classmates. >> (speaking foreign language.) >> so we can experience the pleasure of reading speeding i also wanted to tell you my dream is going to credulous to become a great doctor. >> (speaking foreign language.) >> and i will be who i want to be. >> thank you very much thank you (clapping) and now i have another list of names when i call your name come up everyone has two minutes

(calling names) accompany here you have two minutes each please thank you. >> good evening. i'm kevin with the harvey milk school i am here to talk about see signatures from one hundred parents on this letter we're presenting it to you tonight and excuse me. if you have a private conversation take it outside sir, you may go on. >> the letter requests intervention from this 80 city hall 0 address the issues that

require earthquake attention those of us who have signed those letters we have students and we'll present those situations i want to take my time to give you a brief overview of the letters there are high turnovers the teachers from harvey milk and this is children who have failed to learn and chronic lack of substitute teachers when the substitute teachers are not there the children are dispersed to the other classrooms and declining engrossment to the tent that 70 percent of the people living in the castro area won't list harvey milk as an option on their applications and

resistance from the administration key teachers to get involve and the attempt to form a pat the teachers have voted against it we the parents of harvey milk demand the district work us with a competitive plan to address the issues we need thisa pta at har

this is dispute current fundraising being massively below that of neighboring schools and therefore, the amount of enrichment activities we provide, being pathetic in comparison. this of course has a

particularly negative effect on the least economically advantaged of our kids, whose parents can't afford to supplement their children's education themselves. i don't know about you, but this is not my idea of 3civil justice. we heard yesterday that the faculty was polled again and our neighbors have given up and pulled their kids out of harvey milk. we really hope we're not going to have to do the same. thank you. >> my name is lauren hall and i have two children at harvey milk. i have a second grader and kindergarten child. and so i just wanted to take a quick trip down memory lane, and remind you guys of back in 2012-2013 when my daughter started kindergarten there was

a bit of a buzz around harvey milk and we have pictures from the local newspaper of mr. carranza and our principal and the mayor coming to speak at the school as it was advertising having rising test scores and kind of a hidden-gem status and now my son has just started in kindergarten and i find him in a class with only 14 kids enrolled and that is out of 22 slots. so i think this is a good indication that the school really needs to be looked at. what is going on? and we need help. thank you. >> next speaker, please. >> my name is kevin rogers and i have the fortune of having twins in the 1st grades at harvey milk and i have prepared remarks, but you have heard it all. so i don't need to say this. can you believe that a school

would turn down the parents wanting to form a pta? can you even imagine that? we were bookmarked by either end in our beautiful neighborhood by two schools who raise more than $300,000 a piece by their ptas apparatus. $300,000. imagine what that means? classroom ftes. extracurricular activities, amazing enrichment for all of the people who are disadvantaged and can come to our schools. i'm going ask you for one minute of your attention. one minute, one minute. i want to leave with you two numbers. 100%, and 72%. 100% is the number of people if you take away the people who have siblings at school, 100% did not put their kids in the attendance area list harvey milk as their attendance area, as their preference. thank you for placing it on

your website, rachel norton, this is where i got the information. 72% wouldn't put it on their list at all and you know you can have a long list? that is amazing. can you even believe that. we have mckinley and el dorado on one other. you have people with wait-lists and you have extra enrollment and wait-lists out of wazzu around us. we have underenrollment. we're underfunded and the administration has denied us a pta. for three years they have sought that. i have only been there two. here is what i want to say: a lot of things you hear you can't provide. you can't provide extra money, squeeze it from a rock, but get out of the way and let the school have a leader, provide a leader. our principal must go. we need a leader who can absolutely lead us through a uniting our communitying and letting us raise these funds that the district can't provide. i don't blame you for not being

able to provide them, but let us find the way. we're willing and able and living in a neighborhood that can produce these results. thank you for your time and i hope we can get your attention at every level. assistant superintendent has been amazing. he i think actually needs more help. thank you. [ applause ] >> thank you very much. thank you, president fewer. i received a petition earlier today and i responded to the petition. i would like to ask deputy superintendent and assistant superintendent to please take your parents outside and develop what the next steps are going to be in terms of working with you. thank you for being with us tonight. >> i'm sorry, madame board president, may i make a request of staff? could somebody brief the board and send us a memo on exactly what those happen with a school forming a pta. so i would like

to know the facts about that. >> thank you, commissioner norton. that is part of the fact-finding that we'll get to the board. that seems very odd. >> thank you very much. okay. so the next group of speakers. as i call your name. please come up to the podium. steve liner. amy vander wick and elizabeth jones. . thank you my name is steve liner and my daughter is a senior at school of the arts and mr. matthew mckeel, a young and enthusiastic was just fired as director at the school of the arts and he taught there

five years and even is an alumnus. this has been very traumatic and matt was enormously respected and beloved by the vast majority of students, parents and faculty. whatever the accusations against them, they could have never been anything egregious since he was told in september he had to leave in december and he was allowed to teach. last week after the main fall concert he was frankly dismissed. you can imagine how disruptive this has been to our children's education. he has been a wonderful role-model and the community is so demoralized he need to be immediately rein stated. so it should act on the philosophy of restorative practices.

maybe matt offended somebody important and even worse some people feel he was a fall-guy or scapegoat for powers behind-the-scenes, angry at changes last year in which he wasn't a major player. at any rate matt is not union and so he is easy to fire. i'm just a lowly parent and don't pretend to understand much of that, but the bottom line that our students, parents and faculty adore matt and he is a quintessential teacher and if the district cares about its students please find a way to reinstate tomorrow. if petty rivalries or revenge, that is very, very sad. the entire fosota community begs that matt be returned to our school post haste. i thank you. >> next speaker, please. >> hello.

i'm amy vander wick and my daughter is a judge at the school of arts in the instrumental program. i'm here to speak about matt camille. he is an exceptional educator. i cannot overstate the high regard i have for him as a fellow educator. i have spoken to numerous parents of students in the program and i know of no one with reservations or concerns. matt has enthusiastically challenged our students to strive for the highest standards and they perform at a nearly professional level. he has promoted and nurtured an undeniably positive culture at the school among students and faculty alike.

my daughter has been so lucky to study under matt. the students are being robbed of the extraordinary curriculum that matt planned for them, just in the coming months he was organizing visits from prominent high-profile artists, a trip for alcatraz for students to play and response to the wai wai exhibits. the sudden firing of matt camille makes no sense. the students were told to go home early on friday because there was no one to teach them, but matt was their beloved, dedicated teacher. it seems that the charges against him were bureaucratic and they have nothing to do with his outstanding work with students. why was he pushed out? the administration and district must prioritize the quality of education, outstanding teachers should be supported not

attacked. it is not too late to rehire matt camille for the remainder of the semester or better yet the rest of the school year. thank you very much. >> next speaker, please. >> so good evening president fewer. superintendent carranza and the board of education, i'm elizabeth jones and here to speak tonight on behalf of the school of the arts instrumental departments and many other departments at school of the arts that he had an impact on in a very positive way. he begin interdisciplinary shows, through theater departments and visual departments. he has gone above and beyond in and outside of class giving us opportunities and experiences that we would -- i believe

that we would not have had without him. on my first day of instrumental music on my freshman year we began the firebird and it's not an easy piece and it was an amazing opportunity. and he continued to do so over the next three years, three and a half years he has been at school. and now we're left without a teacher, without a conductor, without a leader to guide the department and we all feel this is very unfair and not okay. thank you for listening. and i worked with superintendent carranza and he knows that -- and where other have attended such shows and know what high-level we

perform at. so i would like you to consider that and thank you for listening. >> thank you very much. i will read another group of speakers. everyone has two minutes. sean hanley. ruth morales. da vont ponte, sarah sims, dan linda. please come up to the podium. everyone has two minutes. speaker, please press the button. >> good evening. my name is sean hanley. i am a parent of a new kindergartner at miraloma elementary and it's been a great experience. we're very happy with the teacher and the community. i'm here tonight because i'm concerned about the status of negotiations with our educators. i'm worried that great teachers like my daughter's mrs. simmons and olive's teacher will not be

able to remain with the district educating our kids if they are not contemplated fairly and in a manner that recognizes the high cost of living in the city. so i would urge you to reach some compromise and to be as generous as can you. thank you. >> thank you, next speaker, please. >> good evening school board and thank you for having me tonight. after listening to everyone speak, it has become very evidence that your school system is very broken, and that you need to change a lot of things. as you know, my nephew rashon williams was murdered september 2nd. you do know he was bullied. my sister went to the principal at buena vista was aware of it. you were all aware of it. i don't know why you didn't

take the steps you were supposed to take. it has become very clear that changes need to be made. first of all, we need to take this and fix it from the bottom-up. that mean has we need to give our children coping skills. our children need to have resources. our children need to learn how to communicate. a lot of these kids are coming from broken homes and it's not being taught at home. we all -- you all -- the teachers always tell our students that school is their second home. so why aren't we taking the steps that we need to take? children have a lot of energy, and you all know that it can either be productive or it can be destructive. we can make a huge difference

we can make a big difference. rashon had big dreams. i don't understand how he was failed. this shouldn't happen and i want you to go home tonight and look at yourself in the mirror and ask yourself what you can do to make the change that you need to make? >> excuse me, your name, please? >> ruth morales. >> thank you. next speaker, please. >> thank you very much. i'm heidi kelly and i'm here on behalf of buena vista horseman rashon williams and all the children that attend buena vista. we are suffering from bullying and violence and dealing with the death of sean ito williams.

we need professionals to help the children. my son happens to be a bullier. he is 11. he is very kind, but there is a lot of activity going on with the young youth, kindergarten, all the way up to 8th grade. i know that a lot of facilities and resources give us a cookie-cutter resolve in this, with the homelessness, with the violence and this, that or whatever, but it's not working. so i'm just here to say that we would love to have professionals come in and psychologists deal with the death of sean williams because it's affecting all of us. i'm just here to say that we tried a lot of different things, but after the aftermath and storm settled and the calm is now, it's still an uproar and you said this school board was the titanic. it's going to sink titanic if we don't do a state of address, an emergency on all of these

issues that are present and profoundly prevalent right now. so we just need to get down to the core of it, so we need to step outside of the box, outside of the politics, outside of the budgets, outside of the things that have been done thus far, and maybe dig a little deeper to find a resolve, and my son would like to say something. >> i don't like bullying in the schools, because of rashon. how could this happen to a school? like the system,