spoke another language. other than english in their home. and 65 percent were qualified for free and reduced lunch and 17 percent were children recipients of special education services. english was a dominate in the language that we of the participants in there. we heard from representatives of 39 schools, 21 elementary and four k-8 and, 8 middle schools and 6 high schools. the majority were african americans and 24 american latino and 7 percent asian pacific, and 12 percent white and 2 percent chinese american and two percent other non-white. and this is to kind of look at how the statistics of the data presented again, as you can see, intentionally, we had

because of the disproportionalty that exists in the district we reached out to the african american and latino populations to make sure that their voices were represented for their experiencing the disproportionalty within our district and so you can see here that we did meet more than proportionally to how many are enrolled in the district and although, we did have that intention to reach those specific groups within our schools, the questions were designed and the discussion guide was designed in such a way that we want to hear from everybody's experience, because everybody's experience matters and what is working and what still needs to be improved. >> so here are our findings. >> all right. actually before i get into the findings, i want to share something that as one of the that we said, when we met with parents, i want to clean out

the parent advisory council is made up of parents in your district and we are your stake holders and the most precious and valuable resource is in your hands. 81 percent of the people who participated in these community conversations on racial equity were parents. we started when we began talking with parents, we told them that this conversation starts here, but it does not end here. and i am hoping today that when we get through the findings and recommendations that the board seriously considers helping us keep that promise to the parents that conversation does not just start there or that it ends. so, and parents were grateful and very receptive to have the conversations, and want to see more members with the community and have the conversation and here are the quotes. racial equity is important to me as a cuban woman, i am ready

for the next steps that is an elementary school parent and another school parent said that i love the opportunity to talk about race and equality. at the same time, of course, as we all experience people and discussed the discomfort as a reality when we have these honest, forth right circumstances about inequity. racial inequity, one parent said that it felt uncomfortable to stay in this space talking about this special equity that was an elementary school parent and another parent said that there is a misconception that because i am black it would be easier for me to talk about it. participants articulated the need to have these conversations about racial equity after schools with teachers administrators and other district staff. one quote from a parent from a ka school said that i feel that the staff should have been here to hear all of these thoughts and i found that the staff does not like to speak their minds

but behind closed door, another parent said that i would love to have a training for this or a workshop for teachers, involve the teachers and administration in these talks and say that i, cosign on that. this was not professionally and personally, dedicated my life to this, schools that had the designated staff person for ingaegment and the group have the greatest participation in these conversation as well as the diversity of the parent leadership reported on the esc and elac councils there was a sense of the work to built across the communities had been started with the intentional support of the coordination at these schools and so again we have leadership, that is coming up next and to qualify the elementary school parent said that we feel like family and support one another and the teachers and we support each other's families and another parent from a ka school said that i have been involved with the parent leadership for a while and i have seen a change and when i first started the

pta was small and limited and for me being in that school and seeing this painful change in growth, i am ready to see where this seed grows. and in other schools we found the community struggle with the challenge to bridge across the differences that difficult work of integration. and once elementary school parent said that it is difficult to form the bonds across the groups even when you would like to and another elementary school parent said that a lot of people were interested in going to the school because it was diverse at the time. but a lot of times people still hang out with their own race, there is not a lot of interaction between the races but i am wondering how to do something proactive to reach the other groups. and that need for the ongoing conversation. the role of leadership also played a part in making these conversations happen as well as creating opportunities for diversified parent leadership to develop at the school sites, one elementary school principal said how do i insure that we talk about it more out load and

there should be more training for the staff and acknowledge the uneasiness that this creates and have a stave space for these dialogues but it is okay to feel uncomfortable. another said that the principal showed up figuratively and literally, and at the school during these meetings and it was a big boost and brought a new energy to the group. many concerns that the people shared was about the importance of cultural competency and cultural ininstruction as well as the need to provide the training and and support to better support our out comes for all students, teachers, one elementary school parent said that teachers need to be reeducated or retrained because they are not sensitive to these situations, an educator said that i thought, i thought that i taught equitable last year and turned out that i was not i learned what it was and i realized that i was failing my kids, teachers need to learn what equity really is and what it looks like and should be, that is the only way for us to

be educaters. participants highlighted the need for increased quality of teaching including hiring qualified and reliable substitute teachers, one parent from an elementary school said that more accountability for teachers who are the primary educators for our children that is what we need. more communication to the family about what concerns the teachers have regarding social academic areas, and another elementary school participant said that what they send need to be turned around and turn out and it is criminal and keep it real. >> and, sorry, i am just get emotional when i hear these because for some people it is numbers, but this is my baby. this is the baby that i take care of and so it is just, it really, it is really important. provide and one other recommendation was to provide and encourage and support the opportunities for teachers, principals and other district staff to participate in professional development and to

work with families and students of diverse cultural backgrounds, i am sorry i am in the brong part. could i add one last thing? oh,. did i skip a page >> i did. >> i take responsibility for my mistake here and restorative approach. i feel like that you reading the powerpoint and if you could stick to the highlight, and ask the questions, and i hear you and thank you. and i was giving the details to the community who might be tuning? . who could not make it here tonight. and i was working parents and the people concerned about this very important issue. >> but is your report to the board or to the community? >> good point and so the parents need a relevant

curriculum and this is very important and i am going to read this point from a parent. and race is an issue because we teach white history, why are we still teaching about columbus and my son came home and told me what he learned and i had to spend the entire walk home unteaching him about columbus and, we have limited number of latin americans and african americans, and the history needs to be taught and as you can see from the powerpoint in front of you that the other parents agreed, and the conversations high lated and the parents concerns about schools have low expectations, and the experience of shared inconsistentcies and we all have read a lot of reports from any fund and so forth that have highlighted how this disproportionalty have happened and we will read a quote from a parent that said that my parent started in the middle of first grade and the teacher was great and i noticed that the african

american children were made to feel invisible and would be punished differently and misunderstood. and across all conversations participants expressed their desire for more cultural sensitive and recognize them as partners. wow and you can see the quotes there. and there is a parent that said, we need to educate parents in the school needs to have more communication and workshops with the parents and teach the parents how to interact instead of blaming have the events or programs for the parents to be involved and have the teachers establish the relationship for the parents at the beginning of the school year and now we are moving on to the report and i would say, that i, there needs to be curriculum, that matches the student needs, that is my professional opinion as a professioner of african studies. >> good afternoon.

okay. >> so i am going to read the recommendations, the first one is to promote opportunities to the communities to engage in dialogue, focus, on improving racial equity within the school sites and the more the scores happen, the more that this scores happens, the more that we learn from each other. experience and promote appropriate and improve actions and interventions. so, a couple of these recommendation is again, kind of looking at how the school sites can be supported to have these dialogues by providing staff and resources to make sure that they are letting it happen, again on the ongoing process. thank you. >> can you hear me?

>> okay, to provide and encourage and support the opportunities for teachers and principals and other district staff to participate in professional development to work with the families, and students, of diverse cultures and backgrounds. so, from action steps that we want to a couple with the recommendation is to create a menu of professional development and workshops that provide strategies to address working with the culturally diverse universities and set a concrete goal for the number of teachers and students to reach each year and track the data and including the workshops that are offered and the number of attendees that are reached each year, and coupled with that is looking at creating professional learning communities to support the professional development and implementation and an ongoing dialogue. >> number three, to... sorry. >> to adapt culturally

responsible curriculums to reflect the collective histories and the lives of students and the population and represented in our schools. so, action steps associated with that, recommendation is to incorporate culturally relevant and diverse stories and history and themes into the common core standards and the ininstructional materials and the practices and the trainings to reflect the students who are enrolled in our district and please identify the schools that are currently offering ethic study courses or leading the similar work and create a share point folder for lessons and materials and exchange of ideas. >> number four, identify strategies to address the challenges to bridge across the cultural and differences, that many schools face by providing tools for principals and school leaders to support these efforts. >> so, the action steps to that is to explore the work that the restorative practices team is leading right now in this area

and identify the strategies to support and strengthen their relationships across the diverse communities and to incorporate successful strategies inside of the family engagement plan, and assess, which schools have formed african american groups and other diversity groups and identify the strategies tools, and supports that they needed to successfully form those groups and share these practices with other schools. number five, provide opportunities for parents to develop leadership capacity to give voice, to all families, represented at our school sites. >> action, steps, identify staff point person for family engagement at school sites and promote the family engagement family strategies, standards, and at the site level and back to school nights, and parent teacher conferences and the ssc and the pta meetings and the other school wide events and

also encourage the school sites to create parent leadership opportunities on and beyond the sac and elac and ptas. >> number 6, develop a plan to improve communications strengthen the relationships among students, schools, families, and each school and within the district. >> and for this action, step we just thought that we would be important to incorporate the communication as a central theme within the san francisco unified school district family engagement plan. >> and so, our conclusion, was the pac really just wants to say that we appreciate the communities and the groups that hosted these conversation and we want to acknowledge the families to share the heartfelt stories and thank the leadership for opening the doors to us, and we know that it takes a commitment from the

leadership and superintendent carranza has made it a district priority to address the disproportionalty and that is the first step in the addressing of this and that continued commitment and ongoing dialogue. and that is intentional, and structured. and of course, followed up by action. and that is our report on a racial equity. >> thank you. >> so georgia i also have a second plentitation and let's address this one as a separate issue here. and so first i would like to start with comments from the board. or questions from the board? >> i want to thank you for the

work that you did and it is sometimes hard that you hear the same things all of the time and what i think that i have learned from that is that you just have to keep going these things over and over again until we get better at them. i think that the fact that we have you doing the work for us is fantastic and it is done no place else. and we had a conversation today, about what or how many other school districts actually have official advisory body of parents, for the district, for policy making, and we were with some other school district people, georgia and i among a lot of other people that is what i mean by we. and so it is, we struggle to make it better and make it meaningful for everybody, but just this is fundamentally different, to have the parents talking to parents and i

appreciated the comments that were made about having the staff there and i think that we need to figure that out in some way, what the next steps are so that this sort of parent-led effort is really meaningful. and we don't want to lose, you know what? i think back to how many times it has been, well, it is always the same thing, when you come out there and it is just the official school district. and it is not as meaningful to the participants, that is not what they said, but that is basically the information that we got, and i do think that we have to struggle for the in between next steps. but the reason that we get to do that and we get to look for what is even more important and meaningful through the participants is that we have taken a big step by having you help us, with this work. and it is fundamentally different in the way than we have ever done it before and the way that anybody else does it. i want to thank you for that. and i, and i hope that what we will do is sort of take some of

this information, and look at the recommendations, but also, at the comments of the people who participated, and really use it so that we can with you, think about what we can do to make this even more important. and therefore, for the participants and therefore, for us, that we will learn more of what we have not been able to learn, not because we have not asked and not because the people are saying, but because when we talk to each other, it is not always in the best most meaningful way, for everybody, so, i just wanted to thank you, and also say that i while, you know, we have heard a lot of these things before. i hope that we get to think about them and talk about them in a different way and that you will help us the best, so thank you. >> thank you. commissioners anyone else? have comments? >> commissioner mendoza mcdonald? >> i want to thank you all for

making this effort, particularly hearing voices that we don't normally get an opportunity to hear and i think that we kind of take for granted what we think people want and need and what their experience is, and so i was and i really appreciate it as you were reading through all of the comments, that they were you know, coming from parents who probably have never been to a board meeting, who probably never had an opportunity to be asked what do you think about this or what is your experience has been or what does your child need? and so, this just reminds me that we need to do more of this, and not only around satisfaction, but just feedback, on so many of the and so much of the work that we are doing, particularly because we are moving forward on a lot of pieces that really we feel that we want to address around the equity and access and so, and again this begs the question, what is equity and access look like? how does it fall on people and

what is it mean? from our perspective and what does it mean when it is delivered into our school sites and into our communities? and, again, i just think that we take for granted what we think that people want and so this is really helpful and i just appreciate all that you did to reach out, and really target our families who did not typically have a voice. and the time and energy that you have put into this. so thank you. >> murase? >> i just want to recognize brat and the members of the pac and also mis grabowski before georgia in perfecting this method of getting a lot of input at the school sites and having participated in the previous community conversations and it really brings together the people who would not participate in these kiepds of suggestion and i want to congratulate on that and

just the mind reflection from the presentation is that the good news is the themes that emerged from the conversations are also things that emerged in our vision 2025, conversations, and track very closely with the lcap recommendations, when i first presented with this, and i was like wow, pac is doing racial equity and the lcap that is crazy because those are so intense and now i see kind of the logic of it because these same themes keep coming up and it shows that we need to do a better job on the cultural competency and the family voice in the communications. >> commissioner haney? >> yeah, i just want to echo my thanks to all of your hard work in this report, and all of these conversations, and it is incredibly powerful to read through the quotes and the recommendations that i, and you know, that the conclusion in particular stuck out to me as especially powerful and poetic and you say that we hope that what we learned and share from

these conversations will ripple like the impact of a tiny pebble on the water and ascend beyond the reach to support the work in the district in this area and i think that this is a beautiful metaphor and i hope that you will hold us accountible to that and continue to push us and share with us, and i am sure so much was learned from these conversations, more than you could put into a single powerpoint presentation, of course and so i hope that that we continue this conversation, and not just with the board, but throughout the district, to learn how to do this well, and how to have very difficult challenging conversations, about the goals that we all share, as a school district. and if we are going to move forward on these issues if we are going to really take on and lead, we need to know the truth, and we need to be honest, and i think that is what you all have demonstrated here is that we can do it that way. and not just sort of saying, as was said, making assumptions about how people feel and what they want and actually going out and talking to them and

asking them and learning from them and then having that lead the way. and so, i, thank you for doing it, the right way and i hope that we can learn from that in terms of a process, and one thing that i will is which i am especially interested in and jumped out at me and i hope that we can take it seriously is the point that you made about the curriculum, and the impact that that has, when we have a curriculum at all levels k, through 12, and still in many cases does not reflect the histories and the experiences of our students and families and what we can do you mentioned ethnic studies and what we can do to spread that throughout the entire curriculum and really prioritize that with everything else in the common core and all of the many important things that we are doing. and that is also equally important is to have, a curriculum that is reflective of the experiences of our students and families. i hope that we can work together on that as well and thank you for all of your hard

work and for having the courage to take on these conversations. >> commissioner norton? >> i think that what stands out for me and it is a theme that has recured a lot for me. in this work in the district is just this idea of communication and that up here, we feel like we are always working on these issues and talking about these issues and some of it is what commissioner mendoza mcdonald said is that we don't want to assume that we know how people feel without going out and asking them 1k3 that is an important service that you have done for us in this latest project and hopefully that you will continue to do for us. >> i think that what we really need to do and what comes through here is that we need to build the capacity of our site leaders particularly and our teachers, and secondly to really talk about these issues, to make it okay to have these discussions and have them be more spontaneous. and to occur when they need to occur at sites, and i think

beyond that also just build the capacity of the school leaders to really explain to the school communities what we are all doing up here. because you know, it is amazing to me how little when you go out to the schools people know or understand about what we are talking about here and what we are doing and that is on us, and that because why are we doing it if nobody understands it and paying attention to it. so yet, again it is just under scores for me the important of just over communicating with our school sites with our families and with our staff. about what we are trying to do and what we are, and what strategies we are using to get there and what our goals are and encouraging that two-way conversation. >> great, and any other comments? >> seeing none, so i just want to thank you for doing this. i think that this is the first

community conversation that we have had with the majority of the participants are african americans and when i saw that, i just thought, we are doing something that we have not done before and that is remarkable. and then i also want to say that i think that all of the comments that you captured here are really valuable and i think that i loved to hear when the people can speak honestly about a topic as difficult and as bold as racial equity, and it is something that we have not talked about and we do a lot of lip service to it and it is difficult to walk the talk but this type of conversation, these types of conversations and what you have captured here is definitely a snapshot of how folks are feeling and in our district and it is nothing new and it is the commissioners that everyone said here tonight is true and we have heard this over and over again and how many times do we need to hear this before we make a change, first i want to commend you on

taking on this subject. because as you probably realize that there are many of our administrator and many people in our schools that are unwilling to have these kinds of conversations and these are difficult conversations, and they are personal conversations. and sometimes, they are very painful conversations, to have. personally, even when i have had them, i think that it is they are insightful, and they always trigger some reflection and some self-introspection and it makes us check ourselves too, and i think that is really, really important. and i think that some of your findings in your recommendations are just spot on. they are exactly what we should be doing. and i think that the implementation for this and this should be a plan to implement your recommendations and i think that the cultural response of the curriculum is very important. you know that i think that we are turning a corner here though, in this district. when i offered the resolution

to have the ethnic studies it was a fight to get it passed, there were groups that were against it. there were some that came out and protested against the ethnic studies and as we see in the states such as arizona, they have succeeded. but in san francisco, thank goodness, that we have the voice of what our students really need and what they really do to serve and, we serve 90 percent students of color and i think that is, and it is socially responsible, for us and it is what we should be doing to offer ethnic studies. i think that we also need to model everything that we expect the principal and teachers to do and it is a difficult thing, i think, that these conversations are, as i said, are very delicate and i think that we need really skilled people to be able to introduce us and to talk about the racial

equity in a way that the people do not feel defensive and in a way that the people understand that in order to best educate and i think that the words of this middle schoolteacher where you captured, their quote of the middle schoolteacher that says, this is she thought or this person, he or she thought this is what equity was and it really wasn't. and that it needed to be taught to see what it is and that, in order to really truly educate our students is that we all need to know this and i think that is a very powerful statement coming from an educator. so, and i want to recognize also that i know that you are all volunteers and i can't, and you know, i wrote the resolution to have a parent advisory council and never in my dreams would i think that it would come so far that you as parents will be taking on this you this very difficult issue, of having conversations about racial equity and i want to commend you all. d