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tv   [untitled]    March 22, 2012 3:30pm-4:00pm PDT

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>> good afternoon and welcome to the thursday, march 22, 2012 meeting of the city and county of san francisco, city and school districts elect committee. my name is david campos, and i am the chair. we're joined by the committee members, board of supervisors president david chiu, sandra lee fewer and hydra mendoza and christina olague. the clerks are esther casco and we want to thank the members of the staff for the city and the
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school district for being here. we have the clerk on the side of the order of supervisors, gail, we want to thank her. madam secretary, do we have any announcements? >> none, supervisor. supervisor campos: i want to make a brief point about the importance of this committee. this is a committee that for many years has played a very important role in enhancing the partnership between city government and the school district. this is very important committee. we look forward to a lot of work being done and i want to think not only my colleagues on the board of supervisors but also the san francisco unified school district for their commitment to this partnership between the city and the school district.
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with that, madam secretary, you can call item one. >> it is file 111046. a hearing on the school improvement grant status as sponsored by supervisor cohen. supervisor campos: thank you. this was an item that was introduced by supervisor malia cohen but she could not be here with us today. i would like to begin by asking for a presentation from the san francisco unified school district on this important topic. this topic that has been a concern and interest to supervisor cohen but for many of us. i note that of the schools that are covered by that school improvement grant, a number of those schools are specifically in my district and i know there are other districts as well that are impacted by this initiative. with that, i will turn it over to the school district.
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>> thank you, supervisor campos and thank you, supervisors chiu and olague and commissioners fiord and mendoza. we will wait to see commissioner maufas. i am the executive director for the improvement grants for the unified school district. i started last year as a consultant at the beginning of the project. [no audio] that is an overview of where we are -- [inaudible] i will start by saying the thing -- before the grant came out of an effort prior to the school district [inaudible] it created a zone that
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[inaudible] with 15 schools in the different areas. these are some of the regions that were created out of commitment to social justice and equity and building from previous efforts at reform including star and dream and the empowerment zone dialogues and research on high performing schools and integration of the strategies implemented. as well as a personal commitment from the superintendent to be accountable for the transformation of the designated schools. besides forming this new empowerment zone -- the superintendent zone offices, the other resources of the central office were brought together around this issue. so in human capital team was created, community schools team
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because a major part of our effort was to create full- service community schools among the schools as well as those in the superintendent john. other external partners, the finance team is supporting it and all these teams are working together to focus and halving strategic meetings to look at the needs of the schools in these areas. -- two areas. and these are the schools from the superintendent's zone. in the bayview, bret harte elementary, carver, malcolm x, willie brown which was a school closure as part of the school improvement grant and marshall high school. in the mission, chavez, flynn, horace mann which is buena vista horace mann k-8 school. nine were funded by sig. all were funded with school
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improvement grant dollars and in the bayview, two schools are funded with sig dollars. the two zone offices that were created to support this town are led by dr. patricia gray and in the mission. i have the small staff of fiscal analyst and as secretary. there is a supervisor of professional learning in the mission and in the offices there are content and professional development specialists in the area of special ed and literacy and math. we also have attendance liaisons' and of the secretarial support. -- liaisons and office
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secretarial support. this is based on national research in the -- based on the chicago school study. there are five essential elements indicated in the study that need to be attended to. if you want to transform schools. creating a clear instructional batons and coherence, making sure they have a clear curriculum, focus on professional capacity, creating student center of learning and garments -- learning climates. parent and community ties and school leadership. it is clear from the researchers have to attend to multiple of these elements if you expect to have sustainable change. sig dictated a set of areas you could use the funds for. one of the funding areas were external partnerships for organizational reform and coherence of that would be large reform partners. partners like school innovation.
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sfs, pivot learning. external partnerships for professional development, literacy collaborative on balance literacy professional development, extended learning programs which are extended learning that can be accomplished through this school by summer session and after schools teaching -- after schoolteaching but also with collaboration with our nonprofit partners. coaching and academic intervention to make sure that we have a job embedded professional development for teachers and resources from improved instructional planning and delivery. that would be the reality of the classroom that makes it a productive place to learn. and community oriented schools. those are what we refer to as the buckets in which the funding is oriented. the requirements of sig aligned with the model as well.
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increasing school effectiveness and it did require us to replace principles or to have recently hired reform-minded principles in order for them to remain at the school so that was accomplished in the first year. it focuses on developing high- quality staff and providing job indebted professional development. also other reforms include use of data and that means using data every day, having teachers use data more effectively to figure out not only what kids are learning but what they're not learning and what to do to change instructions so they can learn. research based and evidence based strategies and continuous use of that data as well as the formation of great double teams and professional learning communities among teachers, administrators, and others, creating a strong core curriculum and responses to intervention. that is an educational term. if students do not learned one way, we cannot give up, we have to have escalating response to
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intervention to which the students who we have not yet reached. increase learning time in community oriented schools. that means extended year, day, and after-school and summer sessions and that includes family and community engagement but also the formation of a full-service community schools and a variety of community partnerships to optimize the use of community resources. the core curriculum focus of the grant is around english language arts, english language learners, both instruction and services for english language learners, math as a core program and intervention. approaches of what have been happening is the use of the computer hands 180 which helps to accelerate reading levels. the advance literacy and from work and the continuous use of data. the leading indicators that are required by sig is to be
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collected and to be reported upon including the number of minutes within the school year to show you have extended the learning time. student participation rate, dropout rate combusted attendance rate, -- drop out rate, student attendance rate. also dual enrollment courses with community colleges. discipline incidents, truancy, distribution of teachers by performance level. and teacher attendance rate. how are the funds invested? this slide may be hard to see. the largest area of the pie in terms of the budgeted investments for this year are for personal. the coaches we talked about, the academic acceleration teachers, equity release teachers, teachers in the building to provide any sort of an on-site substitute teacher who can step in so teachers can step out and
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do either professional learning or work with students in a more constructive way or be part of planning time or other parts of their professional growth. the next largest part is the green area, which is consultants and contractors. the reform partners, professional delmon partners, are -- -- development partners, and social service providers such as mental health pervert -- providers and related services. additionally, there is the next larger piece of the pie. apart in red is the instructional resources, the curriculum that have been purchased, instructional technologies, all the reality to make the classroom's reach places to learn. in addition, we have set aside in the blue which is another large piece of the pie, the
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lighter blue color is money that was because we had a short finding your last year, they did not rule out the funding until mid-year. the schools could not spend it so there was carried over. next -- the part of the money is in reserve. the smallest sliver is around travel and conferences and -- as well, i cannot readi it myself. there we go. i think that about covers it. those are the distribution of investments. i wanted to highlight some of the accomplishments from last year and this year. one accomplishment was the creation of the superintendent's zone but within that the creation, principal and teacher job descriptions which were used in the screening and hiring of principals and teachers and that reflected a stronger sense of the kinds of expertise and
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commitment we expect from teachers working with and hard to staff schools with large needs in turn around and transformation. sig requirement in four schools which were considered turnaround schools, we replaced 50% of the school staff. that involved screening all staff and determining which staff for a good fit and determining which might be a better fit elsewhere. to the credit of sfusd, it took a slightly different tactic from other school districts. instead of simply letting teachers go, council bans consulted -- counseled and consulted with teachers. creation of weekly common planning time among teachers and administration.
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what that means is teaching teachers to know how to use formative assessment and data more routinely to adjust their instruction day-by-day, week by week, and change their instructional plans and units according to the needs of students. using that results oriented cycle of inquiry at the zone and the district bubble as well. to look at data constantly about what is happening and what kind of supports are needed to sustain change. the strengthening of the core curriculum and expand job embedded professional development and that accomplished through the work was nationally recognized experts in the field and have focused attention on the needs of english-language learners, new curriculum and collaboration and beginning support with language pathways and working for student success. many of our teachers have
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commitments to bilingualism. many schools do need guidance in developing the language pathways that make effective use of the different languages of instruction at different times of the day. developing language in it is students primary language as well. implementing a balanced literacy framework. changing learning habits in the classroom through extensive classroom work. and a variety of partnerships and curriculum investments. we have developed a strong qadry of teachers at each of the schools, with language arts. and evidence and research base focus on high school strategies, effective advisory's, a through g courses
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adn wnd we are looking at on lie course. and greater collaboration between cbo and nonprofit staff and school staff to academic and opportunities for students and focus on 21st century teaching and learning through burning technology and embedding them in the overall transformation of the school. significantly with a focus was the creation and hiring of a new chord in opposition to work with school leadership to coordinate and optimize community partnerships and resources for students and families that address the whole child, the family, and the community through identification and referral to academic and nonacademic services and supports. i was asked to talk about challenges in -- and barriers. one of the largest challenges last year is week ollie received the funding from the state around november which meant we could only rolled the finding
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out mid year through december which is a difficult thing to do. we discovered at a conference we were among five of over 40 district funded by sig who got that late a start with their funding. many districts received funding at the beginning of the summer before school started. with that kind of start up time we could have had many more systems and instructions in place. starting mid year we were creating the office systems and rolling out the transformation to the school at the same time. another challenge is a different interpretation of sig. the state interpreted the legislation one way and put out an rfp. we responded with the use of after school programming and summer sessions for extended learning but the fed said we intended for you to use -- extended the school day or
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year. because they were concerned about that, our state department decided it needed to do a stronger job of monitoring compliance with the district so they did not renew our funding in a timely fashion. they did not renew it in the middle of summer but renewed it around december. because we had a lot of carry over because of the short funded year, it did not harmless but it did cause this to not be able to make certain investments early in the fall that we would have liked to have made before we got confirmation of our renewal. even with late starts and note -- labour knows there is no opportunity to carryover funds after september 2013. they expect us to spend it out even though they spent -- they started outus late. other challenges, complex
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communication with a midyear startup and the other issue of sig as messenger. it was a blessing and a curse. it was a confirmation to the school communities that they were among the persistently lowest performing schools. for many families, that was a shocking realization. it is unfortunate but sig got painted with that being the messenger. sort of blaming the messenger but folks are much more pleased to know what the situation is and how to move forward. and then change itself and widespread changes can be hard for everyone. even though a teacher may not be the best fit, they can be a beloved person by a family. it is a very difficult situation when the teacher that you love is not necessarily the teacher who is advancing your students or accelerating their work in the way it should be done. that is difficult and conflicting.