never had. it is nice to end my career. it has been an honor and privelege to serve this community. they had the wisdom to hire me. our work has restored my faith in the excellent opportunities that do exist. school boards can serve the students that are most under- served. the work has a long way to go, but if san francisco maintains its course, we will have no

problem in determining student success. the freedom fighters have stood with me to make sure students are a priority. it is not our fault. that is a state infrastructure problem, and in spite of those cuts, as a result, we are one of the few districts that is doign well, and we are having to make tough choices, but we are going to get there.

think about the fact that in 11 years we have had steady grow th. in the last three years, we have showed double digit growth. we had teachers and administrators who saw this as a civil rights issue. when we improve the conditions of underserved children, we serve all children, so i want to commend the work. there is a lot of work to be done, but i leave knowing the

work will continue because we have quality people. the city, the partnership we have developed is like no other place in america. where else can we have all the other departments work hand-in-hand. where else do they go otut there and believe in children? i want to commend the community for standing up for social justice, so we have a lot of

work ahead of us, and i may be a lame duck but not a dead duck. negotiating with partners, hoping we eliminate as many layoffs as possible, because this is one community, and we need to stand up for one another. it has been an honor and a privilege. thank you very much. [applause]

>> hi, i am the president of the school board. today is a sad day for our school district to know superintendent garcia will be leaving after the school year. it seems like we just started this journey. what we have seen is positive growth in students. we have increased access to rigorous curriculum. this includes requriement for high school graduation, so we

could say we have much to celebrate, but the board wants to continue the positive direction. there is no one single school board member that feels we are finished. we want to continue to support our goals and initiatives, so we made a decision to invite one person who has played a centra l role in achievements, so we are going to invite this person to take it to the next level, and that is no toher than oru

current deputy superintendent. [applause] >> thank you. [speaknig spanish] ladies and gentlemen, i just shared a few words with you in spanish because entering schools, i only spoke spanish. i cannot tell you how proud my parents would be that we have

focused on the path to be successful so they will be superintendents and doctors and lawyers. this is a labor of love, and i can tell you san francisco is unlike anyplace else where we believe in social justidce, and that does not happen without the leadership you see. most of all, our students, so i look forward to wroking to continue the work we started. i look forward to pushing

ourselves to provide a better opportunity. my partner, my wife who is with me today, thank you for being here. i would have had my children here, but they are in school, but i want to thank the board for this trust you have placed i n me, so thank you very much, and i look forward to this next chapter. [applause] >> i want to bring up our mayor

, who is a strong supporter o f f public schools. we are grateful to have him as co-chair, so our strong partner in public schools, mayor ed lee. [applause] >> thank you. i don't know how someone my age can figure out an escape so easily, but i want to congratulate you, and on behalf of city government, thank you so much for sacrificing. these days you haeear about heas

of educational institutions in transition, and there are a lot of people who regard education as academic. i get a sense carlos was a different person, and he was always different. the first thing i noticed when i first met him, he was not speaking as an academic. he is speaking about kids and how we want them to succeed. he has championed programs and relationships, whether in the

school board or toher programs, championed programs that are aimed at making kids first in our lives. that is what i liked most. it should not be a surprise he is leaving at a time there has been marked improvement. whether it is championing programs, these are programs i learned about, and realizing they are aimed at achievement gaps, and they have made great stridesw while the other

children were enjoying the benefits, what has made it different is the special relationship with our city, one i will make sure continuses to happen. we are never satisfied with the status quo. if we were,w e would have gone baack to when the mayor was suffering. we care for our kids, not just in precious hours of education, but success has to do with

education. that is why it has never been about a rainy day fund. we can support what goes on in and around the schools. we are always experiencing the cuts at the federal and state level, and we are always challenged, and it is not only those cuts beginning in kindergarten. how many express that it is about continuing all the way to college, and then to have carlos

working with the dept of public health, or as a member of my cabinet, so many other departments engaged in the need for our kids to be successful in and out of the classroom. it is those i believe to be mroe successful, and i know richard is going to inherit this as we meet new challenges. we are going to approach them in an enthusiastic way, that is

the best way we honor your leadership, to carrry those out in more increased vigor. we have been funding a ltot of work and going about the business of solidifying a relationship that is created, so thank you for putting kids first. thank you for expressing your love for 37 years, not only for institutions but for people when you can express your love, it gets us into saying i want to

join because parents fee ll it, because school board members feel it. that is what gets me up every day, if i can get kids knowing education is 24/7. everything else has to be successful. we have to have academic foundations. if we can get all the others successful, we can figure out other revenue streams so we are not worried about pinnk slips. we are not going to lay off

teachers. this is where we have to go. thank you for the progress. i look forward to this. thank you very much. [applause] >> we know you want to spend mroe time with family, but i think you want to travel the world. we are going to miss you. we made the decision, there were a lot of people who want to make comments. today is about us moving

forward. we have that partnership. we have strong leadership, and i trust we will continue positive growth. weas of now, i give you an o pportunity to speak to us individually. thank you very much. [applause]

>> there has been an acknowledgement of the special places around san francisco bay. well, there is something sort of innate in human beings, i think, that tend to recognize a good spot when you see it, a spot that takes your breath away. this is one of them. >> an icon of the new deal. >> we stood here a week ago and we heard all of these dignitaries talk about the symbol that coit tower is for san francisco. it's interesting for those of us in the pioneer park project is trying to make the point that not only the tower, not only this man-built edifice here is a symbol of the city but also the green space on which it sits and the hill to

which is rests. to understand them, you have to understand the topography of san francisco. early days of the city, the city grows up in what is the financial district on the edge of chinatown. everything they rely on for existence is the golden gate. it's of massive importance to the people what comes in and out of san francisco bay. they can't see it where they are. they get the idea to build a giant wooden structure. the years that it was up here, it gave the name telegraph hill. it survived although the structure is long gone. come to the 1870's and the city has growed up remarkably. it's fueled with money from the nevada silver mines and the gold rush. it's trying to be the paris of the west. now the beach is the suburbs, the we will their people lived on the bottom and the poorest people lived on the top because it was very hard getting to the top of telegraph hill.

it was mostly lean-to sharks and bits of pieces of houses up here in the beginning. and a group of 20 businessmen decided that it would be better if the top of the hill remained for the public. so they put their money down and they bought four lots at the top of the hill and they gave them to the city. lily hitchcock coit died without leaving a specific use for her bequest. she left a third of her estate for the beautify indication of the city. arthur brown, noted architect in the city, wanted for a while to build a tower. he had become very interested in persian towers. it was the 1930's. it was all about machinery and sort of this amazing architecture, very powerful architecture. he convinced the rec park commission that building a tower in her memory would be the thing to do with her money. >> it was going to be a

wonderful observation place because it was one of the highest hills in the city anywhere and that that was the whole reason why it was built that high and had the elevator access immediately from the beginning as part of its features. >> my fear's studio was just down the street steps. we were in a very small apartment and that was our backyard. when they were preparing the site for the coit tower, there was always a lot of harping and griping about how awful progress was and why they would choose this beautiful pristine area to do them in was a big question. as soon as the coit tower was getting finished and someone put in the idea that it should be used for art, then, all of a sudden, he was excited about the coit tower.

it became almost like a daily destination for him to enjoy the atmosphere no matter what the politics, that wasn't the point. as long as they fit in and did their work and did their own creative expression, that was all that was required. they turned in their drawings. the drawings were accepted. if they snuck something in, well, there weren't going to be any stoolies around. they made such careful little diagrams of every possible little thing about it as though that was just so important and that they were just the big frog. and, actually, no one ever felt that way about them and they weren't considered something like that. in later life when people would approach me and say, well, what

did you know about it? we were with him almost every day and his children, we grew up together and we didn't think of him as a commie and also the same with the other. he was just a family man doing normal things. no one thought anything of what he was doing. some of them were much more highly trained. it shows, in my estimation, in the murals. this was one of the masterpieces. families at home was a lot more close to the life that i can remember that we lived. murals on the upper floors like the children playing on the swings and i think the little deer in the forest where you could come and see them in the

woods and the sports that were always available, i think it did express the best part of our lives. things that weren't costing money to do, you would go to a picnic on the beach or you would do something in the woods. my favorite of all is in the staircase. it's almost a miracle masterpiece how he could manage to not only fit everyone, of course, a lot of them i recognized from my childhood -- it's how he juxtaposed and managed to kind of climb up that stairway on either side very much like you are walking down a street. it was incredible to do that and to me, that is what depicted the life of the times in san francisco. i even like the ones that show the industrial areas, the once with the workers showing them

in the cannery and i can remember going in there and seeing these women with the caps, with the nets shuffling these cans through. my parents had a ranch in santa rosa and we went there all summer. i could see these people leaning over and checking. it looked exactly like the beautiful things about the ranch. i think he was pretty much in the never look back philosophy about the coit. i don't think he ever went to visit again after we moved from telegraph hill, which was only five or six years later. i don't think he ever had to see it when the initials are scratched into everything and people had literally destroyed the lower half of everything. >> well, in my view, the tower had been pretty much neglected

from the 1930's up until the 1980's. it wasn't until then that really enough people began to be alarmed about the condition of the murals, the tower was leaking. some of the murals suffered wear damage. we really began to organize getting funding through the arts commission and various other sources to restore the murals. they don't have that connection or thread or maintain that connection to your history and your past, what do you have? that's one of the major elements of what makes quality of life in san francisco so incredible. when people ask me, and they ask me all the time, how do you get to coit tower, i say you walk. that's the best way to experience the gradual elevation coming up above the hustle and bustle of the city and finding