's great to come with so many appreciations. we feel like the district and the parent community and the larger community around us is working together and in a positive movement forward and that is just great. there is still a lot of work to be done and we feel that all of the work that we have done in the past couple of years really shows great promise. so, first of all, i think all of you have received this or looked at this. this is the accumulation of what started as parents of students coming to the b.c.c. with a request to have a guide in one place that is translated that we would have all of the information pertinent to our students and after presenting this to the b.c.c. to the district, we are very happy to see that this is now publication that e.l. families

receive on a earlier basis and that should be coming out in the next couple of weeks to every single e.l. student. this is an incredible resource for our e.l. families since it comes out in english and spanish and chinese. those of us who work in bridges in communities, it's an immense help to us. we don't have to translate on the fly all of these difficult terms like reclassification, language pathways, e.l. student, all of the information is right at our hands. it's an immense resource we very much appreciate the district responding to family concerns and we do hope that this is something that is given to e.l. families from now on. we also want to appreciate the response of the district again to parent concerns that the results were coming to e.l. families in english that was challenging, obviously,

especially because star results in how to help our students that are directly related to help our students in the gap and reclassification. again, family members of e.l. students brought this to the b.c.c. and the district as a parent of an e.l. student to our great surprise and joy received the results translated. like the english learner program guide, it's an immense help to our community. we want i want to thank the members for coming to our meetings. we have changed our meetings to be the last monday of the month. i hope the board of education commissioners will be able to join us for it is also a wonderful for you to attend our

meetings. his school district created an internal oversight committee as part of the action plan. the assistant to the superintendent, specifically, we believe that those are very positive steps towards working with the community. we want to acknowledge that the i.o.c. and the organization are working together to provide for a long-term needs. meles is our next interested and it covers a lot of needs and under that umbrella. in we appreciate the els staff and administrators training. that increase the time given on professional development days two student achievement.

we also want to note that the epc was responsive to parent concerns. one was the lack of translation on the san francisco unified school district website. when we brought it to the attention of the ec -- fo the epc that the language testing was only in english and chinese and not in spanish, they were responsive to making those changes to the website so that it was more accessible to the e.l. community, both in chinese and in spanish per it there was a third emerging in the ballot for the 2011-2012 school year. parents brought these concerns were hints of concerns to the district. that is an ongoing conversation.

we were able to see positive responses eventually from the san francisco unified school district and epc, who gave us the report. we are looking forward to meeting with kevin chavez concerning dual-immersion programs and 1-way immersion programs to. we have had a lot of parents come to our meetings and we have lots of questions for the district. we are looking forward to kevin coming and hearing those concerns. i would like to say that we are really happy that we have a lot more parents attending our b.c.c. meetings. there are a forceful and strong voice making their voices heard. that speaks to the parent engagement, we in the community are doing in paris engagement,

and the parents are doing to educate themselves. it is a win-win situation when parents ask those questions. and then the district has the courage to engage the parents in these discussions. i am more than proud, immensely proud of all of our e.l. para community and all the work the para community has been doing. i look forward to continuing engagement, strong voices from the parents. >> as you know, we observe schools every year and. this last school year, we decided to focus on high schools on purpose. we knew that newcomer high school was going to be closed and newcomer pathway was going to be opened. we were concerned that maybe our newcomer students might not

necessarily have their needs met. we did not believe that, but we wanted to make sure. we visited thurgood marshall high school, lincoln high school, san francisco international high-school. we saw varying levels of support. at least one of the high schools, there were over 100 newcomers, which was great. it was not necessarily the same at all of the schools we observed. what we found was that it was challenging for the staff to have many levels of english proficiency at their sites. and they found that there was not enough support from the district. this came from the parents that we were able to meet. we purposely organize our business so that we would meet

with these parents as much as possible. there was also an issue that we saw that the chinese and spanish-speaking populations or not necessarily getting the translation and support they needed so that they would feel totally engaged and the part of the community. we are going to change our of this is for the upcoming school year to. those are, in brief, some of the quick observations we saw last year and. >> the bcc will focus on the students. this year, i am going to tell you about the focus for the 2011-2012 observation. our focus is on yielded time. in elementary and middle schools, we have a particular

focus on long-term yields. as defined by the district and internal oversight committee, we are asking them for general schedules. and allowing them to make observations without administrative -- we are also requesting to meet with the site administrator. and the representatives when they are available.

i will now speak in chinese for the chinese community. [speaking chinese] thank you.

>> wow. ok. first of all, translation services. updating resources. the biggest beneficiary is cindy. if we did not have the translation service in the past six years, she would go from no english-speaking to being able to communicate with a person in english, which is wonderful. [applause] we have a wonderful year for the program guide which will continue next year. and we will continue to reach out and inform the community. i strongly suggest that this program is for the school district to engage the parents, not for the parents to engage the school district.

hiring unqualified translator, a native language teacher, for literacy and immersion pathway. i do not know about your interview process, but i wish, in the interview, a foreign language teacher, you have someone who is a native speaker when you are doing an interview. so that you can understand how fluent he is in the language. that is really important. the use of resources. one-way immersion, two-way immersion, the sfusd is talking about its immersion programs.

the sentences of unified school district action plan. and duel immersion programs to. how well it monitor e.l. students for enrollment in tool immersion programs for 2012- 2013. last, we need more b.c.c. members. thank you. >> we are very concerned about our special ed e.l. students as they go into school with the inclusion model. and along the feeder programs. will our special ed e.l. students be taken care of? we would like to receive any of

your questions or comments at this time. any of the four topics we presented on or anything else you would like to bring up. president mendoza: board members, questions? >> thank you for this report. i think it is really great that we have this now. it clarifies a lot of things for me. it is a difficult process to understand. and also just the definitions and how does a student exit out of the program and the requirements for that. i think it is a great and book -- 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