four years and years and years. and the schools that we're talking about, these handful of schools we are talking about, have not had the voice to aske for what we are hoping to be able to give them tonight. many of our schools are not organized to be able to talk to the right people. many of our families do not speak english. many of our families did not even know where to go, except to and from school. we don't see the same families in these schools in this border. we only see them because many of us go out and talk to them on a regular basis. i live in the bayview. i see our kids on the street every day. i see what has happened in the bayview and in our schools and in the mission.

we have been applying for money left and right, and i will be the first to be on board and a place we can get money. you guys know that. you come to me to ask, where is the money? and we have been successful securing dollars for communities that need it the most. those are investments. those are investments in our children. so tonight for me is not about whether or not this is the right thing or the wrong thing for the teachers. i respect seniority. i respect our union. but this is a question about whether this is the right thing for our kids. and that is what i was elected to do. i was put on this board to speak on behalf of our kids. and my own kids have been in the schools that we're talking about. they have seen what turnover can do.

this is -- and i said this to you earlier, mr. kelly -- a small gesture for something that will have a huge impact. and quite frankly, if we push this down, i don't think we will even hit the pro teachers. we are not even talking about our most senior teachers being affected by this. so i am actually hoping that as a district, we are excited about this big move. that people will go home and talk about how old we are to do something like this, because this is really about our kids. and that this is not wrong if what we are protecting are our kids. and when we did prop a

together, we talked about 25 hard to staff schools we would want to support. and if we could do all 25 schools, which would include eldorado, that would be my preference. but we're not talking about all 25 schools, but we're supporting them the best weekend. -- the best we can. i know this is wrong in your mind, and in my heart, it is not wrong. and, you know, it is one of those votes that mr. kelly and the union, i hope that this does not break up what we have built over the years, because that has been why we as a district have been able to move forward. and we have all had to give up some things. but i don't look at this as giving up something.

i look at this as really wanting to do something that is right for our kids. so i want to continue to invest in our improvements and out onto in our improvements and out onto continue to give our kids in the >> truthfully, i was counting votes. i was thinking, do i have to do this? can i let somebody else do the heavy lifting for once? but i cannot. thougi know what it feels like o have people take the easy vote because they know that others will make the hard votes, and i will not do that. so i have thought a lot about this. i understand the principles of seniority. the principles of seniority i believe then.

and i have looked at all of the data. i am persuaded, for instance, by the fact that the schools that we are proposing to skip here have average scores times, the turnovers of other schools in the district. i think that even if we do this, the length of service of the teachers in those schools will still be much shorter than in other schools. the schools that have been the most successful have had extraordinary stability in their staff, and actually, i have discussed that with leadership for decades. we have worked together on ideas and programs to try to effect these kinds of things. one of the schools in the zone, one of the schools in the bayview that is really an extraordinary example of showing

improvement in recent years, malcolm x, is a school that we have worked together on. and one of the main problems we identified, that we wanted to see if what to do something about, was about stability and the staff. we talked with the staff about that, and also everything i know, all of the research i have looked at, over time tells me this is one of the things we were always finding in the well intentioned the other attempts we have made to effect change and the trajectory of improvement in these very schools and other schools. like commissioner norton, it needs to be said here tonight that the people who chose the six schools were not bus. out -- were not us. i have done a lot of public condemnation of how that was done.

actually, i did not report that we should have applied for this, because i think some of -- and we see all of the other schools around the nation that have taken, as is the direction of the federal administration, a far more punitive, strategic posture around transformation and we have. i think we are right, that the way that people want us to do it is the way that we have tried to do it before, very punitively, but it has not worked well. i am happy that we have looked for compromises, that we have tried to be as supportive as we can, but i know from all of that work that staff stability is key, and gaining subtraction in the multiple initiatives we have had for these very schools is important. what i was going to say is the

six schools have been arbitrary selected for us. we chose, and in the end, i supported that in order to be with my colleagues. i did not want to be the lone person voting against that effort. but someone else chose those schools, and the ones they chose happen to be in and underserved community of san francisco, but not the most underserved community of san francisco, and that is why the bayview zone is important to us. not only is it the next generation of the deceit -- of the desegregation efforts that many of us have been focused on for decades, but also -- actually, and i think we all are quite unhappy that the resources of the program are not focused on the bayview zone, the bayview neighborhoods and communities.

even though it is as hard as everybody has explained it to be, this is one of those decisions where we are all torn, and after all of these considerations, particularly the idea that this is something that is about equity, not that i have come to the conclusion that i am going to support this the way it is. thank you. president yee: so let me wrap this up. like my colleagues, this is a tough decision. i had to think about what the rationale of all of this is, and had to go back into whenever it started, the school board, which this is my eighth year. some of the years that we spoke about when i first got yeahere n

year one or the same schools we're talking about basically, and the staff in the schools was the issue. many of the teachers that were in the schools were first and second year teachers and so forth. and in looking at the data, i did not look that heavily in terms of first year, said it your teachers, but had a history of looking at this stuff and it has not changed that much. and continues to be that way. the other question i asked myself, when i looked at this, i had to dig through the resolution what impact it would have and so forth, i was not too sure. i read it once. i had to think about it and say, well, is this something we are going to do every year?

we're going to say these teachers will be protected every year? when i looked at it, it did not say that, which was a good thing for me, because this does two things for me. number one, i aretino the schools have very young teachers -- i know these teachers have not been around a long time. and also, i agree, whether it is my own conclusion, whereat have looked at research, where stability brings success to situations. the thing with this, knowing that this is asking for the situation forn one year, i am more inclined to support it. if we have 1-year, 2-your teachers, these same teachers are there the next year, have

been there two, three years. i would say that we should look at that carefully next year. whether or not we need to that, indeed the situation anymore, -- whether we need the situation anymore, because once there is a percentage of the teachers who have been around long enough, then there is an equal playing field. right now, i don't feel like it is an equal playing field when the same schools year after year receive new teachers, going in and out of there. it is a tough decision, no doubt, but my colleagues, and commissioner few were really pointed out, sometimes we have to make these decisions because we are focusing on what is the best thing for our students for the next decades, basically. so i will end it with that.

roll call, please? >> we have to have quorum. president yee: i think all four of them were moved. >> we have to vote on them separately. president yee: which is fine. go ahead. >> ms. fewer? >> yes. [roll call vote] that is 5 ayes. on the second, which is the same date of first paid service -- [roll call vote] that is 5 ayes.

reduction of para professional services -- [roll call vote] 5 ayes. and the last, which is the employees in the early education department -- [roll call vote] 5 ayes. president yee: ok. so let's move on. this is going to be item n, discussion of other educational issues. this is the general education transportation update. superintendent garcia? >> i like to call our deputy

superintendent. come on down.

president yee: okay, we're going to have to move on. the last item was very tough, but there are quite a few other things we have to talk about, so let's get started. deputy superintendent? >> thank you, president yee, and commissioners. we do have another tough topic to present an update on. i hope it will not seem as sobering as the conversation that you just had, but

nonetheless, we feel like we have to present an update on another difficult topic that is predicated and necessary as a result of our budget situation. so this is an update on the staff working group's recommendation about the reduction of general education and transportation services. i believe all of the commissioners have received a hard copy of the presentation, and we have large. for the commissioners. we have readable print for the committee members. on this presentation, i believe it has already been placed on the district website. let me just continue. i think the commissioners will

recognize i am joined by all of my colleagues, and we are members of the staff working group. we are missing an important person, it with the district's leads team, which is a part of the network of districts, which is in albuquerque, new mexico, on a network meeting, sponsored through stanford. ok, can you do the slide show? >> right here? >> yeah. ok, so we're trying to get a better projection on here, but i will continue, susan, if you don't mind. just to begin, yellow bus

service, i hope the commissioners will remember, for general education students attending elementary and middle schools is changing. this is a continuation of a multi-year phasedown, not phase out, but phase down of general transportation services. second slide? so one thing to set out day up front, students with iep's that require transportation will not be impacted. other things to mention upfront, the transportation changes are all consistent with the board policy guidelines that were established when the board passed a transportation policy in december, 2010, and i will talk about that in a moment. the point is to minimize the use of general fund contributions

for transportation, again, necessitated by the state's underfunding of our school district. in december, 2010, the board passed a transportation policy, 108-24sp1, which is the first modification of the transportation policy since the 1970's. prior to that, there was an accumulation of an incremental changes to a policy that was first established in the 1970's, under what we called the horseshoe plan. as you can imagine, as you well know, commissioners, the transportation policy and how we deliver transportation services is intrinsically tied to, or should be tied to, our student assignment policy. in that process that started more than a year-ago, that also

included a lot of discussions at community meetings, multiple stages of development of that policy, including leading up to the policy discussions, the board's consideration of the policy, and the implementation and rollout of the first year of cuts. the board policy itself had these principles. one was to support choice in student assignment as a tactic for creating diversity, for creating diversity, to provide it reasonable access to english learners and newcomer pathways. that is census tract integration process, within the city, which has the lowest 20%, the lowest quintile of student'' academic performance. to provide access from those parts of the city to k-8 schools and immersion schools.

and in isolated cases where their attendance area schools that cannot be reasonably access, without the yellow school bus, for residents of the attendance area, that was another consideration about access. another bowl was to support middle school feeder pattern, which was central to the board's incentive policy, and then to provide limited services to after-school programs if feasible and necessary to support the district's vision. so in february 2011, about a year ago, there was a three-year implementation plan, and that was based on community input, board policy, and budget. so three different sets of considerations that was developed to implement the first stage of reductions, the first of three faces of reductions to the general said transportation

services. in terms of communication, there were multilingual, frequently asked question documents and feedback forms. the feedback was received by the transportation working group, the staff team. as the commissioners may remember, there have been time to time conversations about budget constraints for transportation. we did a fairly thorough review of, exploration of the possibility of charging fees, which some districts have done. we have concluded that was not feasible, in essence, for these reasons. one is that state law prevents school districts -- not that we would want to do this anyway, but we are not permit it to collect fees from students who are low income. and in our situation, that would be more and more the focus of the clientele that would receive transportation services. there is also a cap on the fees

that the district can charge. if we charged fees within that cap, we would likely not cover the cost. there is also a significant administrative cost developing that fee service model, to develop and keep staffing, a structure to assign the fees, send out information about the fees, collect fees, etc. all of that said, we did not think that was a real solution to the budget issues with transportation. in august of 2011, the beginning of the school year, the first round of cuts to general education transportation services took effect. 11 schools lost general education transportation services. you see them listed. in addition to those 11 schools, for schools experienced a reduction in general education transportation services, and you

see those schools as well. compared with last year, 2010- 2011, where we had 44 school buses serving five middle schools, 3658 students, in the current school year we have 38 school buses serving 47 kilometers schools, five the schools, and slightly over 2700 students. we have already implemented a reduction of general education transportation services, and this is consistent with the plan that the board was briefed on, approved, and was part of the board policy discussion. in the current year, 2011-2012, this is a breakdown of the funding sources that support general education transportation. there is a state categorical at least for this year that is providing $2.4 million, and in

addition to that, between the consent decree -- sorry, but targeted block grant and the general funds, together, that represents about $640,000. the reason why they are put together, from the state's perspective, and the permissiveness perspective, that is a tier 3 funding and is flexible. so in some ways, in terms of policy calls, the state permits the funds but to be used for other purposes. dcyf field trips does not provide any additional school buses, but it does allow the school buses to provide it field. support to the elementary schools, and that is title 1. that is 2.4 million of us, and that language in there is describing the current provisions of no shot left

behind, which set -- no child left behind, which set aside 20% of tidal 1 funds to be used for transportation or supplemental services, tutoring. so the cost, $5.6 million, dividded by the 2700 riders,. this slide shows the projection for 2011-2012, the numbers i just went through, and also looking ahead to 2012, 2013, showing the staff's recommendations about the next round of reductions. and this, i should say, is an acceleration of the reductions compared to what we have contemplated previously. we were originally a originally a -- we were originally talking

about a three-year production, down to 25 school buses, which represented here shows we have reduces down to 38 buses in 2011-2012, but due to the increasing severity of the budget problem, we are recommending that we go to the 25 school buses next year. then that level would be maintained until further notice for the following year. that would be a reduction of $1.8 million next year. in terms of the specific schools that would be maintained, you see the list of schools. but each group, there is the policy guideline that is linked to the rationale for maintaining services to those schools.

with respect to the hour and a discussion that has already taken place tonight, i will not go through all of these are less anybody has questions. also in february, 2011, there were schools identified that would lose by the end of the third year that would not have general education transportation services, and these are they. i should note this list is subject to change. we're looking at the impact analysis. not that we are comfortable on all respects of continuing to recommend reductions, but we don't think there are surprises in terms of the impact, but we are still finalizing that analysis. we want to finish that over the next two weeks, and then roll out the information.