gloria suna. [applause] dora alvarez. [applause] [applause] cindy choi. [applause] and daisy -- [applause] thank you very much. we would like to briefly introduce the new district learner advisory committee

board. this was elected by parents of the district -- and as i call your name, can you come up please? maria -- [applause] cindy choi. [applause] maria -- [applause] rosario -- [applause] edwin yun. [applause] carla mirada. [applause] dora alvarez. [applause] gloria cerva. [applause]

carolina. [applause] amalia mendez. ana vazquez. gloria. my colleagues will read the chinese members. >> maggie pho. [applause]

thank you. >> we look forward to serving the needs of this district's english learners. the english learner students. thank you. a few words from our new president. [speaking spanish] >> hi, my name is maria rocha, and it's an honor to be chosen to represent the english learners. >>

[speaking spanish] >> so i'm looking forward to working together and all of us are on the same page so we can provide the children with the tools so they can be successful. so again, thank you for this opportunity and we're willing to work. >> once again, thank you for those that served last year and thank you for those that are willing to serve this year. it's going to be a lot of work. congratulations.

we're moving on to our next item, which is for the japanese american citizens league donation of the book "zero" to the san francisco unified school district elementary school libraries. superintendent? commissioner murase. >> one of the few things i did on the board was to recognize a civil rights activist who was recognized at the end of january. january also happens to be anti-bullying month and our hardworking staff also distributed materials into the schools for anti-bullying month.

included in that package was children's -- a children's book called "one," a book that illustrated and written by katherine otoshi, a local author, who is here today, because the japanese american citizens league will be presenting to each of our school libraries the sequel to that book, called "zero" and both of those books address bullying if the bully's perspective and the victim's perspective. i would like to introduce a representative of the japanese american league -- japanese american citizens league and the author of the book, if they could come to the podium. >> it's always a pleasure to come to the board with something like this. in this particular case, something rather special. when i read "one" and happened

to read "zero" i thought it would be a challenging task because we'd have to raise a lot of money to get both books into the system because you have a lot of elementary schools. but it turned out, when we looked at it, "one" had been distributed, so you cut my job in half. it took a while, but we were able to get the book and will get it distributed to the libraries. i'm going to turn it over to the author and illustrator and i have to say i'm very impressed by both books. >> thank you again, good evening. i was asked to say a few words about "one." "one" has to deal with the issue of bullying, prejudice and really the power of one's voice. and i thought i would just go

ahead and cut to the chase, just talk about, one thing that's always asked -- ask when i go to talk about the book, someone will always ask, why did you write the story of "one." i'll talk about the experience, it was a repressed memory from fourth grade. my parents were interned in a camp in world war ii, i was one of the very few minorities growing up in the suburbs and i remember looking around me and as kids do, sometimes you wish you were better at soccer or wish you were better at sports or whatever. in my case, i actually wished i had blond hair and blue eyes or red curly hair and green eyes. this might seem odd but i remember at one point, catching a glimpse of myself in the mirror and being so surprised,

think, wow i'm asian. it went on for a long time, that was sort of my secret. i've never talked about that until i wrote the book "one." and again, sometimes i'm asked, why did you write the story? one particular way someone asked this question, recalled a memory in fourth grade of a little girl i'm going to call ming who walked through the classroom door and i remember distinctly being very excited about ming because i was like, wow, she has the same shaped eyes as me, the same dark colored hair, the same skin color and i was excited for maybe two seconds until her name was called in roll call and she was laughed at and i thought, well, maybe it's not so cool to try to be friends with this person anymore. it got worse the second day of

school because she was -- since she was laughed at, nobody said thing. -- anything. her hair was pulled and she was pushed, surely because no one said anything, it must be ok to shove and pull the hair of this little girl. we fast forward to a whole week and she was so afraid of the rest of us that i distinctly remember when the school bell rang, she would run to the girl's bathroom stall and lock the door and stand there throughout the entire lunch period. my last memory of this little girl is of her crouching behind the school tool shed and she's crying so loud, she is screaming, because there's a semicircle of kids surrounding and pointing and laughing at her. i am the author of "one" which deals with standing up for

yourself. but i could not say that i, back then, stood up for ming, and how ironic being the author of "one," when i think about it, that i certainly could have been a one back then, and i was so afraid to confront these other kids. i was thinking, what if i stood up for this little girl that i called "ming" and they saw that i, too, was asian and that fear alone kept me from doing it. i wanted to thank this board formening us -- helping us in distributing these books out to every school in the san francisco school district. for my part, i decided to do afterwards, i was so upset at the memorying i wrote the book "zero" which has to do with, how do you become a one? how do you become the person

who stretches and grows and that person you hope and want to be? how can we see ourselves as having value and bringing value to ourselves and others. i wanted to say thank you so much for bringing this vocabulary to our schools and i also wanted to thank emily murase and grant muratami for bringing value to us all. [applause] >> i want to have a representative speak about what we're doing on bullying in schools because it is such an important issue. >> good evening, after that, i read "one" so many times, just

so you know, it's in all our libraries, please read it. after hearing that story, i certainly get it now. basically, this book, blue is picked on by "one" and orange and yellow and green don't do it -- is picked on by red, and orange and yellow and green don't do anything, until one comes along. we need to make sure that these lessons are brought to our students' attention buzz the sooner we teach them to value each other and value themselves, that's most of the work we need to do in developing them as human beings. we thank you. the book went over really, really well last yore, it's amazing, and we're happy to have the book "zero" to help kids become one and be counted. i want to introduce very

quickly -- i really do want to read the book, i really do. i want to introduce martha who helps me work on things and they're going to give you a brief presentation about what we're doing. >> i'm martha and just on behalf of school help programs, student support services department and the children of san francisco we'd like to thank ms. otoshi for donating this new book, "zero," as mr. truitt mentioned, "one" was very well received. we had the pleasure of writing a lesson i just shared with you today and many teachers have been asking for more copies of the books. we'd like to thank you. >> good evening, i just want to

echo what martha said. the book will be a welcome addition to our comprehensive health education that includes lessons on bullying at the elementary, middle and high school levels. january is school safety and violence prevention month where we asked all schools to create activities on violence prenks. and we'd like to thank the board again for supporting violence protection month -- prevention month for the safety of all our students.

>> the posters that will be disprayed in all our -- displayed in our schools this month, you have the right to be safe in school, it tells studentser that rights, what they have the right to be protected from, protection from bullying based on race, gender, sexual identity. we deserve the right to be safe. you will see these displayed in all our schools. thank you. >> mr. true it. -- truitt. i'm curious. maybe it doesn't make any sense, i love this poster and the students will probably be

able to read it but i'm also thinking that a lot of parents might be looking at this and one of the things we want our parents to do is reinforce this concept, so if not this year, maybe you've done it already, as we celebrate the month again next year, is it possible to have this translated also? >> it will be translated this year for all our schools, president yee. president yee: good. thank you very much. >> one last announcement. tomorrow, the city and county of san francisco will be having anti-human trafficking awareness day and the dynamics of human trafficking are similar to those of bullying. we had a poster contest and several high school students

and one middle school student submitted posters, that will be tomorrow at city hall at 3:00. we'll have a student-designed poster that asks people to call the police if they see something suspicious. very similar to talking with an adult if you see something, some examples of bullying at school. president yee: commissioner maufas. commissioner maufas: thank you for sharing your story with us, not just the book, but that you came here and shared your personal story with us, it's difficult to talk about memories that are painful, and you shared that with us here in the room and the people watching on television and the internet heard that. thank you for coming in and sharing your personal story with us.

>> i also wanted to add for our listeners at home, it is a lovely book. we reviewed it as a curriculum committee but it is really a lovely book. it's a great choice, i think, for everyone to buy for their own chern. >> next item, recognizing the heroic work of workers from 1601 turk street project during the december 22, 2011, fire. superintendent. superintendent garcia: i'd like to call david golden. >> good evening, commissioners, i'm glad to be here. congratulations, president yee, vice president norton. as all of you know who live in the city of san francisco, because you probably saw this

note, two days before christmas, just before noon, there was a horrific fire on turk and golden date gate -- golden gate that left almost 60 eem homeless -- 60 people homeless for the holiday. it could have been a lot worse for some of them but for the 2006 bond construction project happening next door, at the golden gate campus, former golden gate campus creative charts -- creative arts charter school who happened to be working that day, 10 or 11 workers who were going about their business of pounding nails and doing what construction workers do saw these two buildings literally going up in smoke almost instantly and charged next door, broke down the door, with

a sledgehammer, and in fact woke up some people that actually were asleep at noon and probably would have perished. so it was a great story, we're also -- there were also four people from our building and ground staff that came out and shut off the gas and power and made the neighborhood safe. so the school district and i am certainly proud to present and honor sort of regular, normal people for doing extraordinary things on a regular day for no other reason than that they're good people. if we had more people leek this, the world one a -- would be a better place. i think there's somebody here from the general contractor, bolo construction. i'm going to read off some names. i believe the president of the board of education and the superintendent have some certificates and then i'll read off the four names of the building and ground staff and i'll pick up their certificates

later, but thank you to all of them for being good citizens and helping the people next door. with that, i'll read the names, manuel ibarra, sam, my low, tony, nick tooley, ed marquez, rob durote of mike brown electric, frank carter, mike brown electric, raoul and hoe zaire. thank you all very much. [applause] this is a representative from bolo construction, the general contractor on the job. finally, i'll pick up certificates later but i want to acknowledge mike hill from

our electrical shop, mike powell from the plumbing department, raymond tisdale one of our laborers, who were instrumental in helping the fire department after the fire and in getting the school ready a week later to open only one day late. thank you so much to everybody. [applause] >> thank you. it's nice to know we have real heroes as neighbors. president yee: and that live were saved in this case. -- and that lives were saved in this case. thank you for the people who were involved in saving those lives. item d, student delegate reports. george za -- zhang and -- joist

z -- joyce zhang and karissa tom. >> we've been busy. we're going to have a mid year retreat with the youth commission and the focus will be on the budget process for the city and for sfusd as well as how the s.f.c. and y.c. can work more on budget advocacy. we'll have several workshops on professionalism as well as a workshop on public speak big the bay area urban debate league which will present in the form of formal public comments, meeting with officials and outreach and presentations in groups. during this retreat, we'll reflect on the work done in the past semester and set goals on what we plan to do for the rest of the school year.

adecisionally, we are playing the youth summit 2012 and right now, it's still in the planning but our tentative date is march 23. and in our last meeting yesterday, we voted to have one of the s.a.c. seats per school elected through the -- through the youth vote. we're working through the details which include the term limits and the bylaws and just the nitty-gritty of everything. >> and we are continuing with our -- joyce: we are continuing with our campaign, and there's a really important meeting on february 7 for the sfmta board meeting at 4:30 in room 400 at city hall, that's when they'll

vote on whether they'll continue exploring the three-year pilate program, so if you would like to support that, come out that afternoon and student delegates applications are due on january 25 and whoever wants to kill karissa and my seat, ush be excited to do so. you can turn in applications to peter at 1319 market street and go on www.yesf.org/youth vote to find more information about the application. a reminder about the bank of america high school scholarship program, and you get to spend the summer in d.c. and that is also due on january 25 and for more information go on bankofamerica.com/neistudentlea ders. that's it.

president yee: thank you for your report, student dell gas. again, if anybody is interested in being in their positions next year, please apply. this is really a great opportunity for the high school students to be at this meeting and participate at this level. i think. are you excited? >> yes. it's a good thing to do. president yee: ok, parent advisory council report. representatives? >> good afternoon, everybody. congratulations, norman, president norman yee and rachel norton. i just want to say, i don't

know you that well but i preebt the way that you handled the meeting and everything and you coming to the class meeting as well and just your support so thank you, ms. mendoza for your hard work and leadership and the way you carry yourself, thank you for that. my name is gloria mald, i'm a parent of two children within the district, i'm a member of the parent advise recommittee under title 7 and i wanted to also quickly acknowledge the delac and the new members as well and their hard work. thank you. for mr. -- for your contributions and ms. otoshi, i think it's really important. this report here that i'm

talking about focuses on the p.a.c.'s work and it correlates with the violence prevention, we're focusing on restorive processes and how that's important. i know it's one of the district's priority initiatives and a priority for the p.a.c. for a couple of reasons, first because we know african-american and latino students are suspended at a much higher rate than other students in the district. during the different community engagement campaigns, we have heard from houns -- hundreds of families who have voiced concerns about unfair or enconsistent school discipline policies and worry about bullying and safety. i think this is a good time to talk about this. also, second, we believe that practices of school climate and discipline are important for addressing underlying issues that