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% african americans that graduated and 19% that had dropped out. and we highlight this mainly to show that although the graduation, the a through g requirement is here now, it was

a problem in '98. there was a problem in 2008, and there continues to be a problem in 2012. to the district class of 2010 students who completed the a through g course sequence unfortunately was only 29% of african americans. also in 2010, specifically at thurgood marshall, we had about 30 students that were african-american that graduated. out of that 30 students there were -- excuse me, there were 30 students total, but there were 20 that graduated. there were two that graduated with an a through g, and five that dropped out. at burton there were 23 students, 18 that graduated, two that had the a through g, and about three that dropped out.

i'm going to introduce kevin bogus who is going to read a statement because our young person had to leave. >> so, i'm going to read a statement from one of our youth making a change members. i'm going to read it as she wrote it. my name is [speaker not understood] and i am a senior at balboa high school and i am a leader with ymac and coleman advocate. my experience being a black student at sfusd has been a roller coaster ride. one year i had really good teachers who wanted me to succeed and who cared about my education. but the next year i had teachers who didn't believe i could make it. it's not fair because every student deserves a quality education no matter what their background is. i feel like other black students have had worse experiences than me. i have a parent who works for sfusd and people at school like my teachers know who my mother is and it makes a difference in the experience that i had.

when you have someone constantly telling you that you can't do something and can't succeed it gets in your head and you start to believe it. like internalized depression, you start to believe that you're stupid and you can't be successful. i do not necessarily think that sfusd has set me up for success. i had teachers who didn't believe in me in past grades that followed me that didn't necessarily reflect me. they reflect the struggles that i was going through that year. this year i have up to 36 kids in a class and students have trouble getting help from the teacher with that many people in the classroom. i didn't know that i needed to make up classes to be eligible for college until my last semester of junior year, and now i have to push hard to finish so i can go to college. my college counselor told me i'd be better off at city college and that i couldn't handle college-level classes. but i am determined to do it and being told that i shouldn't go to college is just something

that makes me even more determined to do it. i like a challenge and i want to go to uc santa cruz. a through g is really important for kids graduating after me. my younger cousins and sibyls. for them it's a road map to high school and about those classes, you are out of luck if you're not going to get to college. * siblings. >> in 2009 over 200 coleman advocate students, parents and allies arrived at sfusd to watch the board of education unanimously pass the policy that changed the graduation requirement to include the a through g course. this was a huge victory and seemed to be a step in the right direction for our students, especially black latino pacific islander students. the policy went into effect for the class of 2014. let's talk about some challenges with implementing a through g. there has been lack of

monitoring, adequate monitoring of the a through g implementation at the school site level until this year. not enough oversight by the core board of education to look at how adequate usfg [speaker not understood] and access to data relating to the current student progress, political will of the sfusd staff at all levels of implementation, and yes, we cannot forget the state and their funding issues. [speaker not understood] the data until this moment. we were privy to see some preliminary data. however, the concern for us is regardless of how you look at it, there are 76% of the 2014 class off track. there are 65% of the 2015 class

off track. we have to figure out a way to fix this. we have to figure out that it's not okay for us to act like it's not a reality because these are our children. these are our responsibilities. so, coleman is calling for immediate agency and a call of action that includes a renewed commitment to the academic success of african-american students and other historically under served students of color from san francisco unified school district. this includes sfusd providing real access to a through g courses and career pathway courses at every school for every student. sfusd ensuring that adequate supports are in place for students to be successful in the a through g core sequences, prioritized for under served students of color. sfusd releasing timely and accurate data, monitoring the disparate progress and preparing students for

successful graduation in 2014 and beyond. san francisco unified district in collaboration with the city and county of san francisco together identify the financial resources for crisis intervention making a broken promise and truly supporting all students in being successful, not just some. focusing on offering credit recovery opportunities like seventh period available at each high school for struggling students with a teacher present, not just online cyber high. prioritizing the students most at risk of not graduating for the classes of 2014 and 2015. smaller classes sizes for the key a through g classes and academic support and tutoring for students not on track for graduation. where there are many things the select committee can recommend and move on to both body, we are encouraging each one of you to take into account, like i

said, the urgency and figuring out how we are going to graduate 2014 and 2015. thank you for your time. >> thank you very much. colleagues, any questions? (applause) >> on the presentation? supervisor olague. >> i guess i was wondering, what do you think some of the actions should be, you know, how do you think we can get there? what do you recommend? >> mr. chair and commissioner or supervisor olague, besides the points that we specifically [speaker not understood], one has to be the need to address it. this is our reality. san francisco is an amazing city. i've only been in the bay area three years, san francisco for a year. i love it here. i talk about it at home regular. but with that being said, we

can't act like these students over here, the black and brown students are dirty laundry and we're not going to address their needs. we can't act like we're successful over here and amazing to the nation, but we're not going to come up with innovative ways to address what's happening here. so, immediately we do need credit recovery. we need options for these students who are one class plus or more off track to graduate. that includes other options besides online because even with the online options, our young people have said, yeah, we can finish t but i'm not learning anything. and we really don't even have accurate data of what is the completion rate of our young people in credit recovery with the online courses. at least we ask over and over and have not been able to receive that. in addition to that academic support, because we want to prevent it from happening in the first place. and that goes for all grades. we want to make sure that young people are having a successful opportunity while they're in a classroom and not having to

take their time instead of being enriched through other courses, having to take the class that they've already taken again. >> one thing i found intriguing was the comment of the student. i don't know if it's something that's happening, but it would be interesting to do some kind of group with the student to find out directly with them what they're feeling, you know. because sometimes it's something that's even hard to articulate or they can't even measure -- it can't be measured, you know, the way we measure things. i think it would be interesting to get their direct input. >> mr. chair and supervisor olague, coleman youth are open and willing to participate in that. >> thank you. >> thank you. supervisor cohen. >> okay. i'm sorry, i didn't catch your name again. >> niva walker. >> niva, that's right. you talked about credit recovery. i'