some institutional racism that needs to be addressed as a graduate, from a high school that was created to serve african american students and that dream ended when the police came to the campus and started beating students. and it seems like once again the african american students are getting beat by the institutions that are meant to protect them and it is unacceptable that half of the african americans students will not be graduating if it was any other ethnic group i think that there would be a lot more urgency and effort to support and help those students and especially with such a small number of students in the district, partially because the parents don't feel that they can get a quality education, and i think that needs to be the foe cal point of all of these conversations about how we can serve these students and move beyond the talk and how do we create a culture of accountability where these things are not acceptible in

sfusd and these numbers, for african american students are similar to what you would see in places like mississippi or georgia. and we are one of the highest performing urban school districts and so it is unacceptable and i really just want to know how the board is going to address this and how we are going to create accountability to make sure that these things stop happening because they happened when i was in high school to now and even my older relatives, had the experience the same things, thank you. >> sir, i know that you were waiting and you did not submit a card, did you want to make a comment? i feel like you were waiting for so long through everything that if you would like to comment. please hand her your card, please and you can identify you. and identify yourself, and you have two minutes if you would like to speak. >> thank you, scott, and ab bra hamelin con high school and i am pleasure to be here and i thank you guys for what do you and what i do is teach math, and so statistics is the one of

the things that drew me here, and what you presented was definitely amazing, to jet gentleman that i am from mississippi and the number can be, and it has a larger population, but the big thing here is that i would like to ask, is the correlation of data the things that you are talking about, and the gentleman, mr., haney, okay, your question i think was appropriate, and but i think that also it needs to be asked is breaking things down by grade level. and social promotion, if i understand exists here in san francisco unified, and so we are getting students that have things that are happening before they get to the high school. and then to say that we are going to wind up fixing it, and i think that the data will be nice is to find out when, they failed their classes. and so if they failed it in the 9th grade or tenth or eleventh grade and now we have a subset and i think that all of this data is good, but what you are

looking at, african american and where do they cross the line into the whites and the chinese and special needs and ell and so i would ask if the board and this group will look into if a student is not on track, how many of the students that were not atrack for graduation also did not pass kc? and that is good information of where we are going to be putting the funds and if a student fails a class the first semester, are they with the same teacher, the next semester? because, for me, if a student does well i according to the ed code am i only person of record who can change that previous grade, and if, i am the teacher who gets a student two years later and say in my advanced class and i find out that they have done well before with me, i am the teacher of record and based on making a contract it is not just willie nilly and i

do make the contracts with my students so that we can achieve this. and now it has a two-fold process and it also has a graduation requirement attached and but we are also teaching the students responsibility, and that connection and mr. haney wanted to talk about is that we now have built a relationship with the students that they have done better, and they and this is the prize for what you have done, and one of the things that i started with a great principle, and one of the things that he said was the three rs, rig or, relevance, and i am sorry i got nervous, relationship. and thank you, that is what i was saying, you did learn. so, those are the things that i think that i can that are important and if you look at this data and the subgroups become important and don't just look at the numbers to look at them and you guys have done an amazing job and i think that you can go so much furer >> thank you very much.

>> thanks. >> superintendent, and then, commissioner norton and commissioner murase. >> thank you. >> i usually don't comment on comments, but, i think that it is absolutely important that the community understands that we have raised the bar for a diploma, far above what is required in the state of california. and i support that and the staff supports it. but i cannot sit here, and have public members of the public make comments besmerching the intent of our teachers and of the staff and that has during the great depression, put pennies together to cobble together the supports for our student and then spin it as if we have not done anything since the 9th grade that is wrong. that is absolutely wrong and if you want to have accountability you hold me accountible and i am the superintendent but you

will not besmerch the work of staff and the counselors who are working their tails off to make sure that our children are going to graduate and walk across the stage and that is not acceptable. so if you want to play the blame game, you blame me, i am the superintendent, and i am responsible to the board. but, on the same token, you can't have members of the community saying that we are going to continue to fund specific programs and not have a children's agenda in the city. if you want a xhirn's agenda, to make sure that they are going to reach the a, through g and you put it out there and we look at all funding sources, about how we make this happen. and all kinds of blended learning and all kinds of extended learn and not continuing to siphon and silo the funding so that certain groups get to continued to be funded that have nothing to do with making the graduation rate improve and i would also say that some of the very comments that were made here tonight, are supporting an agenda that

does not braid the fundings or give us the resource to make sure that we have a safety net for all students. and i have the ability and thank god the opportunity to work with other superintendents across the nation, and it is the absolute slight against the people and the hard working he had educators in san francisco so say that we do not care about our black and latino kids and i cannot tell you how many forums that i go to who the parents are not black and accuse me of reverse racism and stop the blame game, this is not healthy and this is the best data that we have ever had in the history of san francisco. and we know names, we know where they go to school, we know who their parents are and we have counselors that are intervening and students that we presented tonight is a real student that is a leaving breathing human being who we have worked with relevance,

rigor and relationships and the people know who that student is. so you want accountability and you told me accountability but you stop beating up the staff. because the staff, is working over time to identify every single kid. and when that one student does not walk across the stage in may, we are going to feel it. and we are going to make sure that they have options even after may and so i am going to ask our faculty and i am going to ask our staff to continue to do the work that they are doing and i am going to ask the community that we have set the high bar and we have raised the standards and the stakes and a student can in any other county walk into their county office of education and get a diploma, based on the requirements of a county office. we in san francisco and the city of county have said that we have a higher standard and we support that, but don't beat us up for the very fact that we

are trying to get our kids to reach a higher standard and it is not helpful and it is not going to help the kids walk across the stage. >> commissioner norton. >> wow, hard to follow the superintendent. when he gets fired up. and i support you mr. superintendent. i just have a couple of questions, the first question is that so i mean, one question that occurred to me when you are talking about the kc result and also just the on track and off track and the superintendent referred to it and this is better data than we have had ever and do we have any defense as to how these statistics might have look td last year and you know the class of 2013, and 2012, what percentage were off track at this point in their graduation area year? the different requirements do you have any idea? >> commissioner, norton this is the third time today that i have had this conversation.

if there is a mile on my face, that is the reason why. as you know, we did not have this particular process, in place for the class of 2013, one of the things that i continued to caution folks about is that when we start to compare apple and bananas or apples and orange its can be a slippery slope sometimes, and we have many different variables for last year's graduating class we have in this year's graduating class and i am not sure that i can give you an exact number right now and i am not sure if i can give you an exact number in the future i can say that this is a conversation after having it three times a day that we need to take back and we need to think about and we need to think through it of how we could potentially do that to some degree and so that is what i can commit to you that we

will take it, and miss chan is very good at holding us accountable being true in reporting data. and reminds us constantly, about research, and how we can and cannot say something. and so, i know that she will hold us accountable with the same but if you don't mind, i would like to take this conversation back and we will come back with it. >> that is fine, i just think that the question should, and it has been out there and should stay out there and we should try to figure out how to answer it and simply, i think that since you are giving us the kc result and give us comparative results because that is the one statistic that is the conditions have not changed over time are more kids passing it earlier or are we at a point that this graduating class where more kids have passed it than other years, i would love some of that perspective and then, i am going to ask, actually, the peanut gallery asked me to ask

two other questions. because they all right went. so the first question was, what percentage, or do we know what percentage of the class of 2014 will actually graduate uc eligible? >> in other words, that they have cs or better in their ato g courses as opposed to d. >> that was a request that we have received from a board member and we are preparing with c, or better and we are looking at the courses c, or high and her when we get out the responses to the courses that is something that miss chan is going to go back and work on. >> okay i have one more question. >> i just wanted to say, rachel that you gave us some data about cs, and cor higher, and d, right? and we do have data on that and that was in the slide show.

it showed the percentage of the students that passed with a d, and moum with cs, and so that gives us an indication i think, the clarification, on what i requested, was by race. >> yes, just the data, by the different. >> how many ds, like for example, is it ten ds, is it one d, is it how far are we from this mark? and okay? sorry to interrupt, i just wanted to have you refer to that. >> it does not actually appear to be in my packet. so if you could e-mail us all of the presentation. and then the last question was, he referred to a statistics that i don't see in the presentation which was something to the effect that 50 percent of african americans are not or not going to graduate this year, in our schools s that what you said. am i representing that correctly, and where does that

statistic come from? is that true, i dent see that in the data. >> and it appears to be mostly students, and you are counseling all of the students at the beginning of the semester were off track by one semester and that seems to be most of those students. and that if they are not going to make that up and so we don't know that yet and that is the data that they are going to give us. >> that is what we are looking at right here and that is what that says. of the 90 some students, that are off track, 74 of them are off track by one semester, and one in the semester and before the semester started. and the spring semester, and so, it is impossible to know that. that is what we are talking about. >> right, because you, in the numbers that you just gave us, there are 758 students that were off track to graduate but to some degree and 74 of those students are african american, correct? that would only be ten percent of the i don't know what that, what that is, what percentage that 74 represents of our

entire senior, or 12th grade enrollment, but it would not appear to be 50 percent. >> well, what we do know about that group of students, african american students, is that when we or this semester, february, 7th, we pulled the data and we compared it to the data that we pulled in october, is that the african american students that there was a 7.9 percent increase of students that had moved from one of the categories to the right to being on track and so that is one thing that we do know about those students. and we can do that group more and give you the total n, for the class. >> and the ones that were in the class this semester. that would only include the ones that in the fall semester completed something that put them back on track. >> that is correct. >> i think that what we are trying to make clear is what is, or what we actually have data for and what we don't have data for. >> excuse, and i think that it

is slide 10 from the curriculum committee that says that 229 students are african american, and 42.8 of them are on track and 32.2 are missing classes and 19.2 are off track up to one semester and 3.1 off track up to one year and severely 2.6. and so when we look at this, and when we cross-reference this data, that the. inger african american student is off, 2.6 classes just three, and i think that this is the or where the less than 50 percent, because we have and we are going to, and we have the end of the semester is basically in one month. and then we are starting summer school. and we see that there is 32.3 percent, that are missing classes, and of the african americans are missing 2.6 classes, and we may be able to capture some but we will not be

able to capture all. yet. and seeing... >> but that is including the summer graduation. option. >> yeah. >> which was presented at the curriculum committee. >> the summer graduation we don't know the numbers yet. but we know that we are offering summer school at many of the classes and just the courses and but it is also means that this is a very rigorous summer, academically, for some of these students. some of them we will not be able to capture, because they are off track up to one semester. and that would be 19.2 percent of our african american students, thank you. and i am just saying that out loud for the public that is listening that does not have this slide. >> and commissioner norton? >> i am done. >> and vice president murase? >> yes, i wanted to comment that in our curriculum committee meeting where we

reviewed the initial presentation of this data there was a lot of out rage and anger and a lot of emotion that was also evident at this meeting as well. but, really, i see that as huge progress that we have the data to be angry about, because until now, we didn't know these things. we didn't have the data. we didn't have the systems, the infrastructure to understand the scale of the problem, at all. and so the fact that we can have this honest, difficult, conversation, is a huge improvement over what we had before. and i just want to acknowledge, that through qt, ea, and i believe that as i got 2 million dollar investment in the credit recovery which we did not have before. and so under the pec, i am sorry public education and enrichment fund and we have a two million dollar investment in the credit recovery and all of these great summer programs and i hope that someone will get the website for how people

can access the credit recovery programs this summer. and this is all about data bench marking and we are bench marking where we are this year, and so i think that it is huge progress and i want to acknowledge my colleagues on the board, and the colleagues before them, who set the bar really high. and right? and so the athrough g requirement was a really heavy lift by the members of the board before i was here, and there was a lot of skepticism and criticism and it is going to be too difficult to meet. but we threw it down as a challenge and an expectation off you are students and understanding that not 100 percent was going to make it and in the early years. and then, i also want to acknowledge the team that gave us the data, that really worked over time to present this to us, and finally to the hard working counselors and teachers who are working directly with the students, and this is a

difficult conversation, and these are not results that we want, but it is huge leap forward in terms of the district. >> commissioners? >> excuse me, she has not spoken yet. >> okay. >> commissioner wynns? >> i just wanted to say that i appreciate the superintendent's i think legitimate out rage, but what i wanted to say is that because the people have been working so hard on this in the time of no resources but i really wanted to just sort of say that for the public it is just as not true to say that we waited until april to look at this, we have commissioner maufas actually outlined the multiple times recently and the staff has talked about how we have updated this data and so it is not to say that you are wrong we did everything right. but rather to say, this is something that you have to learn how to do it is hard and we have to do it incrementally and we have i appreciate, how

much information that we have gotten when it was available, even learning how to gather that information, and we did not know what we wanted and what data we wanted in the begin and we were just looking at this and saying what about this and that. and so this is going to get better and better as we go along, and this has been something that for many years, we have been working on slowly way too slowly, but i am actually it is not going to be good enough until we reach the bench mark and but i think that the work that the staff has done and the discussions that we have had and the participation of the public and including kol man has been significant to get us to where we are now and we have been working hard on this and we will continue to. >> commissioner maufas? >> thank you, president fewer. first i want to make the personal comments. so, in regards to a, to g, and i hear mr. bogus's perspective

and there are moments when i am aligned with that perspective because i come from the place in the district where it was fine, for everybody that kids did not, that all of our students did not graduate a, to g and there were so many schools that knew that. and protested us over and over for decades but nothing changed. and even as i sit here in this place, and i know that we are doing things to move off of that philosophy. when i child is going to graduate and they are not meeting the a, to, g it is still defeating, one child, it is a huge disappointment, and i think about that and where is that student going to go in life? and even if they understand, that they can still stay with us for a little bit longer to

get the course requirements to move on to something with choices, you know, how is that going to be communicated and will we be able to follow up and does our attention now focus on the class of 2015 and so they are letting go a little bit by little bit and there is out in the world. and with the demands of adulthood. and so, i get a bit choked up when a think about that for those students. and that we were not able to capture. and even understanding by the way, we are so racist, it is so deeply embedded in the bureaucracy of this large institution, that we have to do everything we can to check ourselves, and i mean, myself as well. about how we go about behaving with the kids and every sentence and every look and every opportunity, to even teach, how it is informed by

what we have grown up with and our own individual lifers and what we bring to the table, here. and with a new understanding of how we are going to behave and see the kids through our school districts. and i struggle, and i struggle all of the time, and i struggle in my role as a parent, and watching my grand daughter getting ready to come in and will she have opportunities and be able to absorb all of the wonderful bounty of what we say that we are going to do differently, or is it will be the same old thing with just the different people and at the school site. and so i get that. and by the way, for a lots of community members and families, it is still the same. i know that we are doing professional development, and i know that we are trying to be very vil lent with our staff about how we work and interact with them, but it is so hard to combat what you have been brought up to believe is true.

and i think that we need to also be vigilant about acknowledging that and helping the people move from what they have been brought up with to what we believe is a new day and a new way to operate and a new way to graduate the students from the san francisco unified school district. and we are still struggling today in lots of different environments and in lots of different ways and we have huge, huge, strides to make and we have made huge strides. and i want to acknowledge all of the work, and all of the board members as commissioner murase said, and other members have said and the superintendent, the board members and the staff who have come before you, to start to lay the groundwork for something different. and the fact that they even acknowledged that by the way, we don't even have a way to collect the dat appropriately. we have to do that, we have to begin feeding ourselves baby food first before we can have a

full meal on what is a, to, g that is how slow the process has been, but thank god that we are on the process. thank god that we are in the process and goodness that we are doing the process. that is my personal comments and i still struggle when i see the behavior that is just... it is so auful and it is so racist, and it the fact that the people don't understand the damage that gets done. and i just hope to continue this work in other ways to help to support san francisco, because this is my home and this is the school district that i believe in and hopefully, we really move forward with an understanding about sending young people out in the world, and out into the world, fully prepared. fully prepared, to do anything that they would like to do. and those are my personal comments. and i want to thank the

superintendent, because i definitely agree with you as well. and i know that while i have been here, i have seen the people change. still struggle with the folks that have not changed but i am here to work with that. i am. and that is what i am committed to working with the folks and that is part of the process as well. and i have a few questions and, if i may, and i appreciate my colleagues patience. one of the questions that i have immediately was, can you or do you have any information on the decrease in the on track students that are white and instead do you have any indication on what that was? >> i don't have it right here. >> sorry tha, is on the slide five. >> yeah. i don't have it right here, but it is something that i can follow up and get on the reasons are, because we actually wanted to do these by course. >> okay, thank you.

>> and the next question that i had, so, again, i have to, and my information and my experience is long. and i want to know because i look for pockets of change and i am talking about counseling services. and counselors are so critical in this process how do we know and what you have said is happening? >> how do we know that how do you know? that what you have told us is happening with counselors and how do we know that? what is the proof? >> i can tell you how i know because you know i work closely with all of the high school counselors and we meet with all of the counselors on a monthly basis and we are in touch with them via e-mail and i go out to the sites and i up until this year i have been doing the work

myself at mission high school and so i have a strong relationship, or a rapport with the counselors there and i know their commitment and really the counselors going to counseling because they care about the students and student out come and working with the families and seeing the whole child and seeing the whole student, so i can tell you that it can happen, or that it is happening in terms of data that might be collected, and it is something that we are looking at as a department, and it is very much in line with the american school counseling standards in terms of the work that counselors need to be doing, and our district needs to be doing in collecting how counseling services can be quantified. >> i

specifically with off track students and there is a process and she has received those logs and that data has been shared if not, she has it. >> we can check from this semester we followed up with the data from last semester and miss norman and maybe it was not highlighted enough and you can follow up with that, okay? >> thank you. >> and when you share, and could you speak to some of the professional development that you have had to provide for counselors to be able to take on this sort of task, these are