celebration of sfusd's early education department's 70th anniversary whereas sfusd early education department's preschool programs were established in 1943 by president franklin eleanor roosevelt work projects administration to provide the city's families with care and education for preschool age children during world war ii. whereas eed began with four sites. today eed has grown to 43 sites that serve over 4,000 students including infants, toddlers, preschool opportunities, transitional kindergarten, other students and tk as well as fifth grade students during non school hours. over 90% receive completely free or subsidized care based on their family income and more than 75% of families served a language other than english at home. whereas

sfusd's strategic plan contains three main goals: access and equity, student achievement and accountability, and calls out the achievement gap as one of the greatest civil rights issues facing the district. whereas decades of research has shown that providing children with early education opportunities can have significant positive impact on their growth and academic achievement. in addition for students from families who face economic linguistic and other opportunity barriers the need for and impact of this early education investment is paramount. whereas sfusd is one of the few school districts throughout california that continues to invest in early education. therefore be it resolved that the board of education of the san francisco unified school district celebrates the 70th

anniversary of our early education department and our 70 year history of investment in preschool. [applause] i should have done this before the reading of the resolution so i apologize for the protocol. i need a motion and a second to hear the resolution. >> i move. >> second. >> thank you. with that taken care of are there any comments from the board or from the superintendent? vice president fewer. >> i think this is a wonderful celebration and it marks our commitment to early education and actually we are the largest provider of early education in san francisco, and so congratulations to all, and again could you tell us the dates of the celebrations so the public maybe available to participate. >> yes. the dinner is

february 8 at 6:30 p.m. and the saturday event for the families is the next day, february 9. they like to get it done. >> and the location of the february 9. >> the ninth is at 20 cook street. >> from 10 to three. >> from 10 to three. >> well, i just want to congratulate you on all your good work thus far and it sounds like the celebrations, the twin celebrations are going to be a great way of celebrating the department. particularly i love that you're including the families in the celebration. i think that is wonderful. thank you. much deserved and here is to 70 more years. oh yes did you have more comments? >> yes, i wanted to thank ms. bryant for your hard work. there have been a lot of changes in the early education department. i know it's been a heavy left and thank your staff and recognize the classroom teachers in the program. i

remember when my kids were that age it's a handful to manage kids at that age and express my appreciation and congratulations. >> thank you. now i believe we were going to have translated some of the details about the celebration. >> okay. the dates for the celebration. okay. [speaking spanish]

location? >> [inaudible] >> [speaking spanish] >> okay [speaking foreign language] >> what time is it? >> >> [inaudible] >> [speaking foreign language] okay thank you. >> we will also be sure to post this information on the school district website so that all families can access it in multiple languages. >> okay. roll call please

ms. cast co. >> ms. lee, ms. wong. >> yes. >> ms. fewer. >> yes. >> ms. haney. >> yes. >> ms. maufas. >> yes. >> ms. mendoza. >> yes. >> ms. wynns. >> thank you. >> ms. northon. >> yes. >> six aye's. >> all right. next we have a commendation on peer resources

on national mentoring month. may i hear a motion and a second. >> so moved. >> i second. >> thank you. now commissioners murase or haney may read the commendation. >> yes, i would ask the commissioner to read the commendation for peer review. >> i would be happy to. whereas this has been national mentoring month and the school of health and program launched the program to highlight the mentoring and the development of young people and has gained the support of u.s. presidents and congress and such luminaries as myue angelou and peer resources offer a variety of programs for our students including retortive mediation on a peer to peer basis to promote academic

achievement with student and prevent conflict and mitigations and healthy liching habits and empower students as agencies of change and whereas after participating in peer resources students reported statistically significant increases in school engagement, connectedness to school, school as a community, leadership, self efficacy, optimism, ability to make a difference in the community and relationships with peers and these are outlined with the strategic plan and the score card and whereas peer resources operate in 13 schools and and the schools listed and in 1112 touchedded fives of peer

leaders who served sfusd students. therefore be it resolved that the board of education of the san francisco unified school district on the occasion to the 2013 national mentoring month has student resources and participants and its dedicated staff and mentoring committee for advancing this in san francisco and effective use of a peer model to create positive out comes for students throughout the school district. >> thank you commissioner. are there any public speakers on this item? no. >> [inaudible] >> okay. doesn't matter. hold on. all right. so ms. anderson please say a few words on behalf of the superintendent. >> good evening commissioners, superintendent. commissioner haney thank you so much because

you said everything i was going to say and this is great and moves us around so at this point what i would like to do is call forward the director of peer resources, ms. tam. [applause] i would also like to call forward a student speaker who will speak in a few minutes and that is dominique sanchez and i would like those in the audience tonight who are now or who have ever been associated with peer resources to please stand. [applause] thank you so much and so i turn it over now to ms. tam to say a few words. >> hi. once again i am ms. tam director of peer resources. thank you. we are honored by this commendation and excited to be here. we especially while i have the chance i want to thank you all for your support at

peer resources especially at this critical time of transition and as the superintendent mentioned we are now independent and a project of community initiative, so moving forward peer resources' mission is to create justice change in our schools and communities through the leadership of young people engaging, training and advocating for young people, and with that i'm going to turn the podium over to dominique sanchez. [applause] >> all right. so i am dominique sanchez and i want to thank the school board and the superintendent for this honor and having me here and peer resource program is a program that allows the youth to educate their peers and we cover topics such as peer pressure, self esteem, sexiel decision making and my class is working in racism and we work on how to

combat interpersonal and racism and we get to pick the topics that we want to learn about, but personally pier resources is not just a program to do extra circular activities and i can open up. i surround myself with people from different backgrounds. i feel i'm a leader and can compete in the top ton ivy league schools and i can take on everything and i want to thank her for her help and i never thought i would be up here speaking and i am thankful for being here and let's go 49ers. [applause] >> any comments from the board? well, i will just say on behalf

of the board how much we appreciate the work of peer resources for our students and thank you to the commissioners for bringing forth the commendation. might i request on behalf of the board if the authors allow us add our names to your resolution. thank you. oh yes commissioner wynns. >> thank you. sorry i can't be there tonight, but national school board association meeting in washington, but i wanted to jump up when you said everybody has been involved in peer resources because i am proud to have been an active supporter of peer resources for more than 20 years and i am just really thrilled that this happened and we have been able to recently really show our support for peer resources at a time of transition when it's needed. i

am committed myself as others connected to the program to be a supporter of whatever needed. thank you. >> thank you. roll call please. >> thank you. ms. wong. >> yes. >> ms. fewer. >> yes. >> mr. haney. >> yes. >> ms. maufas. >> yes. >> ms. mendoza. >> aye. >> ms. murase. >> aye. >> president norton. yes. >> seven aye's. >> commissioners, if you will do the honors with the certificates. thank you.

>> all right. the next item we have recognition of mentoring for success. mr. superintendent. >> thank you president norton. i would like to ask kim coats and the staff of mentoring for success to please come forward. [applause] and mr. kevin [inaudible] >> good evening superintendent, commissioners, i am can i

havein trin from the support department and i promise said we would be quick today so my reputation is on the line so we have two programs in the department we are very proud of. yes peer resources. thank you very much for honoring peer resources. they're a great part of my department and also parenting with them is our mentoring for success programs. we have four grants. we had a [inaudible] with the district attorney's office and this is one of the projects we're partnering with the district attorney on. we currently have 640 mentors in the city mentoring 740 students but there are at least a thousand student who is are out there wanting a mentor that we cannot provide one for right now, so with that being said i will introduce three important people for the program,.

[applause] >> so we're really happy that you're giving us time to talk about mentoring for success, quite a movement that is happening right now in mentoring and we appreciate the recognition of national mentoring month. we did give you materials to keep to the time limit and it does have some snapshot of some information with pretty pictures and graphs and stuff so you should check it out, and just so we're all on the same page. the formal definition of mentoring is a structured and purposeful relationship between a caring adult and a young person so that's what we're talking about here and we know one thing is if students don't feel connected it's harder for them to succeed and we know that caring adults build assets for our youth. you simply can't succeed if you're not connected. it's human

nature. that's why mentoring for success is fostering those relationships in our district. no two relationships look the same so we have a couple of mentors here and a student that will share about their experience in a bit so yeah. >> under the umbrella of student community support and health programs we launched this program and in 2007 with seven schools and 90 matches. today thanks to grants from we're proud to partner with 40 schools and support 740 matches. the program encompasses two school base models, a one to one mentor program with 640 k through 12 students and a model that serves ninth grader who is are at risk of dropping out of school. we haven't did this on our own.

we have been able to utilize staff to coordinate activities. our social workers and nurses and wellness coordinators have built the capacity to do this through mentoring. collaboration is key to our success. while we cannot acknowledge all of the partners right now they are listed in your profile. we are partnering with the da's office and the coalition to have city wide recruitment event this thursday. we hope that you can all make it and bring a friend. >> together with our partners we are dedicated to reaching out to the vulnerable youth many that live in the distressed neighborhoods. you're probably asking is mentoring success actually making a difference? is it improving grades? is it improving attendance? yes, the data and our students say so. students in the program

consistently report being closer to caring adults at school than the student population and increase their attendance or gpa after being matched and who are our mentors? take a look at the last page of the newsletter. i am sure you will recognize many of the names. this small army of teachers, professionals, social workers, nurses, wellness staff and a broad spectrum of community members have been dedicated thousands of hours every month for a student to maximize their potential and they're the ones that observe your recognition and with they am glad to introduce holy many and her mentee laura gill, an eighth grader in middle school. [applause] >> hi. i am holly. this is

lolo so we're just here tonight to share about our experience together. i have been working with her since 2011. we were matched up then for "our sassy dispositions". that's what they told us anyway so we started working together i have seen a lot of improvement in lolo just across the board. she had a lot of issues the first year with conflicts with teachers and students that resulted in a lot of suspensions and as a result affected her attendance significantly. this year there has been only one suspension and she has taken positive steps in making really, really strong mature moves to resolve conflicts in a healthy way. one of the things we worked on in the school setting and weekly how we could do things differently and try to implement that and she has done that incredibly well. i have no

doubt she will be highly successful in everything that she does. >> well, the question on the paper says and you think back to your mentor relationship. what is something you remember the most? and i think one thing i remember the most how one person can change another person's life dramatically, improve their behavior by talking to them and having an hour together and how she has a rough job already and it's not a little work. it's a lot working at a law firm and she takes time out of her day to work with a snotty kid. that's one thing i will remember and yeah, and i think that mentoring is -- i think it could change people's lives if only everybody could have a mentor. sometimes

adults need mentors. [applause] >> thank you for having us. >> i will second that. >> thank you both so much for sharing. we really appreciate that and now we would like to introduce you to the principal of mission high school and share his experience as a administrator and mentor in our program. >> good evening everyone and thank you for having me here so every monday right after lunch the bell rings. i am doing supervision and go to my office and nine students waiting for me and my partner to mentor them every monday and that is the most joyous tile for me and phenomenal for the kids as well. last year we looked at early indicator students. these are

students that come with two indicators that predict possibility of dropping out of high school and low gpa and attendance and we were looking for what to do and this showed up at our door and a light came on and put the students in groups with partner mentors and what success would we see? and what we saw last year and this year our students significantly out perform the district for attendance and gpa and i know there are a lot of pieces to the puzzle but i believe the mentoring part is critical. our tenth graders are always checking in with us. last semester many of my students are 2.0 and well on track for graduation and one of the significant programs we offer and we're tracking it to look

at the data and in addition we have the one-on-one mentoring and i would be remiss if i shouldn't shout out to the resources folks and being a mentor increasing principal haze given me an incredible lens how to support the students at a higher level. thank you so much. [applause] >> i'm kim coats, director school of health programs and i wanted to close by thanking the superintendent and all of the board commissioners for recognizing national mentoring month. i want to thank kevin and lori varace and others for their amazing leadership. thank you to the people that came tonight and everyone that came to specifically support peer resources and mentoring for success. we need mentors so

talk to a friend, a family member or colleagues or be a mentor yourself. join us at marcus book store. it's the partnership with the da office and starts at 5:00 p.m.. come out celebrate mentoring for success and other partnerships and look at the website healther .org and loo there is some great information there and we would be happy to answer any questions you have now or in the future and thanks for your support and thanks for wearing the stickers too "be a mentor" .

>> i just also want to give a plug. i have had a mentee going on four years and i want to say -- ms. jones who is on track to graduate this may and i want to say that she's knowing her has

enriched my life. i learn every time i pleet with her how to be a better board member and i think about her constantly when we set policy around graduation and how we serve our students best so i want to give a plug on national mentoring month to get involved and i think that we demonstrated here it's a very easy process to do, but i just want to say jamisa has enriched by life greatly and i like to think she's made me a better board member and thoughtful one for sure. >> all right. last but not least at all we would like to recognize the members of the public education reason rich ment fund community advisory community. superintendent. all right. it's not time for

general public comment now. >> [inaudible] >> sir, sir. >> [inaudible] there was a vice principal that touched a child inappropriately -- [inaudible] >> sir --sir, i don't want to clear the room. you're out of order. >> yeah -- let's. >> this is inappropriate. you need to sit down sir. >> sir. >> you need to sit down sir. >> my name is charles e smith pastor. >> all