of it is we get to buy the energy for the same cost we would if it was not now up there, so this seems like not a great deal for us, and there are a number of school districts that are archly going into the business of becoming solar. we have -- that are going into the business of becoming solar. we have vabig roofs, but it seems to me that this is one area of generation of power using our facilities we ought to discuss as a potential revenue raiser, and i do not know that this is the way to go about it, and since i only know about this now, i am not advocating we do

not go into this contract, but we should be looking into this, and we should not be in the business -- the puc is planning to make money by generating electricity and putting it through the power grid and having it sold, so why are they on willing to share that with us, or have we even asked donth? >> good evening, commissioners. we have touched on solar before, and it is the buzzword, and everyone wants to do it, and one reason san francisco unified is not doing what others have done, is that we pay the same amount as everyone in the city. everyone else is paying 13.

we will stay in -- we will still pay nine or 10, and it makes no economic sense at all, so we have embarked on two parallel courses. one, we are starting to install solar panels on our own, and we want to install its, own it, learn how to maintain its, and see how it works. the puc has a grant program. unlike pg&e, their numbers were different, and they propose to target some of our schools, and they would like to come in for free and news hour route to host solar power. what is different about this proposal from other proposals is

the power we produce will actually be used by people in the building, whereas before, they wanted to give us the glory of having solar panels on their rules, but we got nothing in return -- on the roof, but we got nothing in return. they are going to do it in a clean, renewable way. they are going to own it and maintain its, and we are going to see if that works. alvarado is our first test case, and our legal counsel is working on trying to gather some mutual contract, which they have some tough things to see if they can even work, so this is a test to dry it out. we will not generate money for this for 25 years.

we will benefit from having a clean power on the roof of alvarado. from the standpoint of where we ought to be going in the world, it is good for us. until the day of arrives when it is profitable to put stuff on our rules -- on our roof and sell it at a different rate, that is not working for us, so to use our schools and not make energy green, they have to raise the rates to a point when budgets and would explode. they are already talking about raising rates of not just a school district but everyone else, and they want to raise it to five or six, and that will

have a significant budget hit on us, so our view this as a win- win opportunity. they are doing other things with us. they have a lot of money available to help us with, and i think we are in the infancy of trying out which model works for us, so i think it is important to start. i would ask if the board needs more information and does not feel comfortable voting on this tonight, i would like to withdraw its and provide more information because i do not want to see isn't not voted down. >> i appreciate that information. i am a little concern.

25 years is a long way in the way we are going to generate and pay for energy. gooit is probably five or six o0 generations, so it seems like a lot to me. in addition, are they obligated to keep the rules and working and in good repair and? are they going -- to keep vanil the roof working and in gd repair and? putting a lot of heavy solar panels of their region -- solar panels up there is a strain on our system. i would like to know more about this. it seems like we should have an outline of a plan, so do we expect this ruse to not generate

more energy than used by the school? >> the puc is a complicated arrangement with pg&e. it is difficult to explain, of about the line is they did not want to sell back excess power. it costs them more money to do that, so they want to generate no more or less power than the school 10 years, and for them it is a marketing opportunity for them a money-making opportunity. for us, it is a share of -- 25 years is what they say. i think we know when you buy a ruse for your house it last 18 years. -- a roof on your house, it lasts 18 years. they are responsible to maintain its. i think the district is responsible to maintain the water tightness of the rulesoofd

we can kick them off, but there are arrangements to be made. they would like to do more, and we are saying, let's try it. >> when the new roof hold this system? >> yes, this system will have to go through the architect. they are going to have to substantiate these calculations. if they cannot do it, this will work. >> i appreciate you have been working on this and obviously thought it through, but it seems to me -- i have seen us do these things before that are meant to be, let's try it, and what happens is we do it once, and it is a snowball, and i am

concerned about that. part of the issue, i appreciate and understand because of the relationship, and we have an artificially low cost for our of electrical needs. however, we also have an issue in this state that in other states the ability of people to generate power through these passive systems and for them to be required to buy them back at a competitive rate does not exist in this state, so it is not as simple as that. those are the kinds of things that are likely to change significantly in the next few years, not 25 years.

that is why it seems a little difficult for me to support this. >> you need to have sites and areas to generate an of solar panels that you can generate more than 85% of the power for the school. it would be very rare for most urban schools to ever have the space to generate more than 60% of the power of the school, so the concept of selling power back is a moot point. it is where we want to go down there road. one is to be energy efficient, and as the puc manages to raise their rates to a more market rate, we want to be prepared to have as sheet power as we can. -- aheas cheap hour of weekend.

>> it is a moving target we know. we bring it back to facilities for discussion in terms of where we are at, so i would like to take a vote. did we make a motion yet? do we need to make a motion? roll call please. [calling votes] commissioner wynns: no. >> we have six ayes. >> thank you, and thank you for

sticking around. >> i am happy to continue the discussion. >> we will figure it out. >> they can bring it up as an informational item or get a report. this is part of the plan, so he has something set up. >> this is for the school year. we would refer those soon the budget committee, -- these to the budget committee, because we have a deadline to get into the city by the first of february, we do not have any meetings until next month.

>> it is january 31. >> what we are proposing to do, is there a motion? >> so moved. as far as we want to refer this to the committee as alcoho-- asa whole. we can have this discussion. >> item r, in support of those goals.

is there a motion? >> so moved. >> are moved to suspend the rules and consider this item this evening. >> second. [calling votes] >> is there a motion and a second? >> proposed. >> reading the resolution.

president yee: i'm going to read this but i know we may add some new wording to this. so, in support of the creation of vision and goals of the pre-k to third alignment system, including the pre-k to third, looking back moving forward summit, whereas the san francisco unified school district as one of its goals to have all third graders reading at grade level or above because this is a crucial milestone indicating whether or not children will succeed in school. this goal has profound impact to narrowing the opportunity and achievement gap and whereas the district has many positive programs for our young students. however, many of these programs will are not having the greatest impact because they are not necessarily aligned with each other and whereas the district has accepted the

challenge of aligning our prmbings k to third program to -- pree k to third program to improve student outcomes. the district has looked to develop shared goals in aligning our work from prekindergarten to third grade and where there are many private education programs for preschool age children who rentering our program in the district, including approximately 2/3 of the children from low income families that enter our public schools. the next sentence i'm going to scratch. i'm not going to read it. whereas parents and other community members play a crucial role in our young children's development and are key emments to any reform efforts to succeed. our city partners have also played a vital role in supporting early learning for our children through programs like preschool for all and gameway to quality and whereas it is vital to have all

stakeholders involved in a creating a shared vision in goals of prekinder guarden to third grade alignment system. that will be all aspects of children learning including parent engagement. community members and district staff have been discussing a process to allow for stakeholders an opportunity to contribute to this effort. the process includes early education teachers, elementary classroom teachers, classroom environment, parent focus groups and a summit to discuss key points for our vision and goals. whereas the summit is to be held on saturday, february 25, 2012. the purpose of the summit is to create and support the vision of the pre-k to third grade system that would would allow for a collective impact from the diverse entities that influence our young children. and whereas this impact will result in all children reaching their fullest potential, taking one emment such as illiteracy

as an example. the district has the goal of all having third graders reading at grade level or above. we realize that the district cannot accomplish the reit -- the detired results without stakeholders involved in the decision, including many early education programs provided by community organizations, parents and local government. whereas the pre-k to third -- looking back, moving forward summit on february 25, 2012, will include a national speaker who the senior vice president of a foundation and who is leading a national initiative to have kids read at grade level and mayor leer has -- lee has been invited to co-chair with the president of the san francisco board of education, this summit that is beginning to take -- [laughter] oh, boy. the kind of buzz around town. therefore be it resolved that the board of education of the

san francisco unified school district requests that the superintendent of schools will ensure that the district fully supports the inclusion of most stakeholders to create the vision and goals of the pre-k to third alignment system. including supporting the pre-k to third looking back move, moving forward summit. so that's the resolution and i believe, commissioner mendoza, would you like to add something? commissioner mendoza: yes. thank you for putting this forward, president ye. this is exciting and timely in terms of the work that's currently moving forward. so the school district, the city, first five, united way, the walter and louise foundation and many others have been approached by, as you know, the foundation to submit an l.o.i.. the intention of this award was to have, you know, somewhere between 20 and 50 communities

across the united states apply and 159 actually ended up applying. so we have submitted an l.o.i. with the intent of bringing together all of the things yure you described and i think it would be really helpful if we acknowledged that this initiative is the all-city award grade level reading campaign and that we actually have developed a partnership and have submitted an l.o.i. to apply for this award. and the -- and it also is a priority of the board as it is for the city. the three areas that they're focusing in on which you also identify is kindergarten, kindergarten readiness, absenteism and out of school time. all of the elements that are helpful in gaining some momentum around grade level reading. so if we can have some language to -- add some language to that i think it would be really great to be able to bring all that have work together under

your resolution. and how it ties to your summit is up to you but just the work itself in identifying it as work that currently is in motion as of recently would be really great and i just want to thank you for bringing ralph up because he's a great speaker and motivator and this is his baby and i think as a city, whose priority of third grade level reading, it would be silly for us not to participate in his campaign. so, thank you. and i have some language that kind of -- we can add later on. that's pretty extensive. it just speaks to partners and the campaign itself and just what i said. so thank you. president yee: in terms of the intent of what you're talking about, thanks for pointing it out because for me, even though i didn't write it in there, the

intention was that this is very compatible and one of the same to me. so thank you. any other comments? commissioner fewer. commissioner fewer: yes. i just had a question, commissioner yee, or president yee. where is the summit to be held for our listeners? and also, just the logistics about it. president yee: we're hoping that it's going to be held at the middle school. actually, i got to come back around. i called the principal and somebody else answered, the principal wasn't there. i wanted to talk to the principal to make sure that this is available before i made the announcement. but that's what i'm targeting, the middle school. just to let everybody know, we're talking about the morning , from 8:30 to about 12:30. any other? commissioner murase.

commissioner murase: i want to express my strong support for this endeavor. i think it's very exciting to be invited to participate in something that has national implications. and just to remind board members of the sad fact that california prison populations are based on third grade literacy numbers. how many kids who are -- who can't read in third grade are assumed to end up in jail. so there really is very little that's more important than making sure that our kids are able to read at grade level. so i will be supporting this. commissioner wynns: could you explain what participation of our staff will have in the planning and work? is there any -- have we planned for that? president yee: this process of thinking about the summit and the activities that's been taking place for the last almost six months and in fact

our own staff has been involved with the planning of this and the leadership has had been in the loop in terms of the discussion and supporting this effort. and so in many ways this started as a discussion about a year ago in which i said, you know, it makes some sense, many of the -- there was rationale to do this. and then we were able to get the community involved. i wrote a proposal to get outside funding involved. because in the past we've always had community groups be involved and most nonprofits do not have deep pockets to actually -- commissioner wynns: i appreciate all. that what i want to know is, is

our staff, are they going to be doing the work that day? is it in their work plan? have we budgeted for that? that kind of stuff. president yee: one of the things that i just received pretty much notice about it, we've talked about this in terms of budget. but the main expense that we weren't too sure but now we're sure is that it needs to have 75 to 100 teachers in the preschool programs. we're going to have about the same amount of preschool teachers visit elementary school programs. so we do have the funding for that. and in terms of staffing for the people involved so far, the parent engagement office and carla and transition person that she's hired, that's been spoken about and they already know -- they've already

committed to doing that. so that's most of the staff that's going to be involved and then of course we'll need translations. and then in terms of facilitating some of the breakout sessions, we're asking communities to do that part of the activities. commissioner wynns: have we looked at this? you've planned this and thank you. president yee: yeah. commissioner maufas: so i want to also thank you so much for working on this, president yee. i know it's totally one of your babies and you know it comes and going and to really pull together the level of leadership around this and just keep, you know, moving forward, moving forward, and you've really done it pretty quietly, at least from our board perspective. it's here.

and just upon us. and i am very, very supportive and you've mentioned, you know, tidbits to us as we've crossed paths. i mean, pretty much i feel like the only -- besides coming and attending, you haven't asked for us to do anything to assist you and at a minimum, you know, i want to show my support by asking if you'd allow us and i'm speaking for myself and other commissioners, to join you on your resolution, in support of your efforts. and so other folks who even look at this resolution understand that the board is behind your endeavors. and i'd be honored to join you. but also, you know, am opening the phoneline for you to call and say, you know, if you need any assistance in whatever way i can be of assistance to you, my line is open and waiting for a message. ye i appreciate your effort -- president yee: i appreciate

your effort. are you asking to be a name on the resolution? thank you -- commissioner maufas: and something else, too. can you ask for something else. maybe not publicly -- you can ask for something else. maybe not publicly but my phone is open. president yee: i appreciate the support and even though i'm presenting the resolution now and answering commissioner wynns' question, this is not new to the staff. it's just formalizing what we've been talking about and doing and planning and so forth. and it's a good opportunity for , again, for the board to know exactly what's happening with this and as we move forward, we only have a month, a little more than a month, to find details in this. i'll need a lot of help and staff is working on it and part of my role is to bridge, at least initially, help bridge that communication between our district and the community.

so i think that's being done at this point and i feel real good that the district has really embraced this concept. thank you. roll call please. commissioner maufas: yes. commissioner mendoza: yes. maursmaurs -- commissioner murase: aye. commissioner wynns: aye. president yee: aye. >> six ayes. president yee: thank you. motion to pass -- motion passes. ok. item s. board members' report. are there any tonight? i don't -- we haven't had a