committees. >> yes we have a report from the bilingual community council and bcc and they will be presenting and kim garcia misa.

>> all right. welcome to the members of the bilingual community council. you may start when ready. >>

good evening president norton and honorable commissioners and superintendent carranza and welcome to our new commissioner matt haney. i have to say i really appreciate the fact that you hold these meetings and hear this very emotional kind of presentations. it totally drained me. my name is darlene inaya and i my colleagues are here to report on successes and the questions and the concerns

of the bilingual community council, and we are your appointees and we want to thank you for having us here. we will begin by expressing our appreciation to all of those who help us in our work on behalf of the over 15,000 english language learners in our district, and we did provide you with some written data which i will be loosely following in my beginning here. we're very grateful to our english language students and our representatives who continue to attend our bcc meetings and they voice their concerns to us and we're able to bring these issues forward, and to garner attention to them, and to make remedies. we're

thankful for our translators who attend every meeting that we have, both spanish and can tonenies and some of the things that we were able to -- [inaudible] strict and with the help of our -- kristina wong and jennifer fong, the two people we work most closely with. we have a english learner program guide and we didn't have this before and it's also translated into english -- into spanish and conton easy and serves as a guide to our english learner family who is find coming to epc and to the district very intimidating and very confusing. we work with the ioc and the

mpd, the multilink welpath ways and they have given us a great deal of support, and we have -- they do come as guests to our meetings and we learn a great deal from them, and especially epc because that's [inaudible]. that's an area where english language learners don't quite know what to do especially if they don't know the language and go to epc to try to get their child registered in school and epc as a result our requests has actually created written update the transfer process between schools so that it's in writing now, and this is really important because in many of

the programs that are available to english language learners the folks don't really know what the procedure is to get into them, and we have been monitoring el student access and enrollment in the dual emersion programs. it's very popular right now as world languages become increasingly important and there is a certain balance that is supposed to exist so we visit the schools to see if that and monitor to see that balance does exist. we've made progress on our sfusd's communication with families of the el students, especially around the results of the selt and used to be in

english so the parents would get the results and they would not know what it was, so although it costs a bit of money it's now translated and goes out to our families in their native language, and there was a lack of translation on the sfusd website, and this was brought to the attention of sfusd, and they now provide the translation so that the website is accessible to everybody, and another thing that we were able to accomplish was that lowell and soda did not have their applications in languages other than english, and these are very prestigious schools and we did not want to

see our english language learners exclude friday attending these schools. but the application process was difficult and now they're being translate into the two other languages. we also received a report from sfusd staff and once again i do want to say that christina wong and jennifer fong have been just great in helping us with our duties at the bbc -- bcc, and finally we have -- their guidance. that also helps us. they have quite -- i mean the report is like this thick, so

they just keep us updated on what's going on and of course we go out and do visits so those are some of the things we have been able to do this year, and my colleagues are each going to address another portion of this. >> hi. i am abe [inaudible] and with the group with 2011 to 2012. our focus was on time in elementary and middle school. we particular focus on long-term el's and include fifth grade. we started kinder as potential student as defined by sfusd and the ioc. we request [inaudible] general schedule, and then allow us to make situation and speak

with staff, students and families with ioc representation. we have five we can have more [inaudible] without ioc representative present. in our situation bcc a part of appropriate teaching strategy during instruction time. we note that many have after school programs and emphasis on tutoring and assist for el students. we also note that working to improve communication to non english [inaudible] and el students. participation in this access to translation, access to the computer lab. many have after school program that provides tutoring for el students. we hear from some administrator

regarding frustration around planning for fluctuating student population. many planned for more than in the enrollment. we see more than that originally anticipated. [inaudible] situation create planning and implementation difficulties. both middle school and administrators express need to have more communication [inaudible] >> [speaking spanish] >> good evening and commissioners and superintendent. i am flora ramos and i'm a member of the

bcc. >> [speaking spanish] >> i'm going to give a report about to update you on the current status of the members. >> [speaking spanish] >> we need more members of the bcc and we're here to make sure that all the members are represented on the bcc. >> [speaking spanish] >> and that representatives come to our meetings. [speaking spanish] >> generally you only have one meeting a month. >> [speaking spanish]

>> we have member with us a member of the bcc as well. >> [speaking spanish] >> she's our [inaudible] to you with the education on board. >> [speaking spanish] >> she's providing report to the board members. >> [speaking spanish] >> and generally we're going to decide what we're going to focus on in 2012-2013. >> [speaking spanish] >> observations that we're going to include in that report if we can are our observations regarding enrollment. >> [speaking spanish]

>> thank you. >> well, superintendent carranza and board of education commissioners as you can see in our report we have a lot to celebrate and a lot of successes we have made. i am very happy to say great progress in how we are providing services for el students and families, so i think there's a lot to be -- a lot to appreciate and be thankful for. we do believe like we said in the beginning part of our report that we are working much more effectively together with san francisco unified leadership and are grateful for that and my portion of the report are the concerns that we condition to -- continue to have in the bcc and in reviewing the letter to the san francisco unified school district, the bcc found our concerns and

community concerns in line with the department of justice and you have in the report that we gave to you the 10 points that the department of justice outlined in their july letter to the san francisco unified school district, and they are very much in line with the concerns and the questions that we continue to have. i would like to highlight two of those concerns. one would be number six, improved communication with el families. you will see there are a number of bullet points. this isn't a comprehensive list but it speaks to the biggest concerns that we continue to have and one of the largest concerns that we have speak is in line what we spoke about in our appreciation to finally having soda and lowell's applications translated into spanish and chinese but as we look at this issue more closely

we noticed that at least some of the -- soda's website was only in english and aligned with the concerns we are hearing from the families that the websites that are put up by the different sites are not always accessible in different languages to our whole school communities. that is a big concern for us. the internal parent communications that are happening on yahoo groups or communications that are coming out from auxillary organizations like the pta they're not always translateed and it's a big concern for us. it's not a step forward in creating a diverse communities. it's not a step forward in encouraging our -- particularly our english learning family to participate fully in our school sites and so recently we sent some questions back to

christina wong specifically about what the policies were for our website and the auxillary websites that they are generated and the communications in the schools and we received a prompt reply back saying "it is in the works that the district is working toward adding protocols and processes into the guidelines for ensuring quality and interpretation services" and attached to the email. it's not currently in here but we are hopeful it's included and comprehensive protocol that we can give to sitings regarding school loop and all the other auxillary sites are happening as school generate their other school communications. the other point line we would like to highlight is number eight,

enhanced dual language emersion by dual language emotion path ways. >> >> cindy and troy and i and the co-chair were present at the meeting where they asked christina wong to give a presentation of the action plan and we asked that her presentation be included in your packet today. we are very happy that finally we have been asking for data regarding our different path ways for many years and we are excited and we have it now and starting to look more effectively how our pathways are doing. we really are very thankful that data is out there and again it's a move forward for the district and the families and the students. we are very interested in how this data is going to be used, and the way that we are going to

continue to use this data to improve the pathways, take hard looks at the pathways, where we're doing great and where we're not doing so great. one of the signs i was particularly interested in how the spanish language, english language students were doing in our pathways. if you could see on that slide you can see how our students, spanish students are doing and in all the different pathways and frankly what we're doing as a district is not lifg up to what research shows can be the potential for english language learners in these programs and we have to take an honest look at that and i feel confident we're up to the challenge. we will look at that data and do the work that we need to make sure we're doing exactly what we should be

doing, and in closing as an advisory committee to the board of education, the bcc respectfully urges that the board of education require san francisco unified school district to address, implement and monitor all of the department of justice's concerns and mandateds outlined in the july 2012 letter. additionally the bcc will ask san francisco unified school district to review at the next meeting how the department of justice concerns and deliverables were addressed and action timeline for 2012 and we would love to receive any questions that you have. >> yes. vice mayor fewer. >> thank you president norton. thank you very much for this presentation. a couple of things i would like to address. i think first there has been some movement on this and thank you very much for bringing these items to our attention and

actually fixing them with the translation. i can't believe that they're not translated. it seems like such a no brainer and disappointing to hear that but i am glad it's fixed with the remedy. also concerning some of our translation on our websites and the availability of having certain documents translated. thank you so much for bringing that to our attention also. i know we did get an award for having the most transparent website. i think also under questions and concerns number six and i agree with you so are there enough translation services? so i am wondering if we could have an assessment of where we are in our trangz laigz service? so i know that we have funded translation partly through our prop h money, so i

wanted to know if we have done any sort of snapshot about has the population changed or has it increased? are we meeting the needs? are there new language needs that we are not meeting? meaning we are seeing an influx or a majority of students with a different need than we traditionally cover like spanish and chinese and also what exactly is the recruitment and hiring for the translation office and have we done any sort of protocols about the evaluations of them, and also just their job duties. i think they have been classified not as official translators but outreach workers so can we do something about that and really maybe have a formal translation sort of assessment of their ability to translate in chinese, spanish, whatever language

we're offering and then i think the data for the pathways is very, very interesting, so ms. garcia if you wouldn't mind sharing this because i don't believe i recall seeing that sort of synopsis about the data what does it tell us about the programs for the el's and looking at the pathways. we have emersion. we have some of the other programs. what does it tell us about our el's and their achievement? >> so that was some of the questions that we did ask at the -- when information was given to the pac and again we were -- the conversation was very interesting because we were told that christina wong was great about showing all of the information, but in terms of

gleaning any real information or what we could really see from the nmpgdz it seemed if the district was a little hesitant but we're hoping when we see the results of fifth grade we will continue to see if what the trajectories for these pathways particularly for this and you have a copy of the report and i am specifically referring to frames 21 and 23, and these are just snapshots of how we're doing, and just as we can see with snapshots when we're closing the achievement gap we can look at them again like i said unfringingly and what is

the data showing us and what can we look at and if we're looking at the data like a layperson it does seem like there are challenges that the emersion programs are showing, not what we originally hope said and as a parent of english language learners not what the district is telling us your student will do better in -- in real measures in dual language emersion so it doesn't mean -- i don't know if we can make any decisions about the pathways but we can definitely say what do they need to live up to their potentials? >> i believe also that human resources has prepared a report that shows us a snapshot of our staff and how many are

bilingual and which languages and placed and i think that would be interesting also for the committee to look at. >> thank you. we had a presentation from human resources yesterday and they're getting back to us with the questions but told us about the system is cumbersome. it's a lot of filling in just manually. they couldn't tell us -- for instance speaking about the subs. how many chinese speaking subs we have? how many spanish speaking subs we have? and heard from parents and really affect the pathways and have subs that only speak english. it was an eye opening conversation with hr. i am very hopeful and confident that similarly when we start calling epc to get reports back us to we

started seeing changes and we are hoping working with hr can support them and answer the hard questions that require answers. >> can i say something? hi. my name is [inaudible]. talking about the english service. because they only chinese for [inaudible] -- latinos who speak the spanish full time job and the of the one is only part time and talking [inaudible]. some school is called that because -- no people [inaudible] the service and because it's a professional translation and -- and the parent -- coming and sometime parent talking to the school or parent or staff they

think you like the principal and not talk -- question to principal but like talking to the tiu. [inaudible] thank you. prepare for the budget. need more money for the translation. it's good. yeah, maybe need some people -- >> [inaudible] >> yeah. becomes not only -- parents and chinese parents here. many language parents here. some school -- go to the outside center and [inaudible] yeah. and two year they go outside. meet the people at the school and [inaudible] thank you. you have the budget i know march 2 but this time you take the time, one month. okay. the budget for the translation service for the parents. they

will thank you -- thank you. >> commissioner murase. >> yes, i had a couple of questions. just this guide is so very useful and important because we take pride in the multitude of languages that our school offers but it gets very confusing. my first question is is it only available in english and my second question is where can people go to get this guide? >> that guide is in chinese as well as in spanish and it's epc has them and distributes them -- >> [inaudible] >> oh we do? yeah. do we have these? here we go. so we have them in arabic. >> spanish. >> spanish, korean