you don't walk into schools that are using computers that are ten years old. as we look at our budget there's no way to do this without some additional funding, both locally and at a state level. we need to advocate at a state level. you can't expect us to do 21st century schools and do all the assessment online, if there's no specific funding to help our school districts do this. we're launching that campaign. we'll be focusing on talent and there's a number of initiatives there to support our teachers. we're doing exciting work with high schools and creating a much more sdi verse portfolio of high schools. we're going to do a partnership about a whole international service learning model. with marshall we're looking at working with microsoft to make this a 21st century academy.

zinga has worked with us to create game academies and we're rethinking the career tech approach to more of a link learning approach. those are areas where we have fundsers interested in and we'll be doing proactive fund raising versus waiting for people to come to us. really getting the message out that this is not about funding, but about addressing public education and moving to this 21st century vision. >> i think when tony smith was within the school district before he went to oakland he used the terminology that he's trying to disrupt patterns of sexism. i'm curious if you brought up girls and low income groups and the digital divide, i'm wondering what part of the division to action is addressing what smith would remind us of in terms of

achieving access, equity and social justice. >> this is why it'd be great to hear the voice of the stuntds. when you talk to our students there's a couple things. first of all they're board with the traditional ways of teaching and i think that's true for a lot of students, but in particular we have -- we're not engaging our students where they are so we believe this whole vision is a december disruption and is a way to provide the access. if you go to a private or charter school, all the students have cock pleat access and students from middle class or upper income families are learning how to program on i pads at 3 years olds. and our students do have that so when our middle school principals works with the mayor's office and sales force, one of the first things they said is if you want access and equity, we have to provide

these tools and they don't have that. for me, this whole vision is about that disruption and to accelerate us there. i don't think it's fair that if you -- we did learning visits to some of the private schools and the kind of things have access to and our stunlts are fall and kind of leapfrog. i mean, in some ways we have to stop doing the old things we've been doing and push ourselves to innovate more. we don't have ten years to do this. we have the next two to three years to retool oufrss and give our students and teachers the tools they need to innovate, which they don't have right now. thank you for the great question. that gets to the last point. we need to raise the financial social and political capital to do this work. it's a real call to action to

change conditions for our students because right now 3500 to 4,000 students graduate from our high schools every year and we want all of them to have the choice to do post secondary experiences that lead them right into jobs in san francisco that are high wage, high demand, if that's what they choose so they can live, leads and work and thrive in san francisco and retain the character of our city. that's why we're very happy to have you invite us here and i also invite our board members who have been active leaders in this if i've left anything out. >> thank you miss moran. any questions or comments? okay. commissioner mendoza. >> i just wanted to note how far we've come over this last year and the work that was put

into this visioning process. you know, for so long we've kind of taken the leap from people on the outside on some of the things we need to do without really understanding what our students need and this is a much more student centered way of looking at the way we want to deliver teaching and learning for our students an it also sets up a way for us to do -- supervisor kim when you were on the board, how we were always pushing on this development office and now we actually have a development office and we can actually speak to the needs of the district in a very different way so i just wanted to commend laura and her team and the executive leadership team who's implementing all this work going forward and having us just get a better understanding of the true value of our district and the direction that we're going in and it's just a really exciting time to be in the district, particularly with

folks that are starting to invest in this differently and looking at the school district as just that, an investment, instead of, you know, pouring money into a black hole or not feeling like they're obligated because we're a state agency or, you know, not really feeling that public education is worth any kind of an investment. it's been a come meet turn around over the last couple of years and what laura just described will help us going forward to really articulate our story and that's -- when i look at this, it's our opportunity to be more intentional about how we tell our story and we have great examples and we have -- and we know where we want to get to. as things continue to change, we'll adjust, but at least we have a direction now and that's really exciting. so thank you. >> thank you commissioner. i'm very excited that there's

going to be development staff at sfuc. i think it's important that the district be able to fund raise beyond the state. it's really great to hear some of this movement. i think -- you know, i hear a lot from our tech companies about how they want to fund and invest in our public schools so students that are graduating from san san francisco unified school district that are ready, but there's a lot of -- a lot of people don't know how to create this curriculum, the tech companies don't know how and we don't know how, and people want to fund the work, but we don't know what the work is going to look like. how do we update our curriculum. i love this presentation, but doing it is so much more challenging in realtime and real life with our students

than obviously drafting it and so i'm really looking forward to how that all develops and unfolds because it's so important that our education system keeps pace with where our economy and jobs are being created. >> if i could just say what i'm really excited about this year is with this sales force grant doubling, we're actually going to be integrating the technology into the implementation and common core math sequence. you know one of our big equity goals is everyone should do algebra by eighth grade but wu found that was a failed strategy. oakland and san francisco passed four resolutions to revamp the entire way we teach math based on the latest research, but we're going to integrate

technology and computer science and we're using this grant from sales force to support the math team at all 20 of these schools so the teachers and the stem team are going to be innovating together on how to enrich right from the beginning this new common core crick limb, which i think we do know what the curriculum needs to be. what we really need to invest in is the teacher professional development to take that curriculum and innovate in terms of how -- what are the best digital apps, what are the ways to use technology in that higher order of thinking way, and not to get too technical, but we have this whole model that is the equivalent of blooms [inaudible] we call it sammer. we work with the teachers to say how do we make sure we use technology as not substitution. you're doing the same thing, but with a piece of equipment, but that you're doing more complex lessons and that's what you heard from that teacher and

demonstrating 21st century skills. when you talk to teachers they want them to be able to communicate, collaborate, do creative problem solving and that's what we're really focusing on. we're working with another tech company that's thinking of adopting the elementary schools and marry it with literacy and at high schools microsoft and apple have stepped forward to say we want to make investments with you. google's very involved. the tech companies are at the table, and want to not invest, but think with us and bring in their expertise as well. we hope you come visit the schools and see the work in progress. >> i would love to visit and see the progress actually. seeing no -- commissioner haney. >> okay, i'm on.

so i don't have that much to add. i think that laura covered it extraordinarily well and i agree with commissioner mom mom. just a couple things i wanted to add. echoing what commissioner mendoza-mcdonnell brought up which is the process -- long name to say. >> mendoza's fine. >> we're amongst friends here. which is the process that got us here. we brought in over 100 people, you know, teachers, administrators, parents, business people and i remember talking to other board members and superintendent in the feeling and there was a collective feeling of we'll see how this goes, just a sense of how do we get all these people on the same page with a shared vision. i think more than anything that came up by the end of it was

how shocked we were, but also how hopeful it made us that there was that collective vision around where we wanted to go and that's reflected here in the strategic shifts, in the graduate profile and all the of the ideas of what we think is possible for kids in san francisco and should be there considering what we have at our fingertips in the city, that's what's reflected here and it was shared amongst a diverse set of folks who share the vision. it was one that was deeply informed by a broad set of stakeholders who truly across differences agreed to this and were reflecting it from their own perspective. the second thing i wanted to add to it was that, you know, this sf learn thing, i think for a long time there's been a sense that people have come to the school district and said -- i'm sure this was your

experience often as commissioners, we want to add this particular interest and we want to pay for this. as opposed to the school district putting forward our broad vision and letting folks know how they can fit into it and how we need them to fit into it. laura brought up some examples of companies that have come forward and we have had a lot of good examples of folks that have come forward to make this possible, but we have a long way to go. so many companies and all of that are not part of this yet so what we want to have the opportunity to say is here is what we need and we also need you to step forward and help us achieve this and we can't do it without you. and that's what i imagine we're going to need help, you know, not just from those companies, but from all of the city electives, everyone to come together and make that case as almost a demand that if somebody is going to do

business here, there is an expectation that they step up and do something for kids here. we're laying the framework to make that case and to make that expectation of people. and then last thing is just that i would appreciate the comment around -- supervisor mar made around how this connects to equity and i think all of this, that has to be central focus, central driving concern and i can say that as a board member, it is. and the situation that we have now where the future of san francisco and jobs and innovation and everything, if we don't make some big changes, as you all know, our kids are going to be left behind and they won't have act cess to it. we need to do something dramatic and address those changes as well, which is what you do here everyday, but we need to do something dramatic for our young people here,

particularly ones from neighborhoods that are deeply affected by these changes to make sure they have access to skills, opportunities, resources, technology, everything to be able to stay here and thrive here. that's what's driving this and i would really appreciate the reminder that we need to maintain that as a focus. thank you. >> thank you commissioner haney. i know there are also clubs, like, girls [inaudible] that are starting to form in our schools which is great bauds i think young people like to learn this on their own time and often do it faster and better than we do as adults so i think that's positive. i'm hoping [inaudible] or that's what i was told a couple -- last fall. maybe that's changed. >> a number of middle schools are doing coding clubs. a lot of the teachers [inaudible] got 20 hours of coding crime lum and the teachers in the pilot this year doing the i pads just started

doing it at lunch with their students and giving it as extra credit so -- and you saw the student on the video was corroding. coding. it's really amazing to see how quickly the students and teachers are adapting and integrating it. we want to make sure it's universal and if you're a student in san francisco unified school district you'll get age appropriate experience and in high school as you know, we're really rebuilding the kre career tech academies around [inaudible] and have a great partnership with sf state. i mean, sf state has a fabulous computer science program and none of our students get into and r it or hardly any and they graduate -- every student they graduate gets an immediate job in san francisco. we're talking to them and actually the research for african american students, and this is typical across the country -- if we can get our students into a four year

program like at sf state their chances of graduating and being able to go into these jobs is much higher. we're talking about bay view shipyard and how do we create a different way for the school districts, universities and businesses to have an innovation zone for our students not only of that neighborhood, but draw from neighborhoods across the city. there's exciting things happening and great partnerships all around. >> thank you. at this time we'll -- actually, supervisor mar. >> i don't want to extends the meeting too much, but can i just ask is there any concern with too much tech sector involvement in education? i know miss [inaudible] helped me go to a urban schools conference near seattle where microsoft was and it felt like a big hard fell trying to hook

us on software, but seems like the climate is different where they're saying what can we do to support you so the school district and [inaudible] coming up with youth and students want and allowing the companies to contribute to that vision. that's what it seems like. but i'm wondering if you think there's any concerns about overrelicense on the private sector. i wanted to acknowledge that our chairman of our youth commission is here. i think he's graduating in a week or something too. i just wanted to throw that question out, are there any concerns that are there? >> laura has thoughts on it too, i don't know if you saw the recents situation that happened with newark and facebook, if you look at that situation where facebook really was dictating a lot of the policy changes that should have been made by the elected officials there and by the school officials, and so i

think we have to be very careful with that and aware that the decisions in terms of the needs and priorities and vision need to be made by the school board and edge ucators and we need to find where we can draw on the support and expertise of folks outside, whether they're private companies or wherever as to how they fit into that. that's what's exciting about this vision and the digital district plan that we're putting forward is we're laying our own vision and they're coming and figuring out how they fit into it. i think with that we have to be individual lent that we aren't allowing them to dictate our priorities. when they give money it takes our time in different ways. we use our resources, and once you build something and their funding goes away now we own it. i think there's a question as to ensuring whatever it is that

we do, even if they put forward money, that it fits into our priorities. i think that's been as a board something we put on the table and addressed and that's what we hope is that this is going to allow us to move forward but also address that concern that the private sector has a role, but not in making education policy. >> supervisor avalos. >> thank you. and actually i really appreciate your comments, commissioner haney. i think the framework that the school district sets up about what our goals are about education and curriculum are where money needs to flow into based on what the school district sees as what's important. i've actually -- for me, spitting out funds that it's great that we're able to receive. for me the verdict is still out on whether those funds are doing great work. i'm not sure the i pads have

really been used as much as they could be. i'm not sure there was a very strong plan as to how they would be used. i'm hearing this from different parents who have kids in the school district. i'm just curious how -- well, i won't ask that question here, but i was wondering how much of an effort there was to build a curriculum before there was actually the do nation made. donation made. also, what do we have in our schools -- i've had to work on we fie. wi-fi. wi-fi in the schools is terrible. that was or conversation with sales force was that we didn't

want to invest in i pads unless we had the development. i think people think there's i pads in every middle school, there's not. we basically had enough funding for two teachers from each of the 12 comprehensive middle schools and teachers had to voluntarily sign up and they went through five days of training in the summer so they went through a total boot camp and really learned with each other and learned how to use the technology. i would say last year -- and then their training throughout the year and we had probably three or four instructional coaches who worked side-by-side with the teachers. and we had a symposium at auto desk giving demonstrations of the kind of lessons they created. there, you know, we heard lots of great feedback from our teachers, our students and some parents came as well. and we've got data we can share

with you preand post surveys, classroom observations, we worked with sri to help with the evaluation so we can share all of that, but we were really just prototyping because we didn't want to say let's just do it all at once. we wanted to say how do we make this work so it's not just a toy in the classroom. what we didn't have last year is, as you know, the common core is brands new so the curriculum and instruction department had not really laid out what the math and science curriculum would be. this year the stem team led by jim ryan, who's fantastic, has laid out a beautiful math curriculum that was developed unit lessons with teachers so the training this year is much more integrated with the math together and then next year we'll do the next science standards. i think this year -- first of all, i think we did a really good job this year with the training and development and it

will be even stronger next year because there's more integration. to the tech companies, they're not telling us what the curriculum should be. what we're saying to them is help us afford the i pads, the wireless, the stipends for the teachers and we're doing that with new funders who are coming to us. she's going to be driving how the technology's integrated. we're not buying anything from the vendors that we don't want. we're looking at our own curriculum and then picking and choosing from the marketplace what are those apps that work. i will also say we are working with a lot of the tech companies around -- we made a decision this year to be multiplatformed so that we aren't held hostage just by one company. so, you know, the google chrome

books are becoming much more affordable and we want to support both chrome books and i pads. we're in a good position. to say this is our plan, our budget, you need to look at how you can best su por it u.s.. i think we're going to get stronger and stronger at it and not just do a massive implementation over night, but at a certain point, now that we've done prototyping we have to go faster because some of the sixth graders said to us -- you know, someone said this is the [inaudible] raises the money. they said, are we going to have i pads in 7th grades, i loved them in 6th grade. now that we've built up demands, we have to accelerate to have that equity and access. it's a great question . >> i'd love to get a briefing on your evaluation of that if you could come to city hall or i can come to the school

district. >> i'd love to share it with you. >> my daughter's going to start middle school so i know the curriculum's not going to be there. this next semester. >> right, for math. for the math team at sf community will be part of this initiative and they will have some chrome books and i pads and the math teachers are going to be working together with the new common core on how to integrate the new technology so hopefully she'll be participating. >> thank you. commissioner mendoza-mcdonnell. >> thank you. i wanted to clarify a couple of things. we don't look at this as an ipad initiative, that the i pads are just a tool for us to deliver common core math and we're going to be integrating computer science and coding within the math delivery and i think that's really critical

because we've had to talk about this very differently. the other thing that's been really great about focusing on middle schools is we're able to do uniform delivery of information and training for our teachers so all our teachers that participated this past year, they all volunteered, they were pioneers, some who had experience and some didn't, but they were willing to test this out and came up with some amazing projects. the showcase last week was really phenomenal and what the students were able to talk about in terms of what their -- the research they're able to do and what they're able to find via the internet has been really incredible. the other thing is the k 8 is going to be a critical component because we do have a large -- we have over 1,000 students in sixth, seventh and eighth grade in our k 8st so we

wanted to make sure they weren't left behind. one other thing i wanted to say with regards to wi-fi it certainly can be spotty, but we were really intentional in the way wi-fi was set up, and particularly having hot spots close to classrooms where the i pads existed. so the one lesson i think that we learned is when you have 30 students all on wi-fi at once, what's the capacity of one device so we made sure that we loaded up accordingly. and then to laura's point, i mean, i think there was a large lesson learned from la, which we're glad we didn't do and wouldn't have done anyway, which was to kind of distribute i pads everywhere and hope that

everybody would keep them safe. we went through some pretty strict pro to cals in making sure they're not visible and we worry about them getting stolen. we put in strong enforcement around that. and, you know, interestingly when the principals were given some extra funding, they ended up buying more devices for teachers who wanted to be part of the pilot. we're going to have upwards of 50 teachers that are going to be connected and the delivery of education just comes very differently and it's not, you know, all day long. they're still getting both ways of learning so that's been really great. >> thank you. all right, so appreciate the very lively discussion on this item. at this time we'll open up for

public comment. >> hello, my name's larry edmond. i'm coming here to celebrate my boy harvey milk birthday because he was elected in '77 and i thought about my education [inaudible] how that transformed in '69 we had the first black and white [inaudible] in america so i see where this is diverse of education is going to prepare san francisco [inaudible] to 2025 to be diverse and r and what the first lady said, have [inaudible] shakes in school, they're going to be healthy and won't be able to get bullied, racism, i think america has been [inaudible] but i hope