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 meet with city officials and share the thoughts and concerns. the fcc is co-sponsoring this

event and will be helping the groups and everything. for the last night we recently requested a presentation to help to understand why some of our schools have lost their after school programs. so last night, we had a presentation by mala lou smith the director of ex-cell after school programs and we learned about the funding source and why some of the funding no longer exists. we also gave her recommendations for programs and how youth can be engaged in this election of activities and effective credit recovery options. >> thank you, very much. >> okay. let's move on to the next item

which is item e, parent advisory council, pac report. representative? and it is ruth, again. >> we are going to milk this last week. >> this is my last report to the board as the parent of the advisory council. kind of really flowing from what the student advisory council was just talking about, one of the pac's priorities is addressing the issue of high school graduation requirements and especially just looking at where the students who are in 11th grade right now who are the first students to have to meet the athrough g requirements where they are at. first of all the pac is very concerned about the number of students who are not on track to graduate right now. and really especially about the disproportionate on the

african, latino and other students. it is making, we are really making an effort to learn more about the plans to respond to this urgent problem. and it feels the parents like a crisis and actually i have been in a number of meetings and i am glad to say that the district is responding to it as a crisis and has an action plan in place for both the short-term and also we are glad to see some conversation about the longer term strategies to resolve the barriers to graduation that many students are facing, kind of institutional barriers. we have been participating in a lot of different meetings and just before the board meeting tonight i was in a meeting with the district staff had convened with a lot of community organizations that serve youth, and certain familis in different parts of the city. which was great. and i know that there are many, there is the task force, the graduation requirements task force and the select committee

with the board of supervisors and the board of education working together and talking about this issue. and the pac is actively participating with community organizations and helping to be part of the effort to bring people together. we are not the only ones working to bring other folks together. but, in the conversation, earlier today, was colman advocates, parents for public schools, the baby association for youth, chinese affirmative action, the central american resource center, james town center and mission graduates are all talking about this issue and what can they do to get information to the family and bring the services to the youth that they serve. so that part of it is exciting to see that that kind of work is moving forward and i think probably next week, when i am working in the district that will be something that i will be helping to support and move forward as the pac tries to do that from the parent

perspective. we also really appreciate commissioner fewer's invitation to submit the questions that the pac has for the conversations that you are having with the curriculum committee and i think that we are going to get you some questions by next monday if that is okay, for this meeting after that. and we are and finally to close on this topic, we are convening a series of briefings about the topics through the school year to look at the different initiatives that the district is working on. and our topic in the november meeting is the graduation requirements and we are getting a lot of interest from pac members and community folks who want to participate in that so that will be great. and i am sure that the pac will continue to report to you about this topic. >> one more quick addition, we have as you can tell, we are going to be really missing ruth

a lot. but we, do have exciting news to announce, we actually have breaking news that we can announce a new pac coordinator tonight. georgia williams bratt who is the current pair of the parent advisory council has accepted the offer to take on that position, effective next week. and she is going to be a great asset i think that our organization and she is an experienced community organizer and also a parent. and we are just very excited to be able to announce that. >> commissioner fewer? >> yes. so thank you to the pac for having sh interest in our 2014-2015, i too am appalled about the numbers and the disproportionalty that are not on track to graduate.

i think that when the board approved this a-g requirement they were thinking that of course, if we do it well, it gives students two things, one it gives them access to the classes they never had access to before. and secondly, if we do it really well, then we give every student an opportunity for the 21st century, due to the budget cuts, we were not able to i think, implement a lot of the supports that were needed i think that we learned a lot during this time and because of the awareness around the 2014-2015 graduating class and the large number of students that are on track not to graduate and i think that the district has a really stepped up an urgent response to this. we may be needing your support on the city side to advocate for this, you know, how much money this type of credit recovery costs. you know? the catch-up is always costly and i think that is why that we

and under the new superintendant have front loaded a lot of the stuff because the catch up later is very hard to do and a lot of times not successful. so, while we are doing our early warning indicators and other things is an assessment to be sure that the other graduating classes are going to graduate with this a-g requirement and i think that it is a good, or excellent policy for our students, especially knowing what they need to come meet in the 21st century and that we will not have these high numbers and trying to prevent them. i am happy to invite you and your questions, and let you know that i just spoke to commissioner norton and i hope that commissioner maufus can also join us for a curriculum meeting on the first monday of november, which is november 5th, i think that we discussed it as a committee to have it because it is the day before

the elections, we felt that it would be okay, we are hoping that commissioner maufus is available and also any other board members as our meetings are always augmented but we would like to have that curriculum meeting so if we have the questions and we can submit them then to dr. valentino. so, sorry, that he... so we can prep him to have those questions answered. we were also because this is so tied into our graduation numbers. we were also going to have some follow up questions, if you like, ruth, about the disproportionalty of african americans, in special education under the emotionally disturbed category. and so, we because that effects our graduation rate so highly that we are going to follow up

with the questions to it and i believe that you received the e-mail from dr. blanco, the follow up information and if not perhaps someone can e-mail that to ruth about, we had questions at our last meeting and she gave us numbers and she gave us numbers by race that were in non-school placements and also a number of students, what are trajectory looks like when students are put into classified as special education under this classification. and that showed a chart about i remember looking at this, how it spikes at 6th grade and so those type of things and so if you have any questions regarding that, or the pac does, feel free to send them our way also and we will get those questions submitted to dr. blanco in time so she can respond. so we welcome you and we welcome the new coordinator her name again is? >> georgia. >> okay. so we welcome here in the curriculum meeting too, thank you very much. [ applause ] >>