in a brand-new building is disheartening to me. and i hope that we can all come together to figure out a way to make sure that that building gets built. thank you. (applause) >> thank you very much. if i may just add a couple comments. i know we have a very complicated item on the agenda. you know, in a prior life i actually represented the san francisco unified school district as a lawyer on the consent decree case. one thing to remember is that san francisco unified was actually under court order for more than two decades because of discrimination. and a federal court order, you know, overseeing the operations of the school district could not fully address all of the issues that we're talking about . and during that time each year the school district was getting about $40 million from the state to address those issues. so, just to provide some context. so, my suggestion would be to

the folks, the supervisors who requested this hearing and to many of the people that i hear, i do think it would be helpful so that we don't have a situation where we talk about this and nothing happens, to set up a small working group to come up with some suggestions in terms of moving forward whether it's the creation of a task force, whether it is, you know, something larger, because the reality is that we're talking about public education. but there are so many different issues that are a part of this that this would be a disservice to the community if we only, you know, tackled that issue. and i think that what commissioner mendoza said is absolutely true, that the school district is not going to be able to deal with this on its own. there are so many different issues that have to be a part of the discussion. so, my suggestion would be that, that it may be through supervisor olague's office that we form a small working group of folks, and then come back, you know, to the committee,

that we continue this item to the call of the chair so that we have an ongoing discussion. but i think it's really important to the members of the community who took the time to be here, to make sure that we don't drop this ball, if you will, and that we do -- that we continue to move this forward. i do want to acknowledge the deputy superintendent to see if he wants to add anything to this presentation. you know, it's not easy for a school district to have these issues discussed in this way, and i appreciate the fact that we are having the discussion and that the school district is a part of that. >> thank you. and we won't shy away from the dialogue. it is a courageous one, an important one we need to have. our strategic plan is built on. we did our leadership commission, [speaker not understood] to make sure we address this issue, that we narrow the gap. you have our pledge, our

commitment to be a part of any city-wide collaboration. we know we're a key -- we share responsibility on this topic and you can count on us to be here. we had lots of our senior district leaders here listening, learning, taking notes, and we need to do more of that. so, thank you for the opportunity for this first sharing of information. we were kind of talking here about want to make sure we put together a portfolio of a lot of kind of thorough numbers and statistics that folks have begun to question and will continue to do more of that. but thank you for the opportunity today. >> thank you. again, so, thank you again to the school district dcyf, coleman advocate, members of the community who have been working on these issues, thank you to all the agencies. so, colleagues, can we have a motion to continue this to the call of the chair, and we will follow-up. so, we have a motion by supervisor olague, seconded by commissioner maufus. if we can take that without objection. and, again, we will continue to

monitor the situation and we will come back. and, so, i urge this working group to get together sooner rather than later so that we can continue to move this forward. thank you again. madam secretary, can you call item number 3? >> thank you, supervisor. it is file number 120 8 92, and it is the memorandum of understanding between the sfusd and the san francisco police department. >> this is an item that i introduced at the board of supervisors at the request of commissioner maufus. it is a very important item and one that is actually complicated and i want to thank also the youth commission and so many of the youth that have been working on these issues. i'll be honest. you know, it's more of an open question to my colleagues, to the school district, and to the community as well. this is a very complicated issue and one that i think

deserves and requires adequate discussion. i do wonder the extent to which we can completely discuss and fully analyze the issues that are implicated given the fact that we're talking about, you know, being 6:10. and, so, i'm not sure how colleagues want to proceed, if we want to continue with this hearing and finalize the discussion tonight, or whether or not -- i also know that people came out to be here to testify and people, of course, have every right to do that. so, i'm not sure -- i want it hear from my colleagues what their thinking is. * want to hear commissioner maufus. >> thank you, co-chair campos. i had a visual challenge today. i can see there still remains quite a few people in the chamber, and i know they are waiting for this topic. what i had absolutely hoped for

is really, as we had the topics discussed earlier, a long and thoughtful and full and robust conversation about this issue. for me it is not only personal, it really is also a part of the work that i do as a school board member based on my own history and the history of so many children and families that i know in sfusd. and, so, it is never off of my radar. it's sometimes moved to a back burner, but again, it is never off of my radar. and, so, i am number one, happy that it is here. but also want to recognize the time and that we may be limited, incredibly limited in what we can get done today. so, i absolutely want to respect those who have stayed

and have come out, but i also understand that i don't think we can have a long conversation about this tonight. and if it is at all possible -- and i do truly, truly beg for the understanding of those community members who have stayed, that this be perhaps if at all possible the only agenda item at our next committee meeting so we don't have -- run into this issue. and we know that we are going to be discussing this fully. and we give people an opportunity to come back and plan to be here for this item only. that's my request to the chair. i certainly want to hear from other members and i know staff well. >> sure. commissioner, i do have a question. and maybe this is a question to the school district. in terms of the timing of this document, the m-o-u, is there a time sensitive need that

requires us to move or take up the item at a certain time? >> no. kevin, superintendent of community family support department. i have a suggestion. my presentation was really about talking about how we're in this process right now and who i've gotten feedback from. but that we're still gathering feedback and input on an expired m-o-u. so, i welcome the comments. but that's really more importantly why i'm here tonight is to hear what people have to say because i've been meeting with some groups, but i still need to -- we need to collect some more input on the expired m-o-u because the way that the current m-o-u that is expired is written, i predict that probably 90% of it will be rewritten. that's how much of that document needs to be revised. >> my suggestion, then, would be why don't we begin by taking public comment from the youth that are here, everyone that's here. and, so, why don't we i'll read

some of the comment cards, the speaker cards. laura [speaker not understood]. leah white, violent vazquez, tina [speaker not understood], [speaker not understood]. kevin bogus, and then anyone who would like to speak, just come on up. you each have two minutes. good evening, members of the board of supervisors, board of education. my name is leah white. i am the program manager for

bernal hoods neighborhood center, [speaker not understood], this is an action based justice program which engages and empowers young people to be accountable and take part in creating aid more equitable future for themselves and their generations to come. as i know everyone would agree, our youth education and the environment is very important. as a world class city i would hope that we also make it a priority of this in developing world class citizens. the past three years bernal heights neighborhood center has [speaker not understood] addressing the issues that we encounter during [speaker not understood]. sfpd's implementation of the [speaker not understood] program. sfpd is a former model of community policing has been creating more problems than they were helping. so, we decided to collaborate with our fellow organizers at ymac united players, boys and girls club as well as the officers and captain at ingleside police station to encourage dialogue between all

parties. also, members of the board of supervisors, david campos and avalos have participated. this has allowed us to hash out issues and develop solutions and build relationships we would not otherwise be able to do without the [speaker not understood]. our last summit was called justice because we are all in agreement the issues are coming from us. i want to introduce two of my organizers that helped in putting these sum its together and what kind of work they've done. * summits. hello. my name is violet vazquez. i am from the bernal heights neighborhood center movement program and also a representative for united players at balboa high school. firstful allied like to begin with thank you for going to the process of creating the m-o-u. myself and my piers at the movement program have gone and educated -- been educated on

the m-o-u. . i feel there are a few missing details such as the school resource officers being involved at the school community by helping put together programs on campus and/or being involved as a regular on the school campus. * i feel the youth know the officer more as a person it would create a bigger sense of security and it's the goal of mutual respect is to be met, i feel that the youth should see that the officer is putting in some initiative to really get to know the person and to make them feel protected instead of feeling being profiled or judged. the person i have gotten to know a few officers as people and i have a higher respect for them because i know them and i understand that they are people and they're only here to do their job. that's important for all youth to understand and to youth.

another issue i have with the m-o-u is youth should be involved in the training of officers that will interact with us on campus. this way we can put in our own input to make their job easier on campus and also our life easier at school. thank you. good evening. i am tina federaka. i am a part of the movement program at bernal heights neighborhood center. i'm a youth leader at tower and also ymac which is based at coleman. i read through the draft of the m-o-u. i agreed on most of the policies drafted down in this m-o-u, but so that it is not necessary to have one officer assigned to more than one school site. and if this officer is assigned to a school site, the officer should have a good relationship with the community, the school, and especially the students.

i myself am not really comfortable with the cops being around the community i am in because all of the profiling of cops. but i was a part of this youth summit that had communications and interactions with the officers from the ingleside station. officer bode and officer silrob. i grew a community relationship with these guys. it's the fact they took the time to spend time with us and build a community relationship made me change my heart towards the way i look at cops. because at the end of the day, i realized that these officers are still human beings. officers in general should have training that involves themselves contribute a youth -- to contribute themselves to a youth program organization, especially with a youth program or organization that are usually more -- that are using [speaker not understood] by cops.

and [speaker not understood] in the city of san francisco to have more community relationship with youth of san francisco. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker. (applause) good evening, supervisors. [speaker not understood] and youth commission and the rest of the community. my name is [speaker not understood]. i'm the director of community engagement at bernal heights neighborhood center. as part of the efforts to bridge the communication gap between the community members, youth and police, we in district 9 held a youth summit with other cbos. we just talked about t. we can only create safe schools for the long term if students, educators and community based organizations play a key role in identifying and creating implementing strategies to deal with safety concerns and causes of crime. students, educators and cbos know their schools and communities better than anyone else. they spend their time in them and have created relationships that give them access to information to know how to deal with safety concerns. we all know enforcement alone

will never address crime at its roots. we must consider the community-based organizations to support our youth. they are as important as maintaining safe schools and communities just as sfpd. so, as you continue to hear the rest of our youth today, we look to you to address the concerns and understanding that youth input and participation is vital to providing input and feedback to ongoing police and teacher training, providing sufficient resources to our schools, measuring and defining safe schools, on a personal note i attended balboa high school many years ago. and, you know, looking at the bars and the gates, i feel like the school is a prison. by bringing police officers to a school like balboa, we run the risk of making it feel even more like a prison. we have to remember our schools are not prisons. police should be in schools to allow kids to feel safe. this can only come from building great relationships with our youth and to do that we need to ensure there is ongoing proper training for police officers and educators

and our resource to do all that is expected of them. so, the question are how will we measure the students are feeling safe, not threatened? it's not about the numbers of youth being arrested, but numbers of youth that feel safe and feel free to pursue learning. the number of youth that are referred to appropriate programs from after school job training to family services. so, how will youth, educators and parent community educators be involved in the process and evaluation? everyone needs to have a say in the process in order for it to work. if this is done right we have an opportunity to further mend the relationship continues and the police and to create [speaker not understood]. i ask all of you to join us in building a safe and healthy community with shared responsibility, one which acknowledges that police are partction of the equation and ensuring that youth are part of the solution. we're youth educators and police to act, create mutual [speaker not understood] rather than. thank you, i'm sorry, thank you. >> thank you. i'm sorry. (applause)

* part. good evening, my name is laura, i'm the statewide education rights director for council law center and we appreciate the time actually the superintendent, special superintendent has taken in pulling input from the community on this important m-o-u. at public council we have represented and provided support to thousands of students who have been pushed out of school and into the school to prison pipeline. if we want to really increase our graduation rates as we talked about this evening, in particular for our students who are most vulnerable and our students of color, school discipline must be handled by our schools first and foremost and not our police officers. the research shows very clearly that even one contact with the juvenile justice system quadruples a young person's chance of dropping out. so, this m-o-u really must focus on who we are referring to law enforcement, for what reasons we're doing it and utilize alternatives to arrest and ensure ongoing accountability along the lines of what these young people talked about.

where the community knows what the data is, what the police are doing on our campuses and how they are interacting with our schools. and that the board is also involved in that process of understanding the role of police officers and whether they are, in fact, improving our school climate, including relationships that help foster safe communities and one that is graduating our most vulnerable students. so, r we look forward to continuing to persist during the process and we hope you will look at some of the research based and evidence based alternatives that are out there that are really showing progress in other parts around the nation for both ensuring high graduation rates and also school safe. thank you. >> thank you. (applause) >> next speaker. hello, my name is [speaker not understood]. i'm the program associated for homey's organization for empowering youth. i want to thank the committee for allowing me to speak for a moment. i run a couple workshops, a few workshops in fact both on-site at sfusd. when we brought to the attention the youth there was

an opportunity to speak about a m.u. -- m-o-u and the police department how they were treated they emphatically wanted to speak up and demonstrate and present their opinion. i'm here to present some of the youth. to give you an exam polynomial of how the youth feel and how the relationship between the youth and the police s we normally have between 15 and 25 youth at our police. many of them do not want to show up because they do not feel comfortable coming here to speak up and perhaps maybe criticize the police. so, here are some of our members. hello, my name is [speaker not understood]. we would like to share a personal story from our members. one day she was arrested in school by the cops in the classroom. she said, i hate it because the next day when i went back to school, everyone looked at me, looked at me funny and the teachers treated me different and said stuff, i will call your probation officer if you get in trouble. thank you. i now would like to present

[speaker not understood]. hi, my name is jocelyn ruiz and i'm a member. i want to share some thoughts to you guys from some of the members on how this should be done. we think that on an arrest, we wait until the class is finished because it can cause [speaker not understood]. a counselor should not be notified prior to the arrest and a school ally should pull student from a class not a police officer. the kid should remain private and confidential so youth will not be humiliated at school. when the youth is being arrested he or she should get his miranda rights read and be charged like any other arrest. no excessive force unless absolutely necessary. police should be respectful even when they get arrested. some experience cops who humiliated them. the police are there to protect us and they shouldn't make us feel intimidated. thank you. >> thank you very much. (applause)

>> next speaker. anyone else? thank you. my name is kevin bogus. i work with coleman advocates for children and youth. i work with youth at balboa high school, third and high school, june john high school and thurgood marshall academic high school. and i'm here representing our youth who couldn't be here today. they had strong feelings about the m-o-u process. and just to ensure that it's really respectful to students and the way that it's created and developed. so, i'm really glad to hear them speak about extending the process for more community groups to get them involved and make sure we do more than what was in the previous m-o-u to make sure students rights are respected where students won't be arrested in the classroom, where the police department is actually submitting data and reports about what they are doing in the school so that the community can be aware of it

and make sure that things are happening in a way that we kind of envision them. we work with a lot of students who had issues with the police, being harassed by the police in their neighborhood to being profiled. it makes them it important for police to be at school to provide safety. it's really about how do we bridge that gap and make sure the police are there to serve and work with the students rather than there to make sure that people fall in line. our youth want to see clear outlines of the role of the police officer at school sites. and the thing that they will not get involved with like school discipline, someone breaking the school policies, as well as students having a say in which officers actually get to be at their schools. a lot of our youth were concerned with the fact that when police come to their school, they carry pistols and guns, which doesn't promote safety at campus. we would hope that police on campus wouldn't feel the need to shoot any student. >> thank you. (applause) >> commissioner fewer, did you have a question?

>> no. i was going to comment. that's okay. >> i know we have some members of the youth commission here. good afternoon, commissioners and supervisors. my name is paul, i am a member of the san francisco youth commission. i'm also a resident of district 9. and the youth commission is actually really optimistic about this memorandum of understanding. we feel that it is something that mainly fosters great relationships, mutual respect between the police department as well as students. but at the same time we really want to set a very clear expectation for the san francisco police department and also the unified school district, and that being that in the design, the practice and the implementation of this memorandum we really want to make sure that the students are not treated as subjects, but instead as active stakeholders in this process. we feel like students' input should be involved in the design, but also take into consideration things like students' involvement in the selection of [speaker not understood], also evaluation of [speaker not understood], that is really important.

and as well as what was said earlier, to the extent you have student input, what that does is it affirms and values that students have a voice na process and their opinions are valued as equal to the people who are behind designing these policies. we hope you can send that message to the students and you can support the involvement and their investment and that you actively work to seek their legitimate input in the designing of this program. thank you. >> thank you, commissioner. thank you for your service. next speaker. if i may please have y'all undivided attention. good afternoon, honorable supervisors and members of the board of ebbv cakes. my name is angel [speaker not understood]. i'm a san francisco college student majoring in political science. i am the youth commissioner for district 10 appointed by supervisor malea cohen. i spent time in group homes and two consecutive years in juvenile hall. since then i've come a long way and thankful for being part of

the youth commission in addition to working with the juvenile department. we heard from the youth and what they expect from the m-o-u. we share similar concerns to how you'ring out feel. we believe that including youth in the selection and valuation of the sro [speaker not understood] between our youth and officers. we, too, believe that adequate training for our police on how to deal with the city's young people will ensure safety between the police and our youth. in our historical joint hearing between the police and the youth commission on march 7th of this year we had three simple recommendations that were agreed to by the chief. one of which included an updated m-o-u and i have three here for you so you guys can see. one of which included an updated m-o-u in addition to a widespread pamphlet and training for officers when encountering youth on the streets. we still don't know what

[speaker not understood] on two of those recommendations. however, today fortunately for the youth the m-o-u was the topic on today's agenda. and the youth commission strongly urges you to consider all the recommendations and concerns brought to you by the great city's young people. thank you all for your time. >> thank you very much, commissioner. (applause) >> and thank you for continuing to serve as an example to the young people in the city. is there any other member of the public who would like to speak? seeing none, public comment is closed. i do think it is important for -- i want to appreciate the school district for taking the time to hear from youth in the community and to get input on the m-o-u. i think it would be helpful at some point to also hear from the police department. i know that they're not here right now. oh, okay, i'm sorry. please come forward. -- please, captain, come forward.

thank you, sir, for waiting. >> it is my pleasure. good evening and good evening to everyone in the audience. the police department welcomes, obviously, the input on the m-o-u from the juvenile commission. as the last commissioner said, there were three points that were brought up i believe it was a march meeting of this year. first being the m-o-u which we still have to finish, but we encourage the youth participation in drafting that m-o-u. the second is the know your rights pamphlet. and i met with superintendent guerrero if at this meeting. the know your rights pamphlet is in my office. ly have them delivered to the school district and they will be distributed. we have prepared those in english, spanish, and chinese

language. so, we have three versions. and finally the third issue was the training. members of the san francisco police department are undergoing constant training. recently we drafted a brand-new juvenile general order that you're probably familiar with, 7.01. we have been undertaking department wide training in that general order. and that general order, for everybody's information, gives juvenile detainees even more rights in san francisco than they're guaranteed by the penal code. it was an exhaustive negotiation to develop that order. we developed it with the asian law caucus and the office of citizens complaints. it is a comprehensive order and all of our officers are being trained in that. with respect to the s-r-os, we do