participate in professional development in ininclusive practices and response to intervention, which we call rti. i am very much looking forward to schools refining and implementing these plans, to help us to continue our culture shift and practices to students providing services for students with disabilities. >> and i want to thank the educate ors who have taken advantage of these professional development opportunities, this is also a reminder to all of our families that we will hold the enrollment fair on saturday november third, from 9:30 a.m. to 2:30 p p.m. at the concourse exhibition center east hall and that is located at 620, 7th street. this is an opportunity to meet the faculty, staff and parents from the sfusd schools and to learn more about what the schools have to offer and more

about the enrollment process and help with the questions that the parents may have. >> if you want more information, visit www.sfusd.edu/enroll. i also want to tell you about the articles. and today's article focused on dual language programs in the schools and i encourage you to pull that up on-line and take a hard copy as well. and finally we said again and i will keep reminding folks that tuesday, november the 6th is a very, very important day. and it is election day. so, please remember to go out and vote, please vote your conscience. but whatever you do, vote. you need to vote.

and please consider all of the measures on the ballot very carefully. our schools in our state really depend on you voting. finally i am going to end the way that i started my comments, go giants. [ applause ] >> okay. thank you, superintendant. we are going to move on to item c, recognitions and resolutions of commendation. >> i will call on superintendant carranza for awards. >> thank you, president yee, at this point i would like to ask principal michael rical if he is here to come forward and introduce to us our rave distinguished service award recipient for this evening.

it is my pleasure to be here as the principal of a middle school but also as a musician and as a student. because the person that i would like to introduce you to today, sherry whitney is not only a teach ner my school, she is also a teacher for me and a teacher that i never had, so i want to thank her for that as well. to give you a little context. she is the band director and when i met her about five years ago i was astonished at her description of what she did. and furthermore, i was surprised at what her students were able to produce. i have been in a lot of middle schools as well and my 17-year-old career and never

have i heard of a developing group and it comes out in what they play and how they behalf and how they act and how they work as a unit. how they are able to go into a an organization and go out and get the seats out and clean up everything and it is something that goes beyond just being able to place a piece, it is a cultivation that comes from someone's urgency to use every moment and you don't do that without dedication, you don't create a jazz band that can play at a college level in middle school unless you are there every morning before school with your kids on your own time. you don't do that unless you are willing to go out of your way to raise money for instruments you don't do that unless you are willing to take the adhoc principal and give him lessons because you are going beyond your job

description, i am willing to do whatever it takes, because i love it and i want to thank her and introduce her to all of you today. >> thank you so much. >> congratulations. >> i am extremely moved and very touched by this award, i have a list so if you have a baton, and you want to cut me off, just start singing or something, like the academy awards. because that is how i feel. in my career, which has been a long career, i have never had this, anything like this happen to me. i would like to thank the

school board for setting up these rave awards, thank you so much. there is all kinds of music teachers out there that all do special jobs. and i'm touched and honored to be singled out among you. can you please rise? if you are a music teach er in this district? >> i would like to say that i appreciate your support as a administrator, we can't do it, it takes a village, doesn't it. of course, my husband is here. you see i am going a bit. you can't give a band director a microphone. my friends and colleagues, the visual and performing arts department in the san francisco unified school district is extremely special, that is rob daniels is back there, can you

please rise? thank you so much. and sally, i can call her my great friend. sally ryan. who hired me. and by the way it is her birthday. >> yes. ♪ ♪happy birthday to you ♪ >> louder ♪happy birthday dear, sally. ♪ >> and of course, aim, the association of the ininstructors of music that is extremely special too. i have been a teacher in other district and that is one of the things that makes us special.

jillhendricks. and last but not least i feel blessed because i have the most wonderful students in the world and the parents that the parents are just phenomenally great and now i will sit down and be quiet. thank you so much. [ applause ] >> thank you, miss whitney. well deserved. and at this point, i would like to ask orla okief to come forward to introduce to us the rave special service award winners. >> good evening, superintendants and commissioners. i am pleased to be able to announce this awart for the student nutrition team of wilkens and orteza who have been nominated by their colleagues and i would like to read out in what was shared in

congratulating them and thanking them for their support. they were nominated because they secured a donation and i don't know if you would like to come here and wait that will be great while we sing your praises. you can feel comfortable. and that they secured a donation 3,000 lunches and snacks for the third annual sf promise college, and career expo and they did not only save more than $5,000, but the donation was delivered and supervised and they helped to supervise the distribution of the meals and some of the qualities, are examplely follow through, and friendly, customer oriented service, strategic out of the box thinking and creative problem solvers and really nice to work with and going way beyond what is expected of them. for the past three years, they have worked to help provide

meals for over 3,000 students at this off-site event and they have always had a yes attitude from the beginning and worked hard to accommodate the question. they promised on time and with a smile, but they worked around many complicated parameters. the career expo is the only fair held during school time where we provide transportation for all students and chap rones. most are held in the evenings where only some of the students can get it. this ensures that all of the students have access and the nutrition team believes in the concept of the event and wanted to be sure that all of the students got a nutritious lunch for the day, and they are thanked very much for doing that.

>> thank you, so much, that was a very shocking honor to have this... >> this never works for me, superintendant and i am sure marine karu, and this is indeed an honor and i wish to thank you, especially for recognizing, noi, so i don't know how i would have done what i have done over the last 16 school years. she is the only employee in our central office that is actually been here longer than i have. she is in her 17th school year. and she has been my right-hand all along the way. so i can't thank her enough. but, to close, i am sure that you have bigger business to get on with. i do want to recognize every student nutrition worker in our

department, collectively, they serve over 5 and a half million meals every school year. thanks to all of you. please please. >> thank you, very much and congratulations to all of the award winners, president yee, we would like to also present an award this evening, which is some what of a surprise to this person. but it is i think very well deserved. so we would like to ask ruth groboski to please come forward. [ applause ] >> and ladies and gentlemen, you may or may not know this, but ruth groboski has been really leading the work with the parent advisory council but we would like to thank her for eight years of service to the council she has been a

phenomenal advocate for the families in the sfusd. and we look forward to her work as we go forward and she is going to be one of us and she is going to join sfusd and given her contributions we are fortunate to have her join us in our district work. so welcome aboard and thank you for your service ruth, and i think the commissioners also wanted to say a few words and we have a little certificate and token of our appreciation. >> we will just go from left to right. >> so ruth, i want to say, you know, since i was in the ones that wrote the resolutions to have the parent advisory council, i think that it was you that took the baton and just ran with it, with your deep commitment to parent voice and attending all of these late night meetings we always see you, sometimes you are the only one in the audience and i have

seen you so many times just sit with parents and prep them. or the especially the parents where english is the second language to present in front of us. i think that you have really empowered so many of our parents through the work in the years. i want to say a personal thank you and also thank you for stepping up and working with us now to do a district-wide parent empowerment plan, thank you, ruth, much, much, much, luck to you. >> i just want to as you probably already know that the commissioners jill wynns as she on the telephone listening in and responding. she is tell conference from north carolina. commissioner wynns would you like to say anything? >> i would. i just want to add my thanks to all of the work that ruth has done. i am so grateful for the

contribution to the strength and the stability of the parent advisory council. i think that it is remarkable work and i couldn't be happier that you were joining our staff and thank you, deeply, from me. >> so, i'm just going to echo what everybody else has said, i am so appreciative with the work that you have done with the pack and just how the facilitator and the staff person you just have been really so respectful of different parent voices and it is a very diverse group and just how the pack has managed to continue on in a it provides really important information for us on the board and your facilitation and support of the pack has made that continue to happen and so thank you and i look forward to working with you as a member of the district

staff. >> thanks so much. you are stellar on the outside working with us and you will be stellar on the inside working with us and i want to just thank the pack for letting her go. you will continue to work closely with her and we are looking forward to having you on board. >> i have the privilege of meeting you and working with you when i chaired the pack. and i just wanted to thank you so much for your doged persist tense that the make-up reflected the demographic of the school district and you were very, very intentional and thoughtful about that and we all benefited from that diversity on the pack and i just wanted to also congratulate you on your last project with the pack, the restorative practices piece, which really brought so many more people into the community who subscribed to and support the practices and i am super excited about your new position

because i know that we will be benefiting from your perspective and dedication. i just cannot begin to to thank you enough. i will just share with the public that i was part of that inaugural and she applied and we did not accept her and gratefully she did the next best thing and we are so much better for it and have... and i just think, you know, all of the work that you have done, the great example that you have set for other parents who just don't know how to function in their role, how to reach out to other parents, how to become active and organizers. you are a teacher of other teachers. and parents are teachers and

they teach other parents how to do things for their kids and you have set such a high bar and i am grateful that you are coming to the district to do this work with us. and in partnership, thank you for being patient with me over the years. and the struggles and sort of, you know the tensions that we have had to get to the right place to do the right thing, and it is so reflective again, in the restorative justice lead that you have taken, which was wholly unexpected and too my great surprise is so much deeper because of you, because of you and i want to thank you from the bottom of my heart, ruth. >> thank you so very, very much. it is amazing, the work that you do and the people that you have touched. i will not ignore that. and i will not forget it ever. thank you.

>> so, ruth, today's celebration, not only for the giants but for ruth, you know, this is a big deal. you know, i am sure pack is sad to lose you, but we are so happy to gain you, so to me, it is a celebration. and when i guess that we came in to this system about the same time eight years ago. and have we been going on the pack for? gee it seems that we came in about the seem, i have been on the school board for eight years. and i remember the first few meetings that pack tried to interact with the school board i was not real clear what the role of the pack was. and what you have done, over the years has made it real clear cha the role of pack is. you made it real clear, what kind of relationship and what kind of partnership we wanted

to have between the school board and pack. you made it real clear in that, you want pack to set the bar very high in terms of their involvement. it is very high. i think school districts and all over the united states are kind of jealous of what we have here. it is about how you organize them and how they are involved. and how they really truly are a partnership and the pack really does keep the school district and the school board accountable to the parents. one of the things is that i would be really sad if you had to make the switch a few years ago. and i say this because of the respect that i have for you, that you built an organization with the parents to the point where you can lead it and it will function very well because of the infrastructure and the,

again, the bar that you raised for the organization. so just a good day for us. and we want, i could see there might be a few more speakers? >> yes. but that is all that i have to say, thank you for all of your work, ruth. >> good evening, yeah, and thank you. that is why i am here today. my name is michelle and i had the honor of serving with ruth on the parent advisory council for four years. yeah, four years. and i first met ruth five years ago when i applied to be on the pack and my application got lost in the mail. and she contacted me, we figured it out and she met with me before the recommendations were going to go to the board. and from the beginning, ruth and i got along. and her no-no sense, get to the chase, style really meshed with

me and she has always supported me and recognized in me things that i did not know that i could have in me and encouraged me to step up. i am the person, here we go. i am going to do this. i am the person, the leader, the advocate and the teacher that i am today, because of you largely, because of the things that i did, and learned, and was involved in with you to the pack. in the community forums i learned how to facility difficult conversations and how to help people articulate and keep the conversation on track. at board meetings i, learned how to decipher what was really going on and what you were talking about and i remember sharing with shelly and sitting in the meeting and go, i understand what is going on, four years ago, i didn't know. i couldn't follow things and that is because of my involvement in the pack and your guidance.

and in my time with the pack was invaluable to me. i really miss working with ruth on, and we are friends and comrads still and we get to hang out. you are authentic and genuine and you believe in keeping promise to families, which is perfect that you going to be doing the work that you are going to be doing and i am thrilled that we will be able to work together again in the future. >> i'm maranda martin and i was going to be delivering the pack report tonight and announcing this. so i just have a few things that iment i wanted to say about ruth during the report that we will have a short report tonight. i just want to say that ruth has been an amazing mentor to me and she has a really rare combination of skills.

she is intelligent, organized a strategic thinker but also has the ability to really listen and to convey ideas and really plainly and eloquently to really cut to the chase and to help and advice and champion the work that they are doing for them and i appreciate that and grown in the short time that i have been on the pack. ruth also is an amazing communicator and also reaching out including empowering and motivating other people and most of all listening. what i really appreciate is that even though she makes sure that the pack's voice is heard she is also always aware of what they need to hear to inform with work that we do. i think that it is important and it made me think about that as well. and i just appreciate that. and being great, she is also a really cool person and fun to hang out with. and she is tenacious and really

self-depricating and i think of her as a mentor as well as a friend. >> on behalf of pack, ruth you are a rock star and, want to present you with these flowers, and i don't have anything else to say but we love you. so ruth, we do have a certificate that we will bring up in a second and also on behalf of the entire school board, we also have a gift certificate.

>> i am totally shocked and really appreciative. and i was saying to maranda before how much i love that part of commendations are thanking the people that they are getting recognized for and that is truly how i feel about the pack. i have worked hard over the last eight years and i am proud

of what we have accomplished but it was my job. i got paid to do that. i felt that i was accountable for doing a good job at what i was doing. and everybody on the pack is a volunteer. and i just feel it was such an honor and a privilege to work for you guys and i learned, i learned so much from that. and so many people stayed on for extra time, until they termed out and went way beyond the expectations that we had set at the beginning. so i just really appreciate the recommendation, i can't even articulate how moved i am by this. and i do feel like i also have to acknowledge the support of the funders who have allowed the pack to build staffing and infrastructure that help us be functional. without having to take money from the district and money that we feel should be supporting classrooms too, which is the lee foundation and

the dela back family fund and we could not do without them. and we still have a pack report to do and i feel like i need to stop talking. we are going to leave after the pack report and go celebrate. don't take it personally. >> so we are going to move on to item d, student delegate's report, ly and wong. >> we attended the commission meeting, we heard supplement the budget supplemental that would provide $5 million to the school district. and the student council support thises and is interested in working with the youth commission to continue recommendations for effective credit recovery options. fcc is getting involved with

improving the school meals and i met with paula jones with the director of department of public health. the reps will be taste testing for the bid of evaluation for a potential new vender. they will be developing the revisions to the policy. they have a seat for a student representative that the fcc will help to identify. >> excuse me. last night, we had a presentation from niad abrahaman, from the department of children, young and families. she presented us with the youth led day of civic center which is the young advocacy day, it is a day where youth learn about city, and how it works and they get a chance to