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 contribute to these problems. so in thinking about our goals and objectives, the p.a.c. has been very excited about restorative practices and turning that into some sort of concrete goal. what we have decided is to use sort of a focus group approach and involve parents more and hopefully get some input from parents, hear their concerns and hopefully that will strengthen the implementation of restorative practices throughout schools in the district. we know that a number of schools are piloting restorative practices but our sense is that a large number of families don't have any idea what it means and it's not happening at every school, yet. and what we're hoping is that we can meet with, we're aiming to meet at about 10 to 15 sites, school sites and possibly community

organizations, we hope to hear from about 250 participants and our goal is really to share information about what restorative practices is and also hear any concerns from parents, get suggestions and if there are parents who are interested in taking some next steps at their school site, maybe helping to give them some tools to do that. of course we'll share our findings by the end of the school year. i'm sorry. share with the school district and i'm sorry, my name is marnede martin and i'm a parent as well. >> and so, where are we going to conduct the community conversations? p.a.c. members have 24 schools we're approaching and asking if they're interested in this conversation. we don't have the capacity to actually conduct many conversations, as much as we want to, buzz of the limited

capacity of the p.a.c. but we are making a point to go to the 24 schools. we balance a number of different things when we come up with this list. the school suspension rate, compared to the district's -- district's average of those grade levels and if the school is already implementing restorative practices or is interested in developing more plans and also we look at the demographics of the school's student populations and because african-american and latino students are suspended at a disproportionate rate, the p.a.c. is making a high priority to reach these communities. at the same time, we want to hear from families in different kinds of schools, different levels, different neighborhoods and we would like to work with community groups who can convene parents outside of school settings to talk about the issues. we want to invite other paraphernalias into the conversation as well.

in terms of the process, we have been happy to have a lot of interest from carrie berke withs who is leading the initiative with the district, she is helping us develop materials, invited us to train in the coming weeks to bring ourselves up to speed and help share the information out to the larger parent community. so we're really looking forward to this and we also would love if any input the board might have in terms of questions that you think we should be asking or information that you're hoping to hear and also if there are particular schools or communities that you think should be included in our outreach. >> thank you, gloria and miranda. president yee: are there comments?

commissioner fewer? commissioner fewer: i think it would be great if members could attend the trainings coming up in february. i think the trainings are an introduction to restorative practices. i think if you went and -- whoever attended would have a deeper understanding of what we're trying to do and chang our discipline practices but i commend you for taking this on because we believe it is a very important issue in our school district and it is imperative that we look at how we're disciplining students in order to meet the geels for our stratenalic plans. >> i'll just say that i think it is a testament to how popular the program is that the programs are all filled. we were able to add an additional program to get the train big the end of this month. president yee: commissioner

murase? commissioner murase: thank you. my experience is that these community conversations are so important. you get to engage in dialogue many of us aren't able to do. i encourage you to go to as many school sites as you can. my question is, will this be at all levels? are you focusing on the elementary level or will you be talking to middle and high school? >> i think that was part of our balance in looking at sites, we try to have had a representative sample that included at least some schools from each level. >> do you feel any recommendations on which schools to go to? that would be helpful as well. commissioner murase: my youngest goes to rosa parks and they've been active and i received a lot of concern from

families attending marina. >> rosa parks is excited to work with us, they're on top of our list, we're excited about that. president yee: thank you very much for your report and your hard work. ok, next item, f, public comment on the consent items. i believe there is one speaker. mrs. black. >> thank you very much. good evening, members of the

board of education, ladies and gentlemen, i want to congratulate presidentie and vice president rachel nor -- presidentee and vice president -- president yee and vice president rachel norton. i'm hopeful you'll appoint committee hodes so that the different committees we count on on the board of education will be able to schedule their meetings and the union will be able to testify at those committee meetings. i rise to speak tonight on several of the resolutions. in this time of tight budget constraints, i think we have to look at every nickel that we spend. so i ask the board to take a look at k-13, which is on page 117. now you might say, this is only a $0,000 expenditure, and the purpose of it is to have leadership development in partnership with an outside

organization, as it says, but there's a term being used in this that i don't typically use so i'm wondering about it. the term is a critical friend. a critical friend to the principal. i'd like you to look at that and see how much of the money is being spent for that and how much is going for the leadership development that was intended by this. additionally, i would like to ask you to take a look at k-14 on page 119. it's curious to me, i would like to know, this is about an excel program at wester. who was in charge at webster before this resolution? what evaluation of their services ended up demanding this mid year change? or was there no one in charge before? it seems rather odd that you would be doing this in the middle of the year.

and then i'd like you to take a look at k-26. k-26 on page 143. and this is money for a consultant to guide a staff member in understanding their job. now, i can understand that the accounting department activities might cost this amount of money. but why should the money come from what it seems to me are funds that should be used for direct services for students. if you take a look at the funding sources, you see it comes from dcyf mayor's wellness program, comprehensive school health local, i don't know what that mean bus it sounds like it belongs to the kids. i think a word is left out there. and tobacco use prevention

education. so i'd like you to look at these resolutions and before you approve them, see whether the money is being spent the way it should be spent. thank you very much. president yee: as a reminder to the public, in accordance with 11-2 of the board policy p-120, an individual wishing to address the board on agenda items or on matters other than those calendared for forward action can call the board office by 4:30 on the day of the meeting or by completing a speaker card on the evening of the meeting, prior to the item being called. cards being turned in at the same time an item is being discussed will not be accepted.