so, that's one fabulous thing about this graduation requirement. the other thing is it gives them opportunity. quite frankly, d or better gives them no opportunity. a d or better says will not get them into college. a d or better. and quite frankly it's even cs and d at some colleges. so, d or better is actually not an adequate, i think, level to say that we have graduated with all fairness, have graduated our students prepared to college or a job because d or better is not prepared for college or a job. so, as a board i think if we're going to be looking at this graduation requirement should it be c or better or d or better. we're giving the numbers for both to see how much work we have to do. i think you can see on the chart even with the d or better we have much, much more work to do. this talks with black migration, african-american migration, outmigration. this is a huge factor.

you are absolutely right about education, african americans cannot come back to san francisco if they don't feel confident that we can educate their students at a very high level. their children at a very high level to give them opportunity. so, education is a key part of this outmigration. and i think we should have a stronger partnership, really between the human rights commission that is working on this and our educational system because if you look at outmigration, we also have a part in that because when you look at these scores, anyone -- any middle class african-american person would look at these scores and say, i'm not moving back here because there's nowhere i can educate my children. and that is a very real reality. so, just to get back to also what our deputy superintendent is saying, we are trying to upset the culture that we've had for many decades in the school district. as you know it is like turning

the titanic around. it is hard to change a culture. it is hard to change an infrastructure that is very, very traditional in this district. and, so, i think that these small gains that we've made -- and i think we have made some gains but i just want to say when you look at the overall achievement gap, i think that's what we need to really look at. we have a very long way to go. i say this, though, i'm hoping that community groups will hold us accountable to it and that we are not seen as an isolated bureaucracy that nobody can come and say, you should be doing better. i think that everybody should be saying to us, you should be doing better, and you can do better. we are trying to do better. our budget has been cut 20% in the last couple of years. and if prop 33 -- we are looking at big early budget cuts. i think it is correct to say that we are proud that we have no gains, even though we have the budget cuts. but make no mistake, we have a

huge achievement gap. and if we are to ready our students prepared for the 21st century, they must be properly educated and be able to survive in the 21st century and be viable participants in the 21st century. and i think we have depended heavily on the generosity of the people of san francisco, particularly at city hall. i mean, prop h has been huge, dcyf supports given us. i think the one thing, what is sad about the san francisco family is we understand it takes a village to raise a child here, and definitely san franciscanses have embraced that. i think you will see coming up that we are in a panic mode also about -- we know that we can track certain students and how we can get them ready, but the 2014-2015 class is in need of crisis mode, i think, because these students are

juniors now. the acdc deputy superintendent mentioned sequentially gets much more rigorous. we could be looking at much larger numbers come senior year. this is daunting, it is extremely daunting. it is the thing i think that keeps all of us that work in education up at night. we may be coming to you for support again. this is a difficult task ahead of us, but don't think we take it lightly. all of us in education take it very heavily. we weigh all the factors. we are trying our best. i have been an advocate for 8 years at the school district. and now that i'm on the school board i have been very humbled by the work our district is doing, how hard everybody works. but i am glad you called this for a hearing. i think the conversation needs to continue. it needs to be ramped up. and everybody needs to hold us accountable. >> colleagues, just to remind you, i know coleman at some point is -- [multiple voices]

>> okay. supervisor cohen, did you want to add anything before coleman presents? >> thank you. thank you, mr. chair. i would like to ask a couple more questions to the district. if i missed it in a slide, maybe you can direct me to the slide. i want to know what the drop out rate has been the last 10 years and how have we increased our decreased. i'm looking for the drop -out rate the last 10 years. >> 10 years of longitudinal data? anybody want to speak to that? >> if there is somebody in the district that would have that information, we have an analyst that could crunch that. >> we can forward that to you, the 10-year trend data. >> do you have the last two years with you today? >> today we have the last two years.

we don't have it here today, but certainly that could easily be pulled up for you. >> okay. so, a little bit -- my portion -- the reason why i requested this hearing was there was a report that came out sometime ago about the high school drop out rates for marshall high school and burton high school. i want to ask questions specifically to these two high schools. how do they compare with other high schools in the city? i'm just talking about the specific drop-out rate. >> there are certain variability. we could look at the overall rate, but one thing we are of course interested in is how subgroup performance is. that also varies. >> when you say the subgroup, you mean broken out by ethnicity? >> correct. we have high schools that have greater graduation rates for african-american students, latino students, samoan students. we do have those examples where schools are getting traction.

>> can you share that with us today? that is exactly what i'm trying to extrapolate in the hearing. >> i don't have a high school by high school rate with me today. i don't know if any of our staff may have that today either. >> looks like you have some homework. >> looks like you gave us some homework. >> okay, everyone, i'm going to hold you all accountable. my next question is -- and this may be more of a philosophical one. i'm just looking to get some insight. what does the san francisco unified school district believe are some of the causes of this high drop-out rate? you mentioned outmigration. what are some of the other causes? what are the symptoms, why are we so sick? >> well, clearly the american high school drop-outrate -- we don't have a monopoly on that. * it's the case in most urban centers and even rural districts. so, the factors, they are complex. certainly we have our students during the school day, but it's hard to not make some

correlations to sort of the other social economic factors, community factors, you know, people were saying sort of the slogan it takes a village. it takes a healthy village. some of the things we notice makes a difference is when we help students and families sort of meet some of those challenges. so, things that have proven successful in getting kids to better rates of proficiency, making mental health services available, making sure there is academic and enrichment opportunities in the summer and after school, making sure they are involved with a mentor, making sure that they're involved in advisories with a principal or staff member they can relate to, making sure that every single one of these students has an individualized success plan that somebody is monitoring and checking in with them. you see pockets of success where we have some commendable improvement happening with subgroups of kids. and, so, how do we expand on those. >> okay. so, you said you've been on the team eight weeks? >> yes, ma'am. >> is there anyone here who has

a little more institutional knowledge that might be able to help me out here? what i'm really trying to understand is that like this gap existed even when we were in flesh times when the economy was doing well and we had money and there was surplus, yet there still was this gap that still existed. and i know i actually -- this is the first time i met you. i'm a product of a public school. every bit of my education has been k through 12 has been through public school. so, i'm trying to figure out at what point -- what point do we start to lose this battle? that's why i asked for the longitudinal study the last ten years. it would be great if we could go even further back than that. i'm going to -- mr. arm entrout, i want to ask you to follow-up to get the answers to the questions that i propose here today. this last question really is -- i'm just looking for a better understanding, i've got?

some concrete solutionses that the unified school district is going to be implementing to help combat these high drop-out rates. * i've heard some solutions today about the partnerships that you've passed, that -- partnerships with the city and the cbos and i've heard about a through g requirementses. i agree like many other members, a through g should be the standard no matter what. i do remember when i came through, i graduated -- there were some students who did finish with a through g and some didn't but still were able to graduate. so, my original question is what are we doing about this? we'retion calling a hearing, sounding the alarm. look at all the people in the chamber. we care about this. this is important. this is not only important to the african-american community, but to the entire health and wellness of san francisco and i believe we compete as a world and global leader. so, how do we fix this?

>> well, there are definitely some concrete examples of past efforts or current efforts that actually produced results. so, if you think of the consent decree, for example, and what it was able to bring to some of our racially isolated schools in the way of some strategies. so, the additional resources, a longer school day, additional staffing, some of the same elements you see in our school improvement grant effort which have actually surpassed a lot of rates of improvement with most of our schools, having those extra intervention teachers who can be there to ensure all students in the class are keeping up with the grade level standard as an example. and one concerted effort is working closely with after-school providers so that there are shared academic goals. so, yes, they do an enrichment, but here is an opportunity also to catch up on some reading tutoring, math tutoring, et cetera. those are other examples. in past initiatives, there's also been the addition of the

seventh period in some of our schools. that allowed students to also catch up on some of their course work. that's another example. >> thank you. you did a really good job of trying to answer these questions. thank you. okay. mr. chair, we are ready for coleman. >> thank you. why don't we continue. i know my understanding is there are a couple of presentations. there's one by coleman, there is also dcyf. so, if we can follow-up with the next presentation. i don't know if coleman advocates or dcyf -- let's go with dcyf. >> good afternoon, my name is [speaker not understood] department of children youth and families.

thanks for having me here to respond to some of the questions you have today. in today's presentation you will see our dcyf investment strategies and out of school time, youth leadership and department development support education out dumb comeses. and i'll give you examples of acat this timetionv we've funded so far that helps to bridge the gap. -- activities. what has made us unique in the current and upcoming cycle is we have made education our focus for three years and the upcoming three-year. ultimately want to make sure our students are ready to learn and are succeeding in school. and more importantly we cannot be doing these without addressing some of the preconditions. as supervisor cohen asked earlier how can we fixed this, there is education effort. we must address student needs, wellness and also safety. our stretch goals are to make sure that every child is ready

to learn. every child is ready when they are beginning high school, every youth enters high school ready to succeed and when they are finished with high school they're ready to transition to adulthood. you'll see each of our strategies are broken out to target early care education, kindergarten through 8, out of school time and work with students who are in ninth grade through 12th grade. our funding also supports family services, wellness, health and nutrition, violence prevention and intervention. you also see system support. we work very closely with the school district to fund item such as transportation, [speaker not understood], athletics. we have a public engagement effort and evaluation internally. our funds are targeted for all youth across san francisco and the at the same time we also want to be able to narrow it to specific neighborhoods and ethnic groups who are in disproportionate needs. so you see in the middle tier, another way to look at how we

fund is to look at what are the risk factors the young people are facing. so, we have identified risk factors and also high-risk factors. things we'd like to highlight are mental health issues, depression, substance use, truancy, family violence, et cetera. so, out of school time is something that we fund for kindergarten through eighth graders. you will see some of the strategies we have highlighted. ultimately we want tone sure access to comprehensive before and after school programming both at the school site and [speaker not understood]. summer is an important time. we want to make sure the programming during the summer, not all fetch want to go through comprehensive programming. so, we have some highlighted specialized activities such as football games, such as soccer games. we also have training for our providers in capacity building to learn about literacy development, curriculum development, and also science

and technology, engineering and math. some examples in the out of school time activities are kindergarten through 8 students. you see tutoring and mentoring is a key highlight. san francisco students back on track. across the cities we also have beacon centers. so, again, they have on-site services. for example, visitacion valley school and [speaker not understood]. one is more complicated. it includes teens programming. the first line is specialized out of school teen programming. what students [speaker not understood] project based learning and they get to showcase their work at the end of the curriculum. summer transition program is something that we will be funding in the upcoming funding cycle. we currently have summer programming which i'll explain a little more later. work force is a very key component to ensure us --

students succeeding in school. we have relevant learning. we have work services in the school site and also after school. [speaker not understood]. we fund 15 centers, 15 different high schools to provide holistic health, counseling, and also academic support. so, again, this is a list of some programs i'd like to highlight. college track is a four-year program that helps our young people to learn more about what is available out there for them in the college collection process, again, support leadership opportunities, opportunity impact, provide really great enrichment and civic engagement, [speaker not understood]. as i mentioned earlier, the wellness centers and something we want to highlight more, summer academic employment program where we i think for the second summer in a row we

provided funding for 9, 10, 11 graders attending school. after school they receive additional tutoring, mentoring and also career training. this is something we explore further in the coming funding cycle on how we can continue to do that. so, these are some of the highlights of our activities and fundings that we have. >> great, thank you. colleagues, any questions for the department of children youth and families? supervisor cohen. >> thank you. i first would like to get a copy of the presentation that you gave. >> i have distributed that. >> thanks. i didn't get one. >> sorry about that. >> that's okay. you know what? mr. chair, could you -- >> okay. supervisor olague. >> well, i guess really -- i guess we really should jump over to coleman. but i have a very quick question.

the work force issue, i know this past summer we had that summer jobs program that i think we had about four or 5,000 jobs. >> correct. >> that were provide today youth. the feedback i was hearing was that not all the young people from disadvantaged backgrounds, probably some of the folks we're talking about today that are in that percentage, were necessarily had the qualifications to obtain some of those jobs or succeed once they were placed. so, i just want us to -- at some point i guess i would like to have a better understanding of, you know, whether the match was there, you know, but yeah. >> sure, it's a very complicated circumstance. i think to quickly highlight within the 4 or 5,000 job opportunities, there is a range of opportunities. from entry level internship all the way to private sector

placement. of course within that spectrum it has different levels of requirement. so, you're right at some level, some youth are not ready for the private sector placement that they can just go in and work. so, we do have other -- but we do have other opportunities for them to enter at the more pre-employment employment, job training and hopefully sequentially they'll move into the private sector placement. it is something that takes longer time and again, touches on, again, education attainment issues. >> i guess at some point in my -- i wonder if we can track some of this. are we tracking it? >> we do have tracking for a number of youth. a breakdown of that demographic. >> i guess the students that are maybe not achieving at the level that we'd like to see, i'd like to understand of those -- of that population that were placed in jobs, what were the challenges they found. >> of course. >> i know that in one instance we found that it was hard for

some of the young people, they didn't have computer access. it was hard for them to fill out the applications and that sort of thing. it was just basic on that level. and then we found that in a couple of instances we provided some support groups for young people to talk about what the challenges were that they had met with successful. these were almost voluntary -- we worked with the y and we worked with west side services to provide some of those support groups. and we had a couple in some instances. i think it would be good to have the young people kind of give input as to what they found -- what were the challenges they found in obtaining some of these jobs. >> sure. >> i just want to note we have been joined by the director of the department of children youth and families, maria su. supervisor cohen. >> thank you. maria is here just in time to

hear me compliment the presentation. thank you so much. i liked the fact that you were able to identify the risk factors. that's exactly what i'm looking for, some thought here in what you're seeing over the last several years. curious to know how long have you been collecting this data? >> we've been collecting this data through our community assessment. we do -- on a three-year funding cycle. the first can round is the community needs assessment. this is our second needs assessment. so, we used our funding based on a needs assessment. >> so, two years you've been collecting the data? six years? >> six years. well, actually every three-year funding cycle we have to do one. >> so six years. >> yeah, that's good, all right. this looks good. so, i appreciate being able to see your philosophy of the intended outcomes, that's what you have printed. and one thing i also want to commend you on is that you also have incorporated a

considerable understanding for mental health, that mental health needs, particularly dealing with the kid mostly affected with traumatic stress disorder. that is critical when we begin to look at why some of our students are under performing or not performing at all. shim want to commend you on that and encourage you to continue moving in that direction. thank you. >> thank you. >> thank you. were there any more questions? no? then we'd like to bring up coleman advocates for their presentation. >> thank you. let me start by saying thank

you and good afternoon to commissioners and supervisors with a special thank you to olague and supervisor cohen and campos. and then also special thank you to commissioner fewer who was able to just a couple weeks ago on her curriculum committee give us some data we've been trying to get for a few months. so, thank you. coleman advocates for children and youth is a member led multi-racial community organization working to make san francisco a city of hope, justice and opportunity for all children and families. we organized and built the leadership of students and parents in public schools to address issues of inequity and injustice. we have been working on the achievement gap for several years and in doing so, after a few years of organizing in san francisco in the public

schools, its was no secret to coleman advocates parents and students that african-american, latino and pacific islanders were receiving a different quality of education. in 2007 we found that african-americans were ranked dead last in api scores for all major urban school districts in california. this was the low below even special education students in their api scores for [speaker not understood]. the next year coleman fought for the board of education to close the achievement gap. that resolution to ensure the upcoming district strategic plan was focused on addressing the racial achievement grape in inequity in our school. thankfully the board passed that unanimously. however, the gap has widened, especially for african-american students. many of you might have seen the report that came out talking about the 2011 released analysis comparing the progress

of california school districts. unfortunately san francisco received an overall grade of d. and in particular the african-american students as it relates to sfusd, we ranked 127 out of 128. i want to have one of our parent leaders, olivia gudeau, give a statement. >> hi, my name is olivia harris. i am a san francisco resident, also a native san franciscan. i have four children in the san francisco unified school district, at george washington carver elementary school, and martin luther king school. i'm the president of the ptsa at my child's elementary school and a member of coleman advocacy for children and youth. i am here today to talk about the achievement gap and how our african-american children are falling behind and how the gap

is growing between african-american children as a group. this summer i took part in a leadership academy with coleman advocacy and learned that more than 65% of african-american children in the districts are not proficient in language, arts and math, while caucasian children looks nothing like ours. i also learned about the school to prison pipeline and the result achievement gap plays. our african-american children fall forced and get pushed into prison because the district has not taken the time to sit down with the little african-american boys and girls and really invest in them. more needs to be done before it is too late. it is important.

our children's lives are at stake now more than ever. [speaker not understood] is on the verge of extinction in the city. if more is not done to help our children's future generation. thank you for giving me the opportunity to express the needs in our district. >> thank you. >> and, so, a lot of folks know us as an organization that focuses on a through g. [speaker not understood] we'll continue to be closing the achievement gap. but why did we get started? we looked at ways in which the district was preparing african-american and latino and pacific islander students for college and jobs and found shocking racial discrepancies. in 2008 we found that 5 out of 6 latino students and 9 out of 10 african-american students were not enrolled in the a through g classes needed for a

four-year collegeful and may not have even been informed that these classes were an option. * college so, going back in history a little bit, before '98 the district included the a through g courses sequences as part of the graduation requirement. in 2008 they did not. so, if you look back on -- excuse me, in '98 there were 52% of african-american students out of that class that were eligible for college. however, in 2008 only 16.2% were eligible. san francisco unified class of 2010 graduation drop-out rate prior to a through g, prior to that graduation requirement, there's was 63%