around who's up and who's not and when is it going to be more appropriate or less appropriate for either of these funds to go forward. and so there's a lot of that piece that's coming out. i think more recently with the way in which mayor lee works, it's been around wanting to get a much more diverse group of folks at the table so that when the community does go out to put this forward, that all of the questions have been asked around why are we doing this, what's been the outcome with the investment that's already been made. and it sounds like -- and that's the intention of the outreach and engagement effort is to make sure that the folks do understand the importance and value of both of the funds. and i think there also needs to just be some clarity because these funds are back to back and i don't think we've ever had them back to back the way that we do now,

that we want to be very cautious about going out with one and having the voters think they already voted on it and why is it here again. i think what's really different, these are a different time and these are different relationships than we've ever had before with the city and the school district and the dollars that come through are shared in a much more intentional way. there's a lot of dollars from the children's fund that go to organizations that are in our schools and those cbo's are working a lot more closely with the schools and, you know, comply with balanced scorecards and we're being a lot more intentional about the way in which we work together with our community-based organizations and we've seen tremendous growth and support around our public schools and i feel strongly about a lot of that has to do with the coordinated

effort that has been going on over the last few years. at the same time, the peace funding has been well supported with all of our kids in our district and particularly around our arts and all of the other outside entities within our city that's provided support to our arts programs like the symphony and the opera are all part of this much bigger picture. so i appreciate that all the work that our cbo's do and have done around this. so this is not a but, but an and. so i see this as where we are. it's growth. it's the expansion of this work so that our cbo's and all of our grass roots organizations don't have to work as hard to convince people that this is an investment that needs to be made. so i am very much on the side of going out broadly so that when we do go to the ballot, you know, we've

all set through many a campaign rocking ourselves in the corner hoping we are going to get the 66 percent or 67 percent that we need in order to get parcel taxes and what have you. i feel really confident that the approach that we're taking is so much more thoughtful around all the things that we want to do for children across the city and how we can leverage everything that we've already put into it and how we can grow this and so i think, you know, we're going to need our, all of our organizations and all of our parents and all of our neighborhood associations and we certainly want to get business to think about this very differently. so we want them to be a part of this conversation also. and again so that this is something that will go out clean, it will go out without anybody raising money to oppose but instead

will be, you know, raising money so that when it does go into the campaign it will be so that we can pass it with a very high support margin. so i'm really grateful that we're doing it and we're going in this direction. thank you. >> thank you. actually i had some more administrative questions in terms of the election for 2014 and maybe this is a question to the controller. so my first is, i know prop h is a set aside so it's a 50 percent plus 1 vote. for the children's fund, it's a property tax allocation but it's going in the 2014 election year. so what is the threshold for that? >> majority. >> good evening, been rosen, controller. that will also be a 50 percent vote. it takes

the form, in essence, of a base line. >> uh-huh. >> but it's defined as an amount of our property tax take but it's not actually imposing a special tax. >> so both measures will be 50 percent plus 1. do we have an understanding of what measures will be on the ballot currently that are scheduled for 2014? i know we're considering the vehicle license fee and potentially a go bond, i just have a sense of what else is going to be on the ballot for that year. >> i believe those are two that are in the official plans at this point, the vehicle license fee which has to be carried in a general election year, which 14 will be a general obligation bond for transportation and transit i believe is contained in the capital plan that you have approved, and of course the usual conversations that happen regarding general tax increases in those years. but i don't know that any of those have solidified. >> thank you so much. in terms of the conversation

around specifically prop h and the children's fund, some of the conversations that i hope that we can continue to discuss, and this won't be the last time we'll hear it at this committee, is that i'm very curious what we're going to do about the pre-k fund. i know that was a discussion that's come up since we passed this originally in march 2004. you know, sfusd also runs pre-k programs and i think it's incredibly important that as many families as possible get to participate in pre-k from my time on the board of education we learned that pre-k is one of the most important factors in narrowing an achievement gap because there's an achievement gap on the first day school starts in kindergarten. children already come in in terms of a gap on that very first day. so what we can do on the front end is incredibly important so i want to make sure that we are, if we are putting this back to the

voters that pre-k is a part of the prop h reauthorization that we have a really robust conversation about where is that funding actually gets allocated to. i know there's already been some reorganization and last year supervisor avalos and commissioner mendoza was a part of those conversations in terms of melding, if that's the right verb, hsa the 5 commission and dcyf because you serve our children 0 to 4 and we wanted more coordinated efforts there. so that's going to be really important to me. i don't know if there was going to be any comments on that. the second piece, i'm just going to bring up a number of different issues -- has become a discussion point, particularly here at city hall is in kind services and what that means. are we going to keep that in there, are we going to put in a target and kind of specify what that is? is it just something that

really wasn't part, which i'm not going to say what the intention of that was, but i think we have to have a greater conversation about that. because now that we know what some of the kind of different interpretations of prop h there were i think as much specificity as we can grant in the next cycle of the reauthorization, knowing now what the debate has been centered around, i think that piece is incredibly important to either make it more concise or take it out completely and maybe lower -- you know, think about how the dollars match may be what we expected from in kind. the third piece that comes up a lot is, you know, is when we can pull the trigger. and we can pull the trigger when there is projection of a budgetary shortfall of a hundred million and this is kind of verified by three different offices, i believe, our budget legislative analyst, the controller and the mayor's office of budget.

but i think there is also a lack of clarity around how that projection is put together and maybe we can have some more specificity around that. because i think that's really important to our voters. i hear a lot from parents, what does that mean? it makes sense on a certain level on a lay person's perspective but i think everyone has a different interpretation of what a shortfall is. from anyone's perspective we can always say there's a shortfall. we can always say expenses outpace revenue even on a year when we have a lot of revenue coming in. i think just for the sake of clarity for our voters when they are putting something forward i think they would like to have some specificity in terms of what that means. but overall i am a huge fan of both of these funds. i would really like to be a participant in all of these discussions. i think these two funds are incredibly important and i feel they fortunate that the voters of san francisco have supported it and i think that we have

been very successful, as commissioner wynns has pointed out, with any measure that supports our schools and our children and i think that is a positive statement for our voters here in san francisco and i encourage particularly members of our board to really go out and visit our schools and see what prop h means. it's amazing when you visit a school and you go into a classroom and the principal says that's the art teacher we wouldn't have had if it wasn't for prop h, that's the gym coach we have now, that's the counselor that is the peer resource office, the wellness center, all of this happened because of prop h and to see it and see the students use it, it's really incredible to see how directly this has benefited our kids. i know i brought up a bunch of things, i don't know if either miss sear or miss moor want to comment on either. >> on the ece, i think there's

a lot of tough questions that we have to work out and that's one reason we're really excited to have this process because there is so much overlap in both areas and that's one of the things we're going to be doing with the stake holder council. we've already been discussing some of that. i also wanted to mention may 3rd the community coalition is going to be holding a kick off around the children's fund renewal. maria sue is going to be on the panel. i'll be there, superintendent caranza is going to join to give his support to the effort and i think this cross fertilization of people from the school district understanding more what's in dcyf, the children's fund and vice versa and looking at how these come together. but, again, we want to have, as one person on the community coalition said, we want to have some fierce conversations about what's working and not working. we even talked about what does universal pre-k mean, what does the equity issue mean that was

raised? that's what we're trying to do over the next few months is really key up and understand now that we are further along what are some of those tougher questions that we need to answer together, not in silos. that's what we're really excited about. and i think the other technical issues you talked about are things we will be discussing and addressing as well. that's why it's great to have a working group from the school district addressing those and trying to bring forth some recommendations. >> actually one question, this is a question that had come from one of the member s of the public that couldn't stay for the hearing. there is a question whether any portions of the p fund are rfp's out probably within the third third. like the ost >> the psa pieces are rfp's out. >> which ones are --. >> preschool --. >> under the first 5

commission? there's a competitive process for that. >> because there's been evaluation and assessment as being a preschool for all preschools. >> everything is allocated in terms of the p funding and there was a question whether there is an overlap between the rfp and the f funding. >> there are overlaps. i wouldn't call them overlaps, i would call them leverage and alignment around afterschool services, early care services. dcyf also puts moneys into early care and education facilities so preschool programs. and then wellness centers so there's actually joint funding in wellness centers and beacon centers. so we, once again, it's not an overlap. i really do believe that with the two funds coming together it's a more rebust

program. >> thank you. >> commissioner mendoza. >> can you give an example with the afterschool how that happens because that's one of the most significant shares that we do. >> yeah, so thank you, commissioner mendoza. over the last 3 years we have actually developed a very strong partnership we in terms of dcyf -- strong partnership with the school district and started it realize it did not make sense for parents to have multiple afterschool providers on school sites that had different requirements, frameworks and financial eligibility. so we worked very closely with the school district to figure out how best for us to create a seamless afterschool program that's on school site that would be essentially would

allow any parent who needed or wanted an afterschool slot to be able to apply, regardless of income, regardless of anything else. because we use our dollars to match the state dollars so that we can then have some more flexibility in the afterschool program. so through that partnership we have been able to increase quality but then also capacity. so the afterschool program can actually serve more students on school sites. we have now to this year has now started doing some cross training so that the afterschool program that's funded by the excel office will start working with the afterschool providers to do some cross training so that we can have a base line of language that we're all using. we're now trained to build it out to even summer programming so that the summer programs would then start doing some cross trainings with the school district excel funded programs and dcyf funded programs.

>> (inaudible) over a million dollars. >> actually i did have a follow-up question to my previous question about the children's fund and i think this is why p is confusing for some members of the public. i guess with in kind services, which is roughly 3.9 million this year, actually that was really the question was do any children's fund dollars that used services to the school district that are considered the in kind allocation of the p funding? >> yes. simple answer yes. dcyf goes through every 3 years a new rfp cycle. for us we technically wipe the slate clean and we grant all new providers. so we do use, we do consider

our new grantees as potential in kind to the p fund. >> when you say new grantees do you mean grantees that were never funded before, is this like an increase in dollars that we've normally not seen at the school district. >> for every rfp cycle for us it's a new cycle of grantees. even if we have had a history with them for many years, because technically the funding is, the funding is just reset. it resets funding. . >> i don't know if you have an example actually. >> if we fund peer resources or the wellness center, let's say we grant the wellness center the new cycle a million dollars, but we had already been funding the wellness center a million dollars from

the children's fund, do we count that million dollars as part of the in kind dollars that we expect the city it allocate to the school district via p ?oo ?a i'm going to risk, i believe wellness centers have been used as in kind towards peace. >> that would not be good. i mean financially it might be good, but to do it, it would really detract from the purpose of what peace is all about. as commissioner wynns suggested, it's actually raising the poor people's spending which i think is the goal. the goal for p should be raising per person spending. if we're doing in kind, it wouldn't be meeting that goal. we should be

thinking about what the purpose of p is going forward. >> just briefly to add, supervisor kim, i agree with your point regarding what the intent and how the in kind language works in all legislation. frankly, from my perspective the way the application of in kind dollars is applied against the p required dollars has been somewhat of a negotiation that occurs that results in a dollar value, that you then choose off of a laundry list of services that the city provides that vastly exceeds that dollar value which you want to plot into that in kind account. i don't know there's more science than that to it, frankly. >> one of the things that continues to come up about how p should get structured and how children's fund shouldn't be utilized for different things. it's those kinds of questions that have come up that make you go, wow, these were done very differently and not having a mutual goal, which is what

we're trying to achieve. >> i'd really like to get a breakdown, then, of the in kind services budget that we're allocating to the school district this year, so breakdown of the 3.9 million, close to 4 million. i know we didn't define in kind services, but the general principle was that we would not be supplanting existing services, we would always be funding new additional services to the school district. in my opinion a wiping out because an rfp process, because a granting cycle is over and we're doing a new granting cycle, it me that's not additional dollars. in my opinion and clearly this is a problematic portion of the p funding and how this has been put together, but i would think that a lot of voters would really be upset to find this out. because it sounds like double dipping. it sounds like

we allocated portions of our property tax dollars that voters wanted to go towards children's funding and then said, oh, that's part of our set aside that we also voted on top of that that's supposed to go to our schools. to me that is problematic as well. so just poiplt of clarity i think i misunderstood you when you said what parts of dcyf programs were considered as part of in kind. i did not fully understand your question. i think now that i do, so, for example, if we come online with a new program out of increased funding in our budget, we do consider new programs and new funding as part of the in kind. so, for example, the tark fund, which is the truancy assessment and referral center, has been used as in kind. we have done an increase in excel

match funds which are after school funds and we're using that as in kind. i don't -- and i think this is the technicality piece where at what point do you say this is new funding and at what point do we say it's old funding? so for us -- anyways. >> but if you're using children's fund dollars, if the tarc funding and substituting the excel funding, i assume the state funding cuts, right? if we're putting children's fund dollars into that i don't think that counts in terms of the p set aside from our city's budget. even if it's new, so even though it's new funding those dollars are still coming from the children's fund. so then we're seeing that it still

sounds like we're double counting or double dipping. >> this is a great conversation to have. >> and i know that the controller and rcfo has started the conversation and started trying to figure out trigger and in kind. because --. >> it's great that the children's fund is being used for those purposes but i just don't think it should be counted as in kind services under p >> and that will be a policy choice that comes to the board of supervisors as you seek to reauthorize. currently as it understands the piece creates a spending requirement on the city but it does not create restrictions on that spending, on what the revenue spending is. >> so there's nothing in p that says the dollars must come from the general fund. >> correct. >> so there's other departments that contribute to that as well. for example, nick castner is funded by doe

and in kind, their budget but it gets paid for through in kind. >> actually what would be helpful is if everyone can cancel their request so i know when there's a new request. commissioner wynns, i do want to move on to public comment. >> i really appreciate this discussion and i think that's the kind of discussions we have to have as we go along. i think there are two questions here that are being discussed rtion both of them very important. one is what's new spending and the second one is what's in kind, right, and so because these are both set asides of city dollars, it was a shock to me to find out that children's fund spending was counted against the in kind for the -- for p because basically we're clearly counting twice the same money that's been set aside, even though in every

logical, you know, we all wrote this and we presumed that it was an additional amount of money, not the same money that we would count twice as being set aside. and both, i actually think and i appreciate that this is, we've talked about how we're going to discuss this further and we have to. but, you know, the children's fund doesn't have either a trigger or a set aside, it is a new numerickal and arithmetickal -- remember it was done when the city and the state were facing terrible budget cuts so it looked as though, if you recall we actually postponed for a year the implementation of p we gave a whole year for at

noe valley. we want to say we strongly support the reauthorization of prop h as a set aside and also we want to ensure that there is a component in the legislation, there might be right now, i'm not exactly sure, that can increase the fund dollars if the city, as the city budget may grow. that may already be a part of what we have now. but anyway, just wanted to say we applaud the city's efforts to aid public education here in san francisco. it's so important and so appreciated and it's exactly what the supervisor was saying, you can come into the school and point to so many different resources and assets that we have because of this funding. so i just want to say thank you for that and we look forward to engaging with you over the next year or so as this process gets going

and the community engagement. so thanks very much. >> thank you. >> hi, my name is todd david, i am the alvarado pta advocacy chair and i'm happy to be able to represent both groups here today. i think one of the things that commissioner wynns always reminds me that is left out of this conversation i think is so important and i hope that she will correct my numbers if i get these wrong, but over the last 10 years the san francisco unified's actual budget has slung by 20 percent. it's gone from $500 million dollars to $400 million dollars. well, the city has run a budget deficit, its actual budget dollars have increased in the same time frame. its expenses have gone up faster than its revenues have, but at san francisco unified the actual dollars have gone down

while expenses and pension obligations continue to rise. so i think it's an incredible thing that the voters of san francisco have 100 percent of the time supported local funding for our public schools and for our children and that the only place that there ever seems to be a debate as to whether there's an appropriate use of local funds, of the city funds for public schools is inside this chamber. the voters have already spoken and that 100 percent of the time we support these local funds. and so i think that that's a really important distinction that is not spoken about enough, is that the two different budgets. from a very high level point of view talking about prop h and the children's fund, i think the voters will once again 100 percent reauthorize both of them. i think there's an opportunity to really concentrate on creating an

amazing policy that could be nationally recognized as state of the art and i think that that is really where we should be intending a lot of our time and energy. thank you. >> thank you, mr. david. >> hello, my name is chelsea from coleman advocates for children and youth. i want to thank the committee for pulling together this hearing. this conversation is really helpful that it is happening kind of in a transparent way and engaging folks. i know it got pushed back an hour and a half so i know there ares on folks who wanted to stay and weren't able to. coleman advocates is really committed to the reauthorization of these funds and protecting the investment in children and families. coleman along with margaret broadman decided to work closely with the process laura and maria laid out to engage community in these issues. the issue around in kind services,

for instance, is actually concerning in terms of the double counting issue but we knee there are going to be dozens of those coming up and looking forward to diving in deep so i wanted to thank you all. >> are there any other members that would like to speak on this item? seeing none, closing public comment. commissioner wynns. >> thanks. for the listening public we should say we interchangiblely use the term piece, the public education fund, and prop h >> thank you for the clarification. >> miss moran >> i wanted to mention we're really excited once we do the design with our stake holder council, which is from all