tv [untitled] April 27, 2014 7:30pm-8:01pm PDT
7:30 pm
provided speckly through peef. this has allowed us to protect critical programs that the measure was intended to provide. it has allowed us to expand them. we stand alone compared to a lot of our counter parts in the state and across the country. protected funding for libraries, arts and music, physical education, through the third or are -- or the use program. we helped our students meet graduation requirements, to launch a new investment in our science, technology and engineers math area and to fund learning support, nurses and wellness among other things and i'll go through more in the next few slides. here's a couple of pictures before and after.
7:31 pm
this is what our school library looked like. an unnamed school library. this was used, not as a library as it was intended, but as a storage area. and a critical gap was we didn't have staffing for the library or for most of our libraries frankly price to peef. these are images of two our of libraries now and they're beautiful. they're about the only images we have or that we could have shown about school libraries. one statistic is since peef has been implemented, the number of school library books has tripled so really a few changes in terms of access to school libraries and the materials. in terms of athletics, so our secondary schools, middle schools and
7:32 pm
high schools received stipend and those are used for uniforms and equipment and facility improvements including dramatic improvements to our fields and transportation for our student athlete and providing athletic trainers. in terms of physical education, again, all of our secondary schools receive support including a per student dollar amount. this has been as high as $16. right now it's $10. we're hoping to get it up to $16 per student. that's funding for fitness and sports equipment. and at the elementary level, funding for staff. so funding for, about e teachers and equipment. for arts, we have art teachers in all of our schools, so whether for visual or performing arts as well as a
7:33 pm
per student amount of funding that's prioritized by the school community, $10 each for elementary schools and $0 for each high school students for arts, supplies and materials. we provide artist and residents, field trips and musical instruments and repairs of instrument. all of this at a time when most districts are severe cutting their invest ment in the arts. in terms of learning support, we have learning support through counselors and our nurses. it's hard to imagine how our schools would operate without these people, without these critical people and they themselves are over suspended but ten years ago, they didn't exist in most of our schools. and here are some additional highlights of areas that we've been able to either
7:34 pm
establish or expand through -- this is more from the other general uses part of the translation and interpretation, services, drastically and -- the practices has blossomed in our district, a formative assessment and cte and the work base learning, a dedicated coordinator for work base learning is funded through peace so that's great to connect those two topics and stem and recovery as i mentioned. just a couple of comments and i'll try to speed through this. i know you're familiar with this. we have been engaged for many months in this renewal process as the supervisors mentioned and we're coming up to the time following a very extensive stakeholder engagement process and also a
7:35 pm
process to define some of the policy themes. next month will be the time when the supervisors introduce and start deliberating about the actual draft language. actually i guess that's the end of this month, but into may and this is for a november 2014 election day. these are some of the community input findings, just to name a few that are parents and youth. although there's an incredible array of services out there, there's difficulties or barriers or communication gaps in navigating the system or systems. the providers of these services has challenges in aligning their collective efforts. we have continuing challenging with equity and access to the critically needed services. we need to improve both our in school and
7:36 pm
out of school experiences and services and we have to end gage the business industry in better ways and we have critical gaps in our programming. so there's a picture that's been emerging over these months about how we might do better to fill in those gaps, so one is to have a better inventory of our services and our needs, to share information across our institutions about which youth and students are accessing services and which students and youth could do better by having better access to services, better align case management and joint accountability. so this set up thoughts under proposed policy solutions, these are really recommendations that have emerged through a joint working group that have been convened by the mayor and the superintendent and i know this is going to continue to be
7:37 pm
discussed as the supervisors introduce the legislation, so one concept is to renew the children's fund and peace as separate funds with complimentary ballot to create city wide outcomes that would apply both to the city's efforts and the school district's efforts, establish this council, collaborative council as supervisor yee mentioned with staff support. that's the concept under the collaborative and then to extend the planning cycles and align them between the city and the district and insure data sharing and information sharing. so finally, let me just address or mention some of the questions that are still being worked out and i think will be addressed in the legislation that's introduced next week and if i may, the board of education has been discussing all of the above including these issues at some
7:38 pm
length and on the first two issues, i can say and i'm sure the commissioners that are on the committee can speak for themselves as well, but the board of education has unanimously supported the idea of eliminating from the charter references to services and the trigger. there's discusses about the sunset date, so there's pretty much consensus about at least -- about the concept of extending the authorization to a period quite a bit longer than the ten years that was originally authorized and some of our commissioners are in favor of eliminating the sunset. some are open to having a sunset as long as it's of sufficient length. there are details to work out about the governance structure, the issue of whether these issues will take the form of one ballot initiative or two ballot initiatives and
7:39 pm
finally about the third of the funds that go for early education. all of these things are still being flushed out and i think that will continue over the next few weeks and hopefully there will be a big push to support measure or measures that appear on the november ballot. thank you. >> thank you. so at this time, i want to open up for questions or comments. this is a good time for discussion. deputy superintendent lee has brought up a number of kind of outstanding issues that will go over in terms of policies themselves and if folks want to make comments. commissioner wynns. >> thank you and thank you for the presentation and thank you supervisor kim for the history.
7:40 pm
it's important to know that the people of san francisco has supported these kinds of measures both the children's fund and the enrichment fund and many other school funding measures generously and wisely in my view, and that we appreciate that and have the responsibility to make sure that we actually do those things that we promised to do and we ask that citizens to fund these -- our schools and services for students that they deserve to need and it's an investment into our future. i appreciated the highlighting of the program and the discussions that are ongoing. i just wanted to -- i think it's my responsibility to say that those things identify in the last slide is the issues of whether or not there should be a trigger, whether that allows the city to not fully fund it which
7:41 pm
has happened in future years and should there be a sunset date and should we have one ballot or two and issues related to preschool which is because that money is administered by first 5 and not our primarily responsibility and we have the obligation to weigh in since we're talking about the students that come to us after their preschool experience. i'm hoping that we will -- i'm hoping that we'll resolve some of those things through the staff discussions before the introduction here. it's going to happen next week, so i'm kind of interested in just an update on how -- an update if that's possible. i think the board of education, i'm not speaking for the board, but based on our
7:42 pm
discussion would be interested in seeing if we can do that as quickly as possible. and by saying that i personally, not the board, but i personally have a concern about one ballot. i think we should have two ballots. these are two funding issues very well understood by the voters. we have recent polling that shows that and i continue to have some concerns about the proposed governance structure. i think it's hard for us to understand and we need to clarify that more before any of us can or should feel comfortable with something that we don't -- that is a little bit not specific, too not specific for public governance of these public funds so those are concerns that i have and i appreciate the time and the ability to put those on the record. thank you. >> commissioner fewer. >> thank you, supervisor kim.
7:43 pm
thank you for this presentation superintendent lee. i agree this has been an outstanding gift from the city of san francisco to fund these programs at a time where we had great, great need and also -- for example, in the example of the libraries that we had no librarians in our schools and we had no elementary pe department at all whatsoever, and so it has completely transformed those two programs and now they're robust and on their way and as you can see from these photographs, our libraries aren't in good condition and we have weeded out books from the 1950s and we have staffed our libraries with
7:44 pm
credential so that's taking a step to improve the education of our students. in reference to what commissioner wynns has mentioned, we as the board has decided that one ballot verses two was something that the majority of the board has agreed on. she's right about finalizing the governance structure and we haven't had actual legislation, written legislation brought to us for approval but we're narrowing it down. what the board has said, this he -- what the board has said, they don't want it defined more vaguely but more precisely about how these two funds will be governed and whose responsibility is to govern what. ideally, the board wouldn't like a date, but
7:45 pm
is open to a sunset date that is more than the ten or 15 years that it has had. so with he -- we have some things to work out, but we have full agreement that this fund needs to be reauthorized and it has been a gift to the public school children of san francisco and so in turn, a gift to the city of san francisco too. thank you commissioner kim for taking the lead on this and for listening to all of our concerns from the school district and for bringing this forward today for discussion. thank you. >> thank you. okay. so just an update on where things are at in terms of the drafting of peef. it's drafted as an independent measure and it's ready for introduce and supervisor's yee office led the drafting for preschool for
7:46 pm
all or early childhood education for peef and we were drafting the 2004 ballot measure for the remaining 2/3. two changes that were put in to the draft that we have right now is that we have taken out some kind services. something that i think has been a source of frustration for the city and for the school district. it hasn't fulfilled the objective of the initial legislation and we have taken out the trigger. we continue to have a discussion around the sunset date. there are roughly ten set aside, general funds set aside that the city has that we bare and we looked at the other set asides that we have. roughly half of them has sunset dates and half do not. the half that do, i believe three of
7:47 pm
them had a sunset day of 15 years and two had a sunset date of 30 years and peef had a sunset date of 10 years. there's a conversation of how many years is appropriate or is no date has been appropriate. i've heard of ideas like 18 or 21 years really kind of to emphasize the life of a young person here in san francisco. and give voters an opportunity to assess whether these dollars have been well spent and well governed. we continue to have a discussion on the overall governance structure that supervisor yee's office is working on to make sure the dollars are working in alignment and there
7:48 pm
continues to be discussion on whether we'll have one or two ballot measures, but supervisor yee's office is working on that. that's an update on where things are currently in terms of the drafting process and if there are no further comments, i was going to open up to public comment. so at this time, we will open up for public comment if you'd like to speak on this item, please step up. >> good afternoon, supervisors and commissioners. my name is emily. i work at performing arts work shop which is an non profit organization that serves 5,000 youth in san francisco every year. i'm here on behalf of the san francisco alliance education. we recommend the funding to move
7:49 pm
closer -- to insure educational program for those. so we support the agreement and we're happy to hear that that has been included in the draft legislation. in terms of the sunset, we recommend the elimination, currently peef is ten years but we recommend a process, we believe that support for critical services for youth shouldn't have an expiration date. thank you very much. >> hi, i'm beverly, also from the performance arts. i want to say that peef created a baseline for sports, arts, music and universal pre-k but the measure has created instability. the
7:50 pm
visual and artwork shops have -- it was not intent so we urge you to not see peef as a program of art. the arts department is funded through peef which is making it difficult to provide quality instruction. the recommendations that my colleague has proposed will create an environment con due sifb to thoughtful long term processes for city government. like someone said earlier, it will have access to these critical educational programs. thank you for your time. >> are there any other members of the public that would like to speak on this item? seeing none, public comment is closed. i want to thank members of the public that came out today. i did have a question on the last comment that was made. i don't know if this would be directed to mr. lee
7:51 pm
about how peef is the sore funding of sfus. it's about my understanding that peef is the only funding for arts funding for sfusd. >> there's one set of resources and that's for the elementary arts and music program and i believe together that represents about a million and a quarter of funding that still exist and to be fair, those resources are originated from the city as well from dcyf. they have not been diminished and they are still in place so i think that's definitely worth noting. as far as general funds support, general fund support has been minimal at least the time that i've
7:52 pm
been with the district and there was for a couple of years, there was a state categorical program that was specifically directed to arts and music that was, i think that was in place beginning in 2006 or 2007, around then, that was of course prior to the recession that took place and in that state recession context, the state allowed districts to repurpose many, many category programs including that arts funding and as most districts did, we had to repurpose those funds in order to make our books balanced and avoid layoffs and everything else, so it is true that there were for a limited -- maybe two years there was some dedicated funding from the state that was
7:53 pm
provided and that is not available anymore, but the long history of general funds support has been very, very small and the dcyf for the elementary and music and arts program has not been diminished. >> supervisor yee. >> i think the language is not applicable anymore. instead of saying we're going to allocate teachers to high schools instead, we have more control over how we spend it. we've done the same thing for our schools. so we put all of that money admittedly, cut and slashed in recent years but nobody want today do when the state was
7:54 pm
slashing our funding. all the money that used to be allocated for certain teachers has gone into student formula and the schools decide how they're going to spend that money, so that's the kind of tough part about local control, whether it's at the school or district. if you give power to people to spend the money the way that they think is best because they're closest to the program, then you have to support their decisions whether they're the ones you may make or not. that's my answer to that. >> supervisor yee. >> yeah, it seems unfair to say that peef money is funding arts and so forth because we take on the regular -- the school board --
7:55 pm
it's not funded by peef. i mean, all those teachers are funded by regular budget and i believe in some of the high schools, there's still existed art classes and maybe even music classes that was funded by education funds. we shouldn't go around saying that peef is the only funding source for art when indeed a big part of the budget -- they support some of the teachers and so forth. >> thank you. okay. well, thank you for everyone for participating in this conversation. clearly there are more discussions than just here on this item and they'll
7:56 pm
be a continued discussion. there's many discussions on policies but we have come a long way and i want to recognize stakeholders that have been involved since the first part of peef in 2004 that have been working on this for over 12 years. i'm excited to bring this back to the voters in november and i like forward to its passage. are there any other announcements madam clerk. >> on the items, do you want to file them away or bring them to the call of the chair. >> is there a motion on the table to continue to the call of the chair or a motion to file? >> motion to -- >> for item number two. >> so supervisor yee has made a motion to continue to the call of the chair on this item. we can do that without opposition. we didn't take a motion on item number one. can we take that motion
7:57 pm
28 Views
IN COLLECTIONS
SFGTV: San Francisco Government Television Television Archive Television Archive News Search ServiceUploaded by TV Archive on